Wednesday, February 6, 2013

IRAN, THE ECONOMY, THE CHINA/JAPAN FLARE UP AND OTHER SIGNS OF THE END OF THE WORLD

Today was a really bad day for news. Iran claims nuclear capacity, China and Japan may be on the verge of war over some uninhabited islands, mail will soon stop on Saturdays (and totally fucking up my Netflix cue), the economy looks headed for disaster and Paul Walker will now take over in the new Hitman film reboot. Joy.

Let's start with Iran. An article has appeared in an Egyptian newspaper with current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quoted saying this:

Ahmadinejad said the world must now treat Iran as a nuclear country. “They want Iran to go back to what it was in the past, but they won’t succeed. They assume we’ll give in to pressure; such thoughts are misguided. We’re already an industrial and nuclear country, a country that has conquered space. For years we have been thinking about sending a human being into space, and we will do that, with Allah’s help. We must ensure development and growth and bring them to pass, and the world must acknowledge our progress,”

The main problem with this statement is that is almost certainly false. While it is possible that they may have enough material for a nuke, there has been no information that they have achieved the capacity for a bomb of missile yet, with yet being the optimum word. They will soon reach that threshhold but, knowing what I do about the nuclear program, they are still months away from achieving that goal. I would almost certainly guarantee this to be grandstanding and I base this on the sentence from the above quote: "A country that has conquered space." On what planet is sending a monkey into orbit, something we achieved sixty years ago, conquering space? Then there's the fact that, if photos are any indication, the monkey they sent up died. Here's the photo they released:



Tell me that's the same monkey because it isn't. The hair is a different color, the nose is a different shape, the eyes are wrong. How dumb do they think we are? Do they really think that all monkeys look alike? If they are lying about their achievement in space travel, it's not that much of a stretch to say they are lying about their nuclear program too.

This is also incredibly stupid as the Iranians must have missed that part of history when Saddam Hussein said he had weapons of mass destruction and then got killed for it. Israel and the US will not react well to this and ups the ante for a giant miscalculation.

Speaking of miscalculations, the Asian Pacific area is headed for a confrontation if what China, Japan and North Korea are all doing keeps occuring. North Korea is allegedly preparing for a nuclear test in blatant violation to the UN treaty. For someone unknown reason we give tons of food to this rouge nation in exchange for them NOT doing this kind of thing. If NK detonates nuke, all food MUST be cut off immediately. I'm sorry if the public starves but I'd rather have that than a North Korea armed with nukes that can hit the US. We are still at war with them for God's sake. This is what happens when countries who shouldn't have nukes get them: the chances for the world to end rise dramatically. Just to stick their finger in our eye, their media there released a video that showed NYC destroyed. Good times.

Meanwhile, China and Japan are inching closer to war over some controversial islands that both claim as theirs. Yesterday, Chinese warships aimed their radar at Japanese naval forces. This is the kind of acts that can lead to a massive war, and one in which US interests will be affected immediately.

And then there is the economy, which despite what the government and MSM keeps touting like a broken record, which is spiraling downward again. Economists Marc Faber and Nouriel Roubini have both said that the debt bubble will burst soon and that the entire world economy may crash. And everyone points to one factor that is killing us: profits. That's all anyone cares about. Not the workers, not the government, not even the company itself which vulture capitalists are buying up, loading with debt and bailing with all their stolen assets. It is this mad drive for profit that is the reason salaries haven't risen for forty years now, why benefits are being slashed and, as a direct result, more and more of us are being driven into poverty and governments are starving for tax revenue that is no longer flowing in but out.

But like any bubble, this one will burst soon. You can't have two thirds of the country making less than $41,000 a year and expect things to be fine. People need to buy things. As they have no money, they put it all on credit. But when you can't pay the credit, and millions just like you, credit card companies go out of business as they have no cash flow just bankruptcy after bankruptcy. Add to that the out of control tuition costs that can't be paid back because new graduates can't find a job, and you have what Roubini says is a "perfect storm."

There is also the housing market which isn't nearly as stable as everyone wants you to believe, an unemployment rate that is masking the true desperation in the country right now (more on that in a future article), and a currency war being fought. There is danger around every corner and the news talks about none of it. It took NBC news three days to talk about the Syria/Israeli conflict and that aired opposite the Super Bowl. The media can no longer be trusted. The government can no longer be trusted. That is a dangerous combination.

Countries like Japan and the US have used ultra-low interest rates and money printing to help stimulate the economies. The unintended consequence of this action is that no one is making any money off their investments anymore, unless you have a high speed computer or inside information. Japan has lost 10% of it's value against the dollar since their new government has tried a growth at any cost attempt which is not succeeding, as growth and cuts are necessary. Grow new business and cut old ones that don't work. That plan is never implemented anywhere. If it was, we would have legal weed here and a defense budget half the size it is.

Because so many people are printing their way out of the world depression, eventually the entire system will collapse and hyperinflation will result. How do I know this? Because everytime this has been attempted in human history, that has been the end result. Look at the Wiemar Republic or even Zimbabwe for how printing money devalues the currency to worthlessness.

Nations have taken noticed as many are dumping treasury bonds and stocks for gold. China has gone from the largest owner of US bonds to the biggest seller and are investing in gold instead, with some saying they are now they second largest holder of gold, just behind the US and now ahead of Germany.

Greed is killing us. Religion is killing us. Stupidity is killing us. And now, thanks to the idiot Republicans who hate the Post Office by saddling them with unsustainable debt, Saturday mail will stop come August. Congress has yet to weigh in on this proposal, as technically they need Congressional action to change anything, so this may still not happen, but if it does, that will suck for anyone who gets magazines, bills, or DVD's in the mail as they will all be delayed now. It may actually put DVD or game by mail service in jeopardy as this will constitute a price hike as the average consumer will get less DVD's per month and may lead to record cancellations as people move to VOD or Redbox. Way to go GOP, you may have cost thousands of people their jobs. Assholes.

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