Closer pirate action

And by all means, let us have the feds and fearless leader continue to dump on Arizona, to protect this sort of action. I mean, those are just poor unfortunate pirates who just need jobs, the jobs gringoes won't take..or something like that.

    I mean I didn't really realize that folks down there in Texas refused to take the pirate jobs, maybe it doesn't pay well or something, so we must import "guest workers" to fill those slots. We should offer them nice benefits and retirement packages as well..and instant drivers licenses, any name they want, low interest loans-scratch- outright grants to get better new pirate boats, free healthcare, personal translation services so they can apply for more government help, and subsidized more modern and lethal weaponry. They need decent tools for their jobs. Someone has to protect us from those dangerous bass fishing terrorists!

The FDA is now claiming, in a convoluted case involving raw milk, that you have no inherent right to choose your own food, that this "right" exists solely with the Federal government.

OK, here's a situation where market forces are going to ignore a tremendous source of wealth, wealth that could be taken from what is now a huge environmental disaster, the pine beetle infestations.

  The pine beetle basically kills off entire huge forests. It is unstoppable. Hundreds of millions of pines in western north America are dead. The deal is, this wealth wouldn't show up for years and years..so..it probably won't happen, there are no short term profits, just huge short term expense, but long range it *would* pay off. The "snatch wealth from the jaws of disaster" involves converting all this loose carbon into biochar, before we have regional sized forest fires or it just rots and still releases the carbon. There's enough potential there to improve the soils in millions of acres and provide a ton of really useful rural work. but..that no short term profit catch 22. So, how to do it?

My idea is to stop this carbon credits nonsense, take that same theoretical money and do it. Trading credits on the market just skims that investment potential away from the taxpayer consumers. All I can think of is direct multigovernmental efforts with something this scale, in part because so much of this now standing dead timber is on public lands. Print the loot up (no taxes, I mean print it up and start paying a lot of unemployed people with it), spend it, get it done. Get huge biochar facilities up and running and get that stuff to farmers all over to plow into their soil, the soil where our food comes from. National security, heck, global security.

  Or watch it rot away, or someday with a dry summer, areas like small European nations in size will burn up. That's the choices. Millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, or deep down in the soil where it acts wonderfully to help regulate subsurface soil moisture and help plants grow, and keeps that carbon sequestered for decades to centuries.

That insider whistleblower case about the rigged precious metals market keeps getting interesting. The NY Post is reporting the authorities are now doing a criminal probe of those manipulation allegations.

A rather vivid description of the standard operating procedure for modern high finance.

More or less what I have been saying, but I am not as afraid of any collapse as the "insider" giving the lecture in the article. Because I know the bulk of those electronic promises of future wealth called "pensions" and so on are *already gone*, already "collapsed", and there never was any intention of actually swapping them back for all the retirees so they could have living expenses.

  The whole article is about cons, so really..that was the ultimate magic beans for the milkcow con the grifters have been selling the public..and municipalities..and unions and organizations and other corporations.... "Gives us all your extra loot for decades, we'll "invest it", then we promise to pay you back later on even moar, forever and ever"! I mean, geez loweez,,, The numbers have never added up, it just cannot be done. That money/wealth is long gone. The rest is ..what to call it..chimeric wealth. Giant ponzi scheme. Sure it has paid off for some. that's how they work, they have to build the hype, so the earlier investors get back some big bucks and get all tuplip mania about it, they "sell" the con to their friends, and it snowballs from there.. only for awhile though, then they collapse once too many are "owed" more than what is coming in.

  So...there's no way it can pay off for the vast retiring boomer generation and beyond, because all ponzi schemes rely on new investors to pay the old investors, and the lie is that the money is "working for you" someplace in magical fairyland ville upstream. Once the pool of new suckers slows down, it gets harder and harder for ponzi schemes to operate, because they *don't make money* they just skim a lot and divvy some out to keep everyone faked out that it is a perpetual motion money machine.

    They'll try accounting tricks and come up with even more exotic forms of future credit, plus always the old faithful run the printing presses. Then tell people they should be robbed..err..taxed more.. all of that ...but the real wealth no longer exists, it has already been spent. It's gone.

You know the famous white van and speakers for sale con? It's famous, happened all over the country, I even saw it once in a parking lot in Stone Mountain Georgia when a friend was driving and I talked him out of it, told him straight up it was a con, freakin obvious. Oh man he had instant greed in his eyes and heart though, that blinded him to reality, so he couldn't see it. Anyway, that's the vast bulk of pensions and retirement accounts and so on today, a real impressive heavy box..it even looks like a speaker inside, nice wood cabinet and grill...you get home, plug it in, nothing. Open it up...full of rocks. The sellers are long gone by then. Your thousand dollar speakers that you "invested" 200 in was a *box of rocks*. Because no one is going to give you real thousand buck speakers, except for a thousand bucks. There ain't no free lunch, there is no magical something for nothing, money doesn't work, money is imaginary property, people have to work, and perpetual motion-something for nothing- doesn't ever work at all.

OK, it is pretty bad now, but just suppose..there's nothing they can do about it, and it keeps leaking forever until it runs out. We need to know how much is in that field and estimated recoverable amounts, but my guess is, and it is a total guess, enough to kill the gulf of mexico pretty much once it spreads out all over, which it would. This is also going to put the kabosh and much more offshore drilling for quite awhile.

And here's another thing...I haven't seen any reason for the explosion/fire. How come no one is speculating on a deliberate attack yet? Why is this *crickets* in this day and age? OK, I just did, as a possibility. Maybe not probable, but a possibility.

OK, more links size of the spill

Maybe it is Halliburton's fault

^^^^ that one sure seemed to take a little while to come out, didn't it? I think there's another example of a corporation that is just too big to exist. They have been implicated in just tons of bogus corporate activities and bogus competence in a lot of their endeavors.

With that said, where are the oil sucker ships/tankers? Seems like they could have something like a long pipe they could maneuver down close and just start sucking the oil from as close to the leak point as possible, then load tankers with it and take it directly to a specialized refinery that could deal with salt water contaminated oil easier (they have to do that with our strategic reserve oil anyway, because it is stashed in old salt mines, and that refinery is down in Louisiana IIRC). Then there needs to be a way to quickly separate oil from seawater and put the water back in the ocean, perhaps with a big centrifuge like device? They have something like this on some diesel air intakes, a spinning fan that shoots the heavier dust and dirt off to the side and out and away before it hits the filter.

My guess is, this will wipe out gulf fishing for a long time though. Might be a good time to throw some shrimp, etc in the freezer.

Ha! I thought I was down on our favorite "investment" bank.... Check out Tarpley's rant.

More righteous ranting at the link, including an important point I agree with (although on a lot of issues I don't agree with Tarpley)..the tea party folks have been seriously compromised, mind faked, if they think the R party will do anything constructive with this set of events. Just like they equated unlimited campaign donations by corporations to be "free speech" instead of just looking and going "Hey, a bribe"! There will be no "reform" of the R party..or the D party for that matter..ever. Waste of time. The largest most constructive change we could do in the next election is *every* incumbent out, replaced by independents.

Seems an expensive balloon based telescope didn't quite make a good liftoff.

The planet runs on still cheap to get in terms of energy in to energy out petroleum. Now..what happens when demand outstrips supply?

There's a good clue in there that has been brought up before, the lack of many new refineries being built. Sure, some are going in, and you can point to a lot of costly regs, etc...but the lack of interest, especially with the US petrogiants is a major clue that they *know* that we already have enough refinery capacity and it won't be cost effective to build more *if there ain't gonna be much crude to run through them*. If they knew or best guessed that a couple new saudi arabias were going to be found anytime in the next few decades, they know enough to start building the refineries now...crickets. There are some niche ones going in to process ultra heavy crude, like for Venezuela's big stash..but besides that, not too many. They *know*, and if they know, you should too, and plan your energy needs for the future *now* unless you want to be wallet raped then.

I told folks this ten years ago, told them we hit peak cheap solar panels (ha, same time I told folks we hit peak bottom gold prices and get some then..I did both in that timeframe, took my own advice, proven correct now). We have very marginal efficiency gains offset by bad inflation and the rising cost of production of said panels...and the fix has been in somewhat, look at the dozens of "breakthroughs" you and I have read about over the years..but no buck a watt retail yet. And it is not likely to happen either with long term patents, and this looming energy crunch. Takes energy to build them things, even the new plastics based panels..petroleum plastics. Plus, a lot of the critical minerals and exotic metals needed hitting peak demand as well.

Anyway, snooze ya lose. Energy production facilities in hand, insuring some reasonable supply for you for the next thirty years, versus ..paper or electronic promises of future wealth, plus nebulous job security, that you are relying on to "pay the utility bill". I know I have a coupla goals for this upcoming decade, two of which are an electric truck with some reasonable range (just enough to get to town and back, thirty miles) that I can keep charged with my solar panels, and also a small electric garden tractor so I can raise food and haul in my firewood, etc, little personal chores and not worry about liquid fuels supply. In between charging those things I already have a bare minimum amount of solar to at least run some lights and a laptop, etc.

There used to be a spiffy product for firewood that evaporated, but I bet it could make a comeback if some company wanted to take another stab at it, a 12 VDC electric chainsaw. Not expensive and limited teeny onboard batteries, just jumper cables to run it from your big truck battery. They used to make the things with something like a 50 foot set of jumpers so you could drive your truck in, cut a load of wood, and still restart and get back out. They make 110 AC saws obviously, but one with just two electric clamps would be nice, and skip the whole inverter deal. Off the wall products like that *might be* a way to future proof employment, just go with the flow of more and more expensive liquid fuels, and see what sort of electric whatever that people will want and need, could be run from solar panels dealie could replace it. It is obvious they really want to do carbon tax and skim globally, so conventional electricity will be going up in price severely, no way around that. So that means..home solar or something that fits in your area, personal windcharger, small scale hydro, etc.

...from the jaws of victory. First, I can't believe how much they are defending wall street this go around. Scandal after ripoff, and about the bulk of the public is "fed" up to here with their excesses. So what does the stupid party do? Start freaking out like they want to "destroy capitalism". This is *epic fail*, alienate all the fence sitters again, and half the true believers. Why don't they just take out a lot of billboards "hey, mainstreet! We hate you and are going to take your lunch money....and breakfast money..and dinner money..and snacks.."

Anyway, a nice piece here on "frontloading" or how all the fast computerized trades from those whopper casino banks are basically working with "insider information" that is a license to steal money out of the market. This is one of the ways they "earn" profits. This also goes back, remember this story, where a programmer walked out with GS's trading program, and some doofus (I think in the SEC) said that "in the wrong hands, this could manipulate the market"? Correct, 100%, and is exactly one of the ways GS and a few others *have* been manipulating the markets.

Another reason to put investing back into the market, institute credible buy and hold time periods, like a year or two, and outright ban computer trades.

A few hints from a top Chinese economist on moves with the yuan coming soon. The biggest little clue, one I have been watching for as a precursor to the Great Dollar Dump, is he is quoted as saying they may decide to peg to a basket of currencies. Translated that means start dumping bucks, which would lead to a global rout.(as I have been saying, when the US loses world reserve currency status, that's it, the party is over, that's all she wrote, etc, the empire goes away, it collapses) There's pressure on China to revalue higher, from all quarters around the globe, the big O harangued them a little bit about it..but they won't do that *until they are good and ready*, and right now they *aren't* good and ready, and are still scarfing up cheap-to-them natural resources all over, locking them in.

  Their undervalued currency and massive manufacturing ability keeps letting them do this, it is a profitable loop for them, so they aren't in any hurry to change things. They can export and undercut most anyone, in return they get oodles of other nation's hard currency, which they turn around and use to get more raw resources via outright purchase or signed long term production contracts, etc. The other stuff they buy is advanced R&D, the means to keep doing what they have been doing. Anything at all to do with new tech, they get it, buy it, siphon it away, reverse engineer, whatever. They compound their own R&D budget immensely this way. Heck, they get foreign companies to put their own money up and come to China and build them even more factories!

Bribes, payoffs, cartel price fixing..it's all in there, how the casino banks bonked Birmingham.(and all sorts of other places, and are still doing it)

And even when they get busted, and convicted, all they get is a joke fine, small enough to be an inconsequential part of doing business.

Crime pays..as long as it is BIG crime.

An Obama appointment for a key trade negotiator for ag concerns. Basically a global food cartel guy. One of the funny/odd things about him is his lobby group is one of the main complainers about the whitehouse organic garden. 0_o

Fair analysis of the looming overlapping debt problem and when it will hit what they call the "Maturity Wall". A lot of good graphs that help you to visualize the time-line involved. I'd call it a serious heads-up.

Recently released documents showing what the Fed did in the beginning of the bailout, purchasing non US backed securities, indicate to the writer of the article that they weren't legal at all, that the Fed usurped congressional authority.