·         We've seen the biggest stock crash in history...

o   ..the biggest property crash in history...

o   ..the biggest deficits in history (four times the previous record!)...

o   ..the biggest bailouts in history (we can't even count that high)...

o   ..the biggest bankruptcies in history...

o   ..the auto industry and the finance industry have been largely nationalized...

o   ..the President of the United States of America is now making financial decisions for formerly private industries...

So what's left to see?

·         Oh yes...the depression...and hyperinflation.

On the bright side, one aspect of the economy that is flourishing is the doom and gloom financial advisory newsletter industry. 

Here’s a sampling from this past week (June 7 – 13, 2009):

The Frame of Mind of American Economic Policymakers, Part I & Part II

By Dr. Marc Faber, Hong Kong, China

By Ian Mathias, Baltimore, Maryland

"...the very day of this highly anticipated bond auction, Russia and Brazil both announced they'd soon be selling $20 billion in U.S. Treasuries in exchange for IMF bonds. It's a smart move...each nation gets to diversify out of the dollar (the IMF will pay these bonds back with a basket of global monies) and send a clear signal to the U.S. government."

Standing at the Gates of Economic Hell

By The Mogambo Guru, Tampa Bay, Florida

"I already told him that the economy is crappy; nobody has any money with which to buy things because all of their money is being used to service a backbreaking load of debt that was accumulated to fuel the booming bubbles in the stock market, the bond market, the housing market and the growth in the size of government that are all bursting, all thanks to Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve creating so, so, so much money and credit, leading us to here, a place I lovingly call, 'The gates of economic hell!'"

The Deflationary Downturn

By Bill Bonner, London, England

"The markets are clearly in a deflationary downturn. No doubt about it. After a long period of credit expansion credit is finally contracting. The smart money is probably betting on lower asset prices...We're also looking at $2.4 trillion worth of Alt-A mortgages that will need to be refinanced or reset. The peak in those resets won't happen until January 2013. So stay tuned...this housing bear market isn't going away any time soon."

In the 1986 movie Platoon, SSgt Bob Barnes (played by Tom Berenger) is hard charging veteran of the Vietnam battlefields.  He is a no nonsense soldier who treats his platoon as a well oiled machine, meaning his way cannot be compromised. SSgt Barnes has a much varied way of fighting the enemy and treating his subordinates than his counterpart, Sgt Elias Grodin (played by Willem Dafoe) who is more of a dope smoking “chill out merchant” liberal.

In the scene where the above quote was taken, SSgt Barnes is telling a young recruit, who is lying in a pool of his own blood after a fire fight, to stop yelling, and die with dignity. (Of course we all knew the recruit was doomed when he showed a picture of his girlfriend to Charlie Sheen’s character, Pvt. Chris Taylor.)

This is the message I’m getting from our elected leaders when it comes to fixing what’s broken with our economy. Those who broke it are now in charge of fixing it, and like an economics professor once told me in college, it’s like taking a “hoola-hoop” into the restroom because you ran out of toilet tissue.  

From the bailouts, to all the talk about “money for nothing and chicks for free” (Dire Straits: “Money for Nothing”) coming from the Obama Administration, I’m starting to get a bad feeling about all this. We may indeed be talking about a generation of bad economic times until we begin to see a return to the prosperity we enjoyed under President Clinton. Remember how President Clinton, who, by his own accord, created 2 million new jobs out of whole cloth? I only pray the Savior, President B. H. Obama, can do the same.  Only thing is, if they’re all public sector jobs, we’ll be paying for them with “funny money” because the private sector won’t be around much longer to foot the bill.

In the scene where the quote below was taken, the Platoon is about to engage a heavily fortified enemy, and Sgt. Red O’Neill (played by Scrubs’ very own Dr. Perry Cox, the MTL Commissioner himself, John C. McGinley) expresses his concerns to SSgt Barnes that he’s “too short” for such an assignment. 

In the video, a hero runs into the room with a sledgehammer, throwing it into the gigantic LCD/Plasma screen were “Dear Leader” (a.k.a. Obama) is giving another eloquent “Big Brother” pep talk to the minded numbed progressives who all seemed to have graduated from Ivy League institutions of higher learning. I presume they all have advanced degrees in enlightened topics like global management in a green environment because they are all dressed the same and have the same mindless expression, much like many of the talking head intellectuals the “Matrix” parades before us on a nightly basis to espouse their worldly views and tell us we are all too stupid to make decisions for ourselves.

As anyone who’s done a family budget or financial plan knows, the best way to make sure your family becomes prosperous overnight is to put everything on credit. Delayed gratification is so yesterday. Instant gratification is the way of the modern era. So much so our own government has adopted “instant gratification” as the wave of the future to guarantee us all there will be a tomorrow.  We’re being told that we’re in such dire straits financially that the only way out is an economic stimulus plan that mortgages our children’s future. 

It’s kind of like a Father sitting the family down at the kitchen table and saying, “I want us to have everything we deserve right now, so we are going to max out our credit cards, take out a number of home equity loans and mortgages and then after your Mom and I have passed on, you can worry about paying the bills. Or you can just declare bankruptcy and move into a trailer park. Either way, what’s important is we realize it is our patriotic duty to keep spending so as to keep our nation’s economy strong. So who needs a new Blackberry or HDTV?”

That makes about as much sense as the pap we are being spoon fed by the Federal government. 

Perhaps the lone voice that actually has some good ideas to jump start the economy and get us out of this economic morass without bankrupting the country is Larry Kudlow of CNBC. His basic premise is the investor class has gone on strike and because there’s no new money flowing into equity markets, there’s no new economic growth being generated by the private sector. He’s even gone so far as to suggest a two year capital gains tax holiday to entice private money back into the markets. He makes a good point.  Since the Federal government is going to be buying up toxic assets and selling them at auction, they just might get more interested buyers if those investors were guaranteed a tax break on any risk they take from investing in these assets nobody wants to buy under current market conditions.

To quote from Larry’s most recent column at National Review online, “One inaugural line of Reagan’s in some sense encapsulates his philosophy: ‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.’ It arguably is the most famous line of the speech. Fifteen years later, in a State of the Union message, President Bill Clinton said, ‘the era of big government is over.’ Yet Barack Obama has said that only government can solve our current economic problems.”

This morning (Monday, December 22, 2008) I was watching CNBC and they were interviewing Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO the world's largest bond investor. He stated we are entering a new era where the government has changed its role as referee of the free market to being a player in the game. This raises some troubling questions.

What if they held a Super Bowl and nobody came because they knew the game was fixed?  Imagine, for instance, the Super Bowl being determined not by the score in the game, but by the team that contributed the most to the referee’s retirement fund or favorite charity. Would anybody pay to see the game? That’s where we are headed. 

Imagine the American automotive industry being managed by a quasi-private/public entity like our very own Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), who tells us when and how long we can water our lawns.  Can you imagine car buyers being told what size car they can buy and how many miles a year they can drive it? Would that not drive more automotive consumers to buy imported cars that don’t come with all the restrictions?

Smart people pay income taxes, stupid people don’t. It’s estimated 47 million Americans don’t pay any income tax.  So why is it only smart people pay income tax? Well, if you think about it, only smart people are intelligent enough to get themselves jobs that pay them well enough to move them into a higher tax bracket. 

I like to tell my kids that only two things cause poverty: stupidity and immorality. This is not to say there are no immoral or stupid rich people, for Hollywood, professional sports and Rap Music are full of them. But, they are the exception and not the rule.  Besides, many celebrities end up like Ed McMahon, homeless and decrepit after the leeches finish sucking dry their savings accounts, which just proves my point. 

Rush Limbaugh likes to refer to Whoopi Goldberg as a, “colossal jewel of glittering ignorance.”  I prefer stupid because Whoopi said the word "stupid" is so offensive it should be banned from the English language. In fact, I think Whoopi and the whole crew of “The View,” (except Elisabeth Hasselbeck of course), are the “Queen Bees” of stupid people, and rank right up there with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Some of my favorite cold war villains were Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao Zedong and Pol Pot (a.k.a. Saloth Sar) because they knew how to deal with stupid people. Uncle Joe starved an estimated 5 million stupid people to death during the “Povolzhye famine” and eliminated another 2 million during the “Great Purge.” Chairman Mao used tanks, garbage trucks and incinerators to quell the Tiananmen Square uprising.  An accurate body count of the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” (referred to in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident, to avoid confusion with two other Tiananmen Square protests) was made impossible by the use of garbage trucks and incinerators to help conceal the body count. Pol Pot was of course made infamous in the movie, “The Killing Fields.” 

Last century was a banner one when it came to governments attempting to make stupid people suffer the consequences of their decisions, as they put an estimated 100 million stupid people out of their misery. From the Ukraine to Tiananmen Square to the killing fields of Cambodia, the left’s “Great Purge” hasn’t let up in their quest to rid the world of stupid people. 

Now, with the election of B.O., the left is on the march in America and there is already talk of silencing political opposition.  Senator Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer of New York fired the first salvo in America’s cold war of words by declaring talk radio “pornographic.” Say goodbye to the First Amendment my fellow Americans, as the left attempts to equate political opposition with indecency, which is ironic given the left’s defense of the porn industry as falling under the protection’s of the First Amendment.  The left is about to declare anyone who disagrees with B.O. and his policies a racist and thereby an enemy of the state.  Can being exiled to “gulag” style re-education/re- indoctrination centers (a.k.a. labor camps) in remote areas of Alaska be far behind?  (Well, at least we’ll get to see Sarah Palin in person.) 

In her book, “Useful Idiots,” Mona Charon makes a great case for the way the left in the former Soviet Union manipulated and used are own elected leaders against us. It hasn’t stopped. Vladimir Putin is probably licking his chops in anticipation of being able to roll the new guy, B.O., and play him like a finely tuned Stradivarius.  (For the stupid people reading this, a Stradivarius is a stringed instrument built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. The bowed instruments are famous for the quality of their sound, which has defied attempts to explain or reproduce. Now go back to the couch and have another beer, or doobie, or whatever it is that keeps you stupid.) 

My pastor likes to say God lets us suffer the consequences of our actions and decisions to teach us valuable lessons. Unfortunately for some, those consequences are often fatal. Many an alcoholic or drug addict can attest to hitting rock bottom before coming to their senses. They are the lucky ones. For some, rock bottom is the grave.  

RE: Archaeologists get a glimpse of life in a Sahara Eden

Scientists uncover skeletons thought to be as old as 10,000 years, when monsoon rains created a 'green Sahara.'

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-sahara15-2008aug15,0,3774647.story

“The Sahara has been a desert for untold millenniums. But about 12,000 years ago, a faint wobble in Earth's orbit and some other factors caused Africa's seasonal monsoons to shift slightly north, bringing rains to the Sahara and greening it from Egypt in the east to Mauritania in the west.”

Opps! Looks like somebody didn’t get the memo about man made global warming. How can scientists keep a straight face when on one hand they blame man for the current global warming trend, and on the other blame it on a “faint wobble” in the Earth’s orbit? Isn’t it possible global warming is being caused by planet Earth passing closer to the gravitational pull of a black hole located just outside the Milky Way, thereby causing the axis to wobble a bit?

“One group of graves contained individuals who averaged more than 6 feet tall, with some as tall as 6 feet 8.”  

Could these be the giants referred to as the Nephilim in the Bible? 

Genesis 6:4-5 (NIV)  ⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.   ⁵ The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

The Nephilim were considered people of great size and strength, and the Hebrew word means “fallen ones” meaning they were ripe for judgment.  

Numbers 13:32-33 (NIV) ³² And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. ³³ We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

Deuteronomy 1:28 (NIV) ²⁸ Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, 'The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.' "

Could the Sahara have once been the “land of milk and honey” referred to in Numbers 13:27-28?

“These individuals, the Kiffian, were folded in tight burial arrangements with their knees against their chests and arms at their sides, almost as though they had been buried in burlap bags.”

Perhaps they were buried in burlap bags after being killed in battle, which would explain the account in Joshua describing how the decendents of Anak, or the Anakites, were destroyed during the time of Joshua.

Joshua 11:21-23 (NIV)

 ²¹ At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns. ²² No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive. ²³ So Joshua took the entire land, just as the LORD had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions.  Then the land had rest from war.

Makes for interesting contemplation, I must say.

References:

Ancient Cemetery Found; Brings "Green Sahara" to Life

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News

August 14, 2008

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080814-sereno-sahara-missions.html

Remains of Cemetery Found in Sahara

Cemetery Remains Show That Now-Barren Sahara Desert Was Once Green And Populated

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON August 15, 2008 (AP)

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5585084

Ancient Sahara Graveyard Hints at Once-Green Desert

Friday, August 15, 2008

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,403921,00.html

Stone Age mass graves reveal green Sahara

• 18:00 14 August 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• Nora Schultz

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn14536-stone-age-mass-graves-reveal-green-sahara.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

Remains of children found in 'green Sahara'