Saturday, August 11, 2007

Assembling Our Armor

Over the past week, the stock market has begun to show signs of cracking. Over the past few years, banks, in "cooperation" with the Feds, have tried desperately to overcome a problem. The real estate market across the country had cooled down, with the result that prudent banks would have to make changes in their lending policies. Among those changes a savvy money fund manager would emplace would be: lower debt-to-equity ratios, higher interest rates for less-qualified buyers, and so on.

One of the last things careful bankers would do is, drop interest rates and open the market to marginal borrowers. The default and foreclosure rates would skyrocket, and lenders would be left with depreciating paper in a long-term declining market. In the face of this logic, many banks, mortgage companies and other funding sources did exactly that. They did exactly the wrong thing.

So, recently, several have had thousands of mortgage notes fall into their laps, against homes in fringe neighborhoods with no chance of recouping even their basic costs. Lender defaults begin, and the repayment monies are nowhere to be seen. Long-term outlook for these institutions: perhaps near zero.

The Europeans invested in these lunatic ventures. So did the Aussies, Asians and Argentines. Federal and regional banks are pumping money into the system to keep it afloat, which is, as Robert Frenz said, like drilling a hole in your boat bottom to let the bilge water drain out.

Proper economics require a corrective "balancing". It's a zero-sum game: the lenders should, over time, be "allowed" to fail, in stages to lessen the overall impact. Instead, the Puppeteer Class is lulling the populace to sleep by covering the error. When the books are balanced, which they must be, the error must be repaid. That error is now, potentially, in the trillions of dollars.

While all this has been going on, China, which was "directed" into such investments, is more than upset. The Chinese are considering the "nuclear option". Not in terms of missiles, but in terms of currency valuation. If China begins to spend the $US it has accumulated, hundreds of billions will flood the markets. The buying power of each will begin to free-fall. It will be an induced version of the absolute collapse of 1923 Germany. Currency traders will move to Euros. The United Arab Emirates already have, and at least three other countries are thinking of joining them. The Bush administration destroyed Iraq, in part because Hussein rambled about pegging oil to the Euro. Boom.

So what's the outcome? No one can say with certainty. But if the rulers of this land do not change direction, we are going to land face-first on the pavement, and the truck that hit us isn't going to look back.

Because the national regime knows there shall be blood in the water, and don't want it to be theirs, King George has been spending a lot of time making new laws, declaring himself dictator in case of [anything he defines as] a "national emergency". Congress just voted itself a pay raise, and is continuing progress toward a North American Union with Canada and Mexico; more immigrants takes the country's mind off finances. The Supreme Court is mostly standing clear of voting about silly things like Constitutionality of the actions of the other branches.

And while this has been going on, dual Israeli-American citizen Comrade Director Chertoff's merry DHS band have been building detention centers within the U.S. We are told, with a straight face, that the potential residents thereof are illegal aliens. Yes, the ones the government is supporting through education, medical care and in many cases, incarceration for true criminal offenses. The same ones who have rallies with impunity, and seeming immunity from arrest from their violation of existing Federal laws. And oh yes, the ones the Feds haven't even bothered to count.

No, the prospective inmates will be the dissenters, the outspoken ones, the people who might influence others to think. This was the Commissars' policy in their last haunt: the 1930's Soviet Union. It is again arising as the policy of their blood heirs. The purges, pogroms and internments in the gulags gave warning to the general population: dissent equals death. And their immobilization lasted more than half a century.

Our Founders didn't put everything they owned in this world on the line for such a result. We have previously been a People which has resisted tyranny, overthrown oppression and sought personal freedoms. Will we hold fast to those principles before the gates close behind us?

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