Your Lying Eyes

"Who are you going to believe -- me, or your lying eyes?"

-Groucho Marx

"Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth,
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth."

-Rush, Subdivisions

"This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."

-F. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

So let's start with a basic and undeniable set of premises:

1.  There is a limited amount of wealth in the world; and
2.  There is an ever-expanding number of people in the world to possess that wealth.

Then you come to an undeniable set of conclusions:

1.  Those who do not have wealth will have to acquire it from those who do; and
2.  Those who have wealth will seek to aggrandize and protect it from those who do not.

It is game theory.  Call it the unattractive truth.  And the rest is just mythology, a fancy and fanciful lie.  All of the other ideologies and sloganeering theories and economic models and governmental systems are just noise, something to distract you from what is right there for all to see.  All of the slogans and values and capitalisms and communisms and "self-made men" and economic systems are just a clear bright shining lie.  There are those who have.  And then there are those who have not.  And they will inevitably, forever be in conflict.  Just accept it.

Because once you have accepted this truth, then you can appreciate the difficulty presented to you in your situation:  If you don't have wealth, and you desire it, you must come up with a way to accumulate it, and your time is limited to just this life time.  You see, most of the wealthy weren't limited to just this lifetime to accumulate it because they made it the old fashioned way, they inherited it.

And once you have accepted this truth, you are better prepared to deal with it.  You can see through all of the ideologies and sloganeering theories with economic models and "self-made" men inheriting sunshine and better living nonsense.  You are better prepared to deal with it, instead of wasting your life laboring, as did Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill incessantly, thinking that just one more time ought to do it, only to see then the false summit, and yet another hill behind it, and yet another rock to push.

And once you have accepted this truth, you can transcend it.  Wait one second.  "How do I transcend it?," you may ask.  How do I go about undoing this game board that has been put in place for millenia or longer, and that is reinforced not just by laws, governmental and extra-governmental institutions, but by all of those who still believe the lie, who still buy into the mythology, who will remain forever locked in their Sysiphean struggle?

And once you have answered that existential question, my friend, you are most of the way there.

Some of the Time

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

-Abraham Lincoln

"When a man's an empty kettle,
He should be on his mettle,
And yet I'm torn apart.
Just because I'm presumin'
That I could be kinda human
If I only had a heart."

-The Tin Man, The Wizard of Oz

So forget those that are fooled all of the time. You cannot save them. The only hope lies with those who are not fooled. And the problem lies with the fact that they are not fooled only some of the time.

Watching the bread and circuses take place is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, I suppose, in that we are witness to a pivotal moment in history. The massive amalgamation of wealth and power and the chronic diminution in the commonwealth available to all is a power play of epic proportions. And a curse, I suppose, in that you may be one of those who is not fooled all of the time.

But you can only see through the facade, indeed, perhaps, can only bear seeing through the facade, some of the time. So you must act quickly.

The G.O.P. is actually running a former Wall Street man himself as their candidate for president. As if the decades-long theft of America's wealth, and the eviction of her people from their homes, was not enough. Somehow -- somehow -- they actually convince them that one of the very culprits in their undoing is to be their savior.

Yet that is where we are. And the millions pouring into and poisoning the campaign finance apparatus cannot seem to give the tin man a heart. It is an extraordinary and incredible irony of epic proportions that they fail. 

You couldn't make this stuff up.

History Will Teach Us Nothing

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past
Security in human systems we're told will always always last
Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast
Without a breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast


If God is dead and an actor plays his part
His words of fear will find their way to a place in your heart
Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse
Without freedom from the past things can only get worse


Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later just like the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away


History will teach us nothing
History will teach us nothing


Our written history is a catalogue of crime
The sordid and the powerful, the architects of time
The mother of invention, the oppression of the mild
The constant fear of scarcity, aggression as its child


Sooner or later
Sooner or later
Sooner or later
Sooner or later


Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong
Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long
A simple act of faith
In reason over might
To blow up his children will only prove him right
History will teach us nothing


Sooner or later the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later the world first day
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away
Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away


History will teach us nothing
History will teach us nothing


Know you human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for
Know your human rights
Be what you come here for


Sting

Automated and Amalgamated

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

-Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816

“The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.”

-Albert Einstein

“It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.”

-William Graham Sumner


We are witnessing the simultaneous amalgamation of capital across the globe and the automation of daily life of each person.  It is an evolution speeding its way into a revolution.  In the U.S., the politics have become wholly devoted to masking the amalgamation of wealth and power in a tiny elite.  The massive wealth disparity between the ultra rich and regular individuals has grown into a chasm.  This has been sustained up until now by the widely disseminated myth that one could reach the pinnacle of wealth; in essence, the two were interchangeable.  One could become the other.


But as the avenues upward have been detoured time and time again, reality begins to set in.  The opportunity to set up shop in the town square is gone, displaced by the big boxes, who cannot even pay its local workers enough to get by and leaving them seeking public assistance for health care, once again, on the backs of the taxpayer.  In effect, the government and taxpayers subsidize the big box stores.  But that's not all.  They also buy their goods from China and India, adding insult to injury in hiring non-Americans and supporting their economies, and sheltering profits offshore, out of the reach of American taxes.  The opportunity promised to immigrants for generations died in the shadow of Wal-Mart.  


Everything has become automated.  Want to open up a bank like George Bailey, American hero?  That is gone too.  It takes too much, and only the amalgamated capital can meet the regulatory burden.  There is no such thing as a bank startup.  It has been gone for decades.  Your only bet is to go to work as an automaton, a robot serving the little people that come to bank at their automated banking branch.


Amalgamated capital demands its corporate welfare.  The subsidy provided goes beyond even their failure to pay sufficient wages.  Even though they refuse to pay enough wages or benefits to keep their American employees off the public dole, they escape even having to pay their share of taxes to the public dole.  Regular Americans have to support their workers, and they support non-American workers.  All in all, amalgamated capital lives on the backs of Americans while enriching foreign workers and a very small tiny, tax-evading elite.


Welcome to the Monkey House.

Economic Diaspora Over. Chickens Coming Home to Roast - er - Roost.

The days of college graduates having multiple job offers all over the world are clearly over. Their best bet now lies in moving in to mom's basement and taking bong hits with other 23 year olds in the same predicament. Mom and dad wouldnt mind so much, except that dad's real estate deal is $600k under water and mom's 401k is down 48% from its all-time high. Soon Junior gets married, and suddenly Lovely Laura is moving in also with a baby on the way. These 3 people will not be taking part in a process so stoked in tradition that it has never been questioned in almost 100 years: Household Formation. And as this scenario gets repeated millions of times, the only economic response is COLLAPSE. There can be nothing else. Everytime this happens, someone WILL NOT be giving mortgage business to a bank. WILL NOT be hiring a gardener. WILL NOT be needing new furniture. WILL NOT be paying property taxes. WILL NOT be buying a new car. WILL NOT be going to Vegas. WILL NOT be investing in the stock market. WILL NOT be very inclined to have real health care. WILL NOT be dining in fine restaurants. And on and on and on. So as the bubble-induced economic diaspora comes to a screeching halt, we will do something that in reality has been the case throughout 99% of mankind's history. Relying on and helping each other in a communal sort of way. Harsh economic realities now in effect for 3+ years haved forced even the most die-hard capitalists to realize this new reality. We will live with each other more often, nepotism will make a surging comeback from the highest to the lowest economic classes, and micro-socialism will be the norm among us as senseless economic policies are enacted merely as an attempt to placate the masses.

Aside from young graduates/new adults no longer taking part in the formation of new households, there also another dire situation taking place which is exacerbating the aforementioned phenomena: Household De-Formation. The number of men in the 30s living with their parents has also surged to all-time highs. So aside from a lack of new entrants into the household formation category, there are also millions of Gen Xers literally dropping out of society as we know it, and shacking up with mom and dad. Add to this the growing list of folks in their 70s and 80s who have been hit by the triple whammy of rising health care, zero interest on savings, and significant drops in 401k balances, and the holidays may soon be a time to get away from, rather than visit, the extended family.

Of course, a grand economic re-set would be one way to solve these problems. But that would entail a whole different class of folks taking huge economic hits. And those folks never take economic hits. You, on the other hand, do.

BCS Championship: Old Money vs. New Money

Well, they had a ball didnt they? They saw the burgeoning successful American middle class as on opportunity for just one thing: The Heist of the Millenium. And now it appears the vault is empty. There really isnt much else to plunder and pillage. Between housing, health care, education, utilites and consumerism, only the lucky ones still have a sustainable lifestyle, and even they are on borrowed time. So when theres nothing left to steal, nothing left to squeeze, and no one left to trick, the elites turn to each other. GAME ON, MF'ers!!!!. Get ready for the most epic battle of all-time, as TPTB set their sights on each other. The good news is, you are out of their cross-hairs. The bad news.... its only cause they blew you the fuck away.

Subtle hints of the elites turning on each other have been going on for a few years now. Making former BofA CEO Ken Lewis gobble up worthless entites like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch were some of the early opening salvos of this battle. Merril stock would have opened that Monday at about $0. But for some reason, Ken Lewis offered $29/ share on Sunday night. Then he was forced out. Do this. And this. Then get the fuck out! Thanks Ken. Or Dominic Strauss-Kahn getting pulled off an airplane about to depart and arrested on ultimately baseless rape charges. Never would have happened when all the elites were on the same page. The latest, of course, is Dave Corzine and MF Global. $1.2 billion in segregated customer money still missing. No real explanation of where it is. Turns out Corzine decided to load the boat on bail-out dependent European soveriegn bonds at a time when his brethren were despereately looking for a way out of these investments. How convenient. Global banks were all too happy to dump, and MF Global was gone in a poof. Of course, there will be no perp walk for Corzine..at least for now.

So its Old Money vs New Money. And though it might be billed as the Ali-Frazier analog of Wall Street, in reality, it will be no contest. Old money will blow out New Money. See, Old Money is clean. Made many times over, over the course of 100+ years in some cases. Pure. No debt, no derivatives, no 30-1 leverage, no CDS. Just pure money, free and clear. New money on the other hand, is largely dependent on leverage, accounting trickery, fractional reserve lending, and stock market levels. It is the new money that is desperately seeking to hold on to what they have. It is new money that will implode should the derivatives market, or interest rates, or emerging markets, or real estate be allowed to find their natural levels. Thus all the shenanigans and bailouts by the Fed, US Govt, and the Euro counterparts. But the Old Money is getting tired of carrying the New Money. They kindly, though reluctantly, let the Grand Global Bailout Scheme have a chance to succeed. But now its grown long in the tooth. And so the Old Money is getting ready to pull the plug. All the plugs. They realize that no country or union's currency that was predicated on foolish printing, or endless and unlimited bailouts, has ever flourished. It will be ugly. But it should happen relatively quickly. And then, we start over. Week 1.

The Slave Morality

Wilhelm Freidrich Nietzsche wrote about the slave morality and the master morality.  The two are locked in an eternal dance through human history and psychology.  Nietzsche abhorred the slave morality and saw himself as a champion or a savior for the master morality.

And he may have been on to something these strange days, although not in the way he would have anticipated.  How many people do you encounter on a daily basis who, although having attained higher degrees and professional success, are so out of touch with what is really going on, that you find it hard to apprehend?  Have you encountered these types in your daily life?  It may go something like this.  (The names have been changed to protect the guilty.)  You have a neighbor or someone you know at work.  You typically only talk about the yard, if it's your neighbor, or work, if it's your co-worker.  Then something slips into the conversation, seemingly innocently.  These days, it may involve something about the government, a look into the invisible Iron Curtain that runs between Blue America and Red America, or, worse, something about religion.

So it falls into the conversation.  You suddenly realize that this person is one of them.  Almost like the aliens from the movie "They Live," this is one of them, and now you can see it.  Somehow, they have bought into the media lies that stream and spill 24 hours per day, seven days per week.  They have bought into the lie that the government is evil and that its supposed spending habits somehow resulted in this person's slavery.  It doesn't even make logical sense, and you have been over it in your head again and again.  It still doesn't make any sense.  Yet this person has been led by the nose to believe it, and believe it this person did.

It could also be about Barack Obama.  I recall speaking with a long-lost friend who kept referring to "him" and what "he" was doing.  After some time of politely nodding, hoping that it would end, I finally ventured to ask him, "who is 'he'"?  Silence.  He looked at me testingly.  Perhaps it was for him the reverse of the experience I was having.  Perhaps he was questioning, wondering whether I was one of "them," albeit a "them" diametrically opposed to him and all that he apparently stands for.  Then he suddenly and nervously laughed.  "Surely," he thought, I "can't be one of them."  So he continued.  "Yeah, so he bought not one but two black buses, and he had them flown around the country."  There was a litany of things that "he" (or "He") had supposedly done or been doing, and it sounded bizarrely conspiratorial, and very personal.  Eventually, I asked him about economic policy.  Back to "him" it went.  "No," I asked him, "forget 'him' for just a minute, and focus on the policy aspects and implications of what we are talking about."  He looked at me for a split second, then responded with "But you can't."  I tuned out, having peered into the chasm separating us, and realizing it was a waste of my time and energy to try to help this person.

You see, people must be viewed more than just by their intelligence.  Because some moderately intelligent and very capable people can be so lost in the media brainwash that one would think intelligence would allow them to think their way out of it.  But it doesn't work that way.  In addition to intelligence, each person has a level of slave morality.  The level of slave morality corresponds directly to their ability to think for themselves and escape the media matrix.  A low level of slave morality means that the person is not likely to succumb to the lies about the government and forced to vote as their religion tells them to vote.  A high level of slave morality is the exact opposite:  such a person is a mental slave.

This convention allows you to deal with the dissonance much better, the dissonance between the truth as those with a low slave morality can discern it, and what we are told by the media -- Fox News, AM radio, and the Republican presidential hopefuls -- and what we know to be the unattractive truth.

Because being in the middle of that dissonance for long periods of time is difficult.