Lately, I have been on fire. I predicted the death of the Tea Party this past election and that seems to be happening everywhere except Texas, and who sees that as a shocker. I said the Republicans would use the VA scandal to their own advantage while simultaneously ignoring their whole part in this through their lack of funding or passing of any bill that would have helped the problem. I watched one Senator yesterday demand to know why this had happened at the VA's, conveniently forgetting he himself had voted against the bill which would have given the hospitals more money or another that would have fixed some serious problems which he said was just Democrats wanting to spend more money and the VA's were fine. No they weren't and apparently this yet another guy in politics who don't know about things like video tape and computers.
In my discussions about Flight 370, I said that the alleged pings they found were doubtfully what they were looking for, as anyone who has any knowledge of physics or even video games knows the pings will get stronger the closer you get to them. If the object is stationary, as a crashed plane would be, finding the source is easy. If it is moving however, due to them mistaking whales, geological noises or even subs for the said pings, finding them will be near impossible as they will disappear and/or move which is exactly what happened. We cannot say with any degree of certainty at this point whether or not the plane crashed at all. Hijacking is still a possibility, even if I do think suicide by pilot is the most likely explanation, but has to be considered a possibility.
How is we can track a turtle anywhere on earth with a GPS, but we lack the same ability for a 777? It's not like this hasn't happened before. In 2003, a plane disappeared from Angola, stolen off the runway by two mechanics that supposedly didn't even know how to fly. It took off and was never seen again. Shouldn't that have been a wake up call to put GPS trackers in all planes? How come we gave up all rights to privacy after 9/11 but planes with GPS was too much? Flight 370 is not where they thought it was. Now what?
The economy is other prediction that is coming true, much to my chagrin. I like electricity, and supermarkets with food and a roof over my head. I DO NOT want to see the economy collapse. But the idiots in charge, and backed up by a right wing insanity brigade on one side and a super PC, nanny state left on the other, and what we see is an almost certain all out plunge into the darkness.
As I said here, the last quarter, which was listed as .1% gain was officially revised downward to a negative 1 now. In reality it is almost certainly 2 or three points lower than that as they rig the numbers by adding in royalties and future investment money which is like saying, "I can predict next years income for myself by the amount of money I am going to win at the casinos." Right. How do they not know that this doesn't work?
Now as always, "bad weather" has been to blame, but as every economic data shows, at the same time the poor and middle class were all huddled up at home trying to stay warm, the rich went out and spent like gangbusters. High end stores like Michael Kors, Nordstrom, Tiffany, Saks, and Ralph Lauren all posted better than expected gains so why was bad weather not affecting them? Bad weather is not the culprit. People with no money are.
All signs say the average consumer is tapped out. They spent every dollar they had last month, as statistics show, and went heavily into debt even to buy what they had to, like college tuition and new cars. Because of this, retail is dying. It didn't help that we have the highest level of retail store space on the planet, most of which is being turned into abandoned strip malls. There are at least seven strip malls I can think of near this town or where I used to live in CT that have been empty now for at least a decade. That is not the kind of growth that sustains anyone for long.
Housing is taking a beating again, though you wouldn't know it from the glowing government and MSM reports. If you have an expensive house, it will sell quick. If it's below $250,000, good luck. Again bad weather has been to blame for the slowdown, ignoring the fact that it has been gorgeous in CA and their market is devolving faster than anyone else. In San Diego, house costing $200,000 or less plunged 46% in sales last quarter. Ouch. People are being priced out of the market by rising housing costs caused by investors grabbing whatever they could driving up prices as a result. But just like 2007, sales and prices are dropping in various cities as investors are leaving the market and no one else can afford to buy at the rates they are.
This is leading many to say not only is a recession all but guaranteed by July 30th, when the next round of numbers come in, but our entire economic system may collapse soon after. Our government has done nothing to fix anything and, surprise, nothing has worked. Our middle class is being eviscerated, corporations are paying people even less to stay "competitive," and tax coffers are being emptied because no one has any money to pay taxes. If only there was some way, like a minimum wage, to make sure people got paid enough to survive. If only.
In response to this coming disaster, the bankers have pulled out their terrorism card again and said if they get prosecuted, they will tank the economy. Whatever happened to this country does not deal with terrorists? I guess it only applies if their are foreigners. Nevermind the fact that Iceland arrested everyone involved with their banking scandal, threw out all the politicians who allowed it, gave people the houses that banks had tried to steal through mortgage fraud. and holy crap, it worked. Their economy is humming while ours is stuck in reverse. The only reason nothing has been fixed is you do not live in a free society. Corporations, especially banks, run the show now. They are above the law. And yet some of you yahoos out there are fighting to give them even more power by voting in corporatists who are going to butt fuck you first chance they get. There's no lube people. Remember that: NO LUBE!
This is from a former professor of law and economics, and chief S&L prosecutor, William K. Black:
First, no banker is “too big to jail.” They are easily replaceable and removing a fraudulent bank CEO from power is the single most productive act that regulators and prosecutors can accomplish. [The Department of Justice's chief of criminal prosecutions] Breuer and Attorney General Eric Holder were involved in a con when they claimed that their failure to prosecute the senior bank officers leading the frauds was in any way related to “too big to fail.” Hilariously, they even applied the “rationale” for non-prosecution to former bank officers – as if a bank would fail “because” its former officers were prosecuted. It is a testament to the weakness of the reportage that this claim was not treated with ridicule.
Second, valid fraud prosecutions do not “cause” a business to fail. The fraud causes them to fail. They should fail when their “profits” arise from fraud. In particular, they should fail in the case of accounting control fraud because their “profits” are the fictional product of accounting fraud. The markets and the economy are greatly improved when fraudulent enterprises are destroyed. ***
Third, very little is actually “destroyed,” when we place a fraudulent bank in receivership, fire the crooked CEO, and sell the bank to an acquirer of integrity and competence. The new bank will, net, be greatly improved because it has been freed from control by the fraudulent leadership that was “looting” the bank (George Akerlof and Paul Romer, 1993, “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit”).
Fourth, there is rarely a need to prosecute a bank. In virtually every case in which the bank’s frauds cause serious harm senior officers of the bank will have led the fraud and profited from it. Everyone in law enforcement realizes that any effective deterrence will come from prosecuting those officers and not only removing their fraud proceeds but also imposing fines that will leave the officers bankrupt.
Fifth, the bank’s controlling officers are in an immense conflict of interest when their frauds are detected. They control the bank and its resources. Their first priority is to prevent their own prosecution. Their second priority is to prevent any substantial “claw back” of their compensation. Their third and fourth priorities are to do the same for less senior officers. This isn’t altruism (though it certainly has an aspect of class-based affinity). Fraudulent CEOs realize that it is risky to allow the prosecutors to gain any leverage over more junior officers who may “flip” and testify against the CEO. The fraudulent officers controlling the bank, therefore, will gladly trade seemingly huge fines in exchange for obtaining their top four priorities.
[Finally, the government's policy of not prosecuting Wall Street criminals] produces what Akerlof and Romer warned was the “sure thing” of CEO “looting” through accounting control fraud plus the assurance that the CEO will not be prosecuted, forced to surrender his fraud proceeds, or forced to pay fines that bankrupt him.Unsurprisingly, the result has been unprecedented accounting control fraud by elite banksters.
None of this explains why they don’t prosecute bankers (much less ex bankers)
Our society is falling apart, no one wants to do anything to fix the problems, and the right is still focused on abortion and gay rights as the house is burning down around us. We have precious little time left before the four horsemen arrive and if we don't start demanding more, a lot more, we won't have anything left.
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