Washington's True Target

Washington's True Target

A true general rarely attacks his foe straight on, he uses maneuver and obsification to destroy his enemy from whence his enemy does not expect it. A true sociopath will do so to those he professes to be his friends, clasping them on the shoulder in brotherly love, even as he drives the kenjal deep into their ribs and lungs.

America is just that, a smiling, murderous regime, bent on world domination and sneaky enough to blind its main allie's eyes to its ally's own destruction. What am I speaking about?

I am speaking about the present "Cold War 2" and "Sanctions" war with Russia. The problem is, Europe's leaders, bought and paid for lap dogs, small minded, power crazed kapos in the great Concentration Camp of European Serfdom, are to stupid and short sighted to see that the real goals of the US is not and never, in this iteration, was Russia.

The American talk of isolating Russia is of course ludicrous. It is impossible to do so, not only because Russia is the 5 or 6th (depending how you count it) largest economy of the world, but also because Russia has close ties with China, S.Korea, Japan, SE Asia, India, Brazil. Washington has no levers to make these giants dance to its tunes and since most everything that is "American" is manufactured anywhere but America.

So the goal here is to crack the EU, breaking it in its economic Achilles Heel, which in turn will lead to mass revolts, collapse and civil war. Europe, stagnant and in many parts collapsing, with just the Germans dragging the rest along, is a vulnerable and sickly giant, with leaden feet and a clay head. The leadership is Hell bent on self enrichment, while the crowds ever weekend pick a new city or capital to turn into a battle ground. Half the member states are in economic collapse, face succession issues from various provinces and have peasants marching with the torches and pitchforks.

So the US has set about the task of fully collapsing this giant into a grand civil war, a murderous destructive path that will inadvertently suck in Russia as well, while the American conmen will sit back and sing their songs and cancel their debt to various regimes as the they fail and are replaced, just like they did to the King Loui of France when Robespierre had his head taken.

The Americans are doing this two fold. First they are pushing the European leaders to commit economic suicide by pushing them into strangling themselves through Russian sanctions. Not only does Russia provide 40% of Europe's oil and gas, as well as 70% of Europe's fuel oil (heating and manufacture of gasoline), but Russia equally provides Europe with electricity, processed foods and grains, cement, fertilizers, chemicals, semi and finished steel assemblies and parts, paper products and so on. For all of these items, Asia is willing and is already paying top dollar.

Thus from this stand point, Russia's economy will hardly miss a beat but Europe's inputs will sky rocket even as energy prices go up 40-50% and force most German plants into bankruptcy. The fact of course that the biggest market for German production will also close firmly, will complete the coup detate on these corporations. The hits will be swift and awesome in their scope, driving all of Europe into the hayday of the Wiemar Republic. 

Russia can of course get many of these products from China or Japan and is itself now undergoing a massive drive to localize production, an existing drive that has now gone into hyper-drive. 

The fact that Russian tourists make up 10-12% of the EU's tourist dollars and in countries like Spain and Greece up to 40%, will only insure that the pain is enough to break society into bloody chaos.

NATO, the American instrument of control over Europe, is also being strengthened again, through mass hysteria that American propaganda outlets are driving throughout Europe. NATO is mostly paid for by Americans for one reason: it allows the US to continue to hold a master like presence over its various European vassals, like the slave like Germans and belittled and morally crushed Italians. At the same time, the Americans are using their back door whores, Poland and the Baltics, to increase their presence on the Russian borders and thus pull Russia into the upcoming EU civil war.

At the same time, the US is positioning Poland to counter German control of the EU and ensure that the Germans will have absolutely no chance of regaining or reestablishing order. Thus they will make sure that the zone of chaos explodes out from Ireland to Japan, engulfing everyone, while they sit on their warm behinds in the far off lands and lick the blood off of their fingers.

Is everyone in Europe really that dumb and blind?

Rubles Devaluation Spells Nightmare for Europe

If there is one thing that can help set off that final European push towards economic spiraled collapse, it is something that is happening but getting little real talk about. Why?

Why is there little talk about it? Because it is the ruble and the West, in its arrogance, pride and blind pure stupidity, of all things Russian, still for the most part, thinks of long lines for toilet paper when they think of Russia. That Russia has joined the devaluation game, by letting the ruble float free, has yet to fully sink into the European public mind. But it will soon enough and when it does, a new tightening of the throat and then the belt and then possibly the panic.

Why? Why will the ruble, which has been in a steep devaluation, loosing over 12% in the past 4 weeks, going to cause so much trouble? First a side note: when the Russian central bank decided to float the ruble, a decision that they reached back in 2011/2012 and aimed at 2014, they counted on a slow 10% devaluation over the entire year. The fundamentals of the Russian economy are sound enough, but between the strengthening dollar and euro and the fact that the Ruble was artificially high, the slide has been on. What they have now gotten is a full on slide of over 12% in under 3 weeks and there is no bottom in sight.

Now the upcoming Olympics will slow that slide, as half a million tourists coming in in such a short period will increase demand for Ruble. But this will only last about 1 month and is already starting to appear. Once the Olympics factor is done, the slide will return.

Europeans will start to feel it in a delayed action. First, tourism. In 2013 Russians made up 31.6 million tourists visiting Europe. Russia alone represents 6% of all European tourism and Russians tend to spend big, even when they do not have large means, they do have large savings and Russians tend not to count their pence when on vacation. With the Ruble at all time historic lows against the Euro, that tourism will travel else where, either to European nations who have not adopted the Euro or to SE Asia, Russia's new favorite destination.

Worst hit will be Europe's worst Euro economies: Greece, Spain and Italy. In Greece alone, Russians represent 10% of the Greek tourism. If that cuts in half, Greece's fragile, withered economy will suffer much more. Russians spent over $34 billion on tourism last year with 2/3rd going to Europe. Now Europe may get its wish, to be rid of the Russian tourists. Of course that wish will cost Europe dearly, but the snobbish Humanists will not realize their folly until much later. They never do.

Now the other hit, European exports to Russia, will become much more expensive to the average Russian, while Russian exports to Europe will flourish as Russian products, such as food products to Germany, already popular for higher standards than German domestic production and lower prices will become that much lower priced.

German meat exports to Russia had already fallen by 70% in 2013, due to much stricter sanitation standards, which caught most German producers hold their substandard products. A sharp drop in the Ruble, coupled with a fast growing mass swine production industry at home, will mean a very tight and tough market for German pork, as already happened to US chicken. US pork will equally be hit.

German machinery, chemicals and automobiles will equally slump, only accelerating the trend of German companies setting up shop and major production inside of Russia. In turn, this will cost Germany jobs and Germany is now, by plan, the main and only engine of Europe. Except by converting the rest of Europe into impoverished vassal states, in the longer term, where we are now at, the Germans deprived themselves of markets capable of buying their production and with Russian on the decline sharply, the German economy will feel pain and with it the rest of Europe. Smaller European exporters will be hit even faster as they are already living on the margin.

Will this cause a final run on the banks and collapse of the Euro economic folly? Maybe, but which ever the effects, they will be delayed, as that is how economics reacts, in delay. So if it does, it should make for some interesting TV watching in Summer....make sure you get plenty of popcorn.

A Match Constantly Missed

A Match Constantly Missed

It is ever the wander that desperate Europeans, bankrupt and bereft, squeezed out by austerity, packing degrees in critical fields, will flood out of their severely destroyed economies and not other slightly less destroyed European economies where they than proceed to swell the ranks of the unemployed and unemployable in those nations.

All scream that all they want is a job, but is that so? 

Why do I ask? Because right next door, not in some far off land yander, is a land that is in dire need of professional workers and not just those with higher degrees. Russia's economy is at historic low unemployment. While nation wide the rate is 5.4%, the rate in the major cities, the engines of the economy, the rates are between 0,5-1,5%. 

According to a recent ManPower survey, plans to hire are remaining firm, it finding candidates is becoming ever more difficult, even with salaries growing at twice the rate of inflation and already, post taxes, standing on par with Italy. As a matter of fact, those planning on expanding grew by 16%, stronger than a year ago.

To put meat on that one, 43% of employers can not find candidates. And which are the top positions in demand? Top ten:

1. Skilled trade workers: welders, builders, carpenters, etc

2. Engineers

3. Sales reps (yes fluent Russian is a must on this one)

4. Technicians 

5. Accountants

6. Management Executives

7. IT Staff

8. Truck Drivers

9. Office Support Staff

10. Common Laborers (preferably of the non-Islamic variety)

So what to do?

Well first, the question: which category do I fall into: worker or highly qualified specialist?

We will start with the HQSs. This is a technical or management position. A university degree is required and the salary needs to be at least 2 million rubles, or about $60k. If you qualify for such a position, then you need to find a sponsor, that is an employer. Russian language helps, but since this is as often a Western company as a Russian one and it's a critical position, it's not necessary. 

In such a case, the employer will take care of getting you a 3 yr visa, which takes about 5 weeks turn around time before you are flying into Russia. After a 1 yr stay in Russia on this visa, you can apply for long term residency. This is in turn linked to your visa. After 5 yrs on such a visa you can apply for citizenship. You will have to pass a Russian language exam.

If you are not a HQS, I still suggest getting a job before coming in. Or coming in on a tourist visa and quickly finding a job. Because of the nature of this, knowing Russian at least on a rudimentary level is much more critical. Then you need to go to the immigration office and ask for permission for extended stay in Russia. This is a 6 month stay and along with it comes a right to work.

After 6 months you need to apply and secure a temporary visa which gives you 3 yrs but you can not move out of the oblast you live in (province) and must have a job. After 1 yr you can apply for permanent residency and after 5 yrs for citizenship.

So now you know and can hunt jobs on headhunter.ru, monster.com or LinkedIn.com

The question now is: do you really want to work or are you a poser?

Does High Minimal Wage Make a Country Rich?

Does High Minimal Wage Make a Country Rich?

 

The Left leaning English daily, Moscow Times, published an article aimed to once again show the negativity of Russia. This is their standard operating procedure, to always at any opportunity, humiliate their own country and do it in a foreign language. They pander non stop to any enemy and make excuses for any slight to Russia or Russians, a wave of the so called "intelligentsia" whose predecessors gave us the Revolution and who themselves were first to flee their Frankenstein.

 

But I degrees.

 

Now back to the topic at hand. As with all Leftists, there is ever a very shallow understanding of economics involved. The Moscow Times correspondent goes to great lengths to point out that Russia has the third lowest minimum wage rate in Europe, in USD $223 (70% of subsistence level), while the European average wage is $823 and the American is $1,340. Of course, right off the bat, one notices that the article ignores giving the wage's percent of subsistence levels in Europe and the US. Why so? Mayhap this will not paint such a pretty picture?

 

First, lets keep in mind that only 20% of the Russian population lives below the poverty line, which makes Russia on par about average with the West. In the US, the official statistic is 16% (from the supposed richest nation in the world) and in the EU poverty levels vary from 9-28%, the median being 16.4%. There are two trends that should be viewed, however: 1. the average wages in the West are falling and falling rapidly. January saw the biggest drop in US wages, with a decrease of 3.6% and the poverty level is surging up, with 49 million Americans on food vouchers. Europe is in a similar boat in most nations, with over 1/3rd of Greeks alone already dependent on government handouts for daily survival. In Russia, 2012 saw a salary rise of 10-13% in the secondary cities and a 15% rise in Moscow and St.Petersburg, while inflation was around 7.5%, thus salaries are rising well ahead of inflation.

 

Now, lets look a bit closer at the minimum wage debate and its effects on the economies. Doing a little research, one comes up with the following statistics: the poverty income level in the US is considered $11,170, so the minimum wage at $16,080 is actually 144% of subsistence level. In the EU, the average poverty income level is considered 6,000 Euros or around $7,300 USD. With an average minimum wage of $823, that's $9,876 or 135% of subsistence levels.

 

Looking at just the snap shot, we Russians look vulgar and poor, and yet the economic indicators, such as income growth, poverty rates and debt (Russia's national debt is $48 billion out of a $1,6 trillion economy (about 3%), vs European and American debt levels of 80-200% of debt (nation dependent, Germany being the lowest and Italy the highest and the US in the middle) would indicate that high minimum wage levels are not a positive force.

 

Indeed, in all sense, all Western nations (and Japan included), that is all the G7 of the G8 are broke. As such, one must recognize that minimum wage and especially, high minimum wage has a negative impact over all on the economic growth of society. Sure this may sound counter intuitive but it is not. Minimum wage is a hidden tax on business and in this case, on small and medium business. Large businesses already pay above minimum wage, on average.

 

Why is this significant? The majority of the population is normally employed in small and medium businesses not in the large and super large (usually transnational) corporations. Equally, most of the new technology and new products come from the smaller sized layers and are eventually bought up by the larger sized businesses. But often enough, the smaller businesses grow and create new and serious competition to the larger businesses. However, the reason for large and mega corporations supporting something like an increase in minimum wage, when they already pay over it, is simple: a direct impact on up and coming competitors, which lowers the threat to them.

 

But why does this hurt the average minimum wage worker and the rest of the middle class and specifically lower class society? The reason for the decline in socio-economic standings is simple enough: a higher minimum wage is good for employees, those employees who get to keep their jobs and at the same number of hours, however, quite a few will be either down sized in hours or laid off to cover the higher wages of others. Further, this cuts into investment spending and growth. In a growing market, at least part of this can be passed on to consumers through higher prices, which of course then continues to trickle down and deprive the poorest of purchasing power. Yes, its a circular process that does hurt the very people targeted for help with the increase. However, when the market is already shrinking, inflation: wage and thus product/service cost, is not the correct way out.

 

Right now there is a typical Keynes approach in the Americas and EU, to the crisis of growing poverty and we should look at the analysis that is coming out of it. The drive is to raise minimum wage to supposibily increase wealth of society and cut down on the middle class. Typical leftist Keynes approach and as typically ignorant or ignoring the repeating evidence of policy failure. This interview from the American addition of Voice of Russia, sums this up nicely Analyst: Raising Minimum Wage Will Force Small Businesses to Lay Off Employees

 

Thus, once again, instead of deciding with emotions, as is common with the Left, let us look at actual economic results of previous programs and not be influenced by Western backed, Leftist media to follow the Western Pipers down the road to economic self destruction.

The Great Currancy Flush

Its official folks, the chips are in, the game is set and we are off to the final finish.

What am I speaking of? Why the last G20 meeting, 16 Feb 2013, meeting in Moscow, pledged that they would not devalue their currencies to save their own economies at the expense of the rest of the globe.

This is as rich as Chamberliane proclaiming "Peace in Our Time!". It will be brought to naught just as quickly.

Lets review:

The United States, that super debter of all historical debtors, the nation who in today's dollars, has a bigger debt than all previous nations of earth's history put together, is presently flooding $100 BILLION into the currency swill each and every month. Quantitative Easing 4 is the perpetual round and it came a lot faster than anyone had anticipated. There was narry even a pause between QE 3 and QE 4.

Comrade Obama is on a rip roll, promising one program after another, all with a nation that spends twice as much as it takes in and with every state effectively bankrupt, too. Is anyone in their right mind to think that that tap would be shut off for even a second. The US government spending is now making up 25-30% of GDP and rising. At this point a shut off of the tap would cardiac arrest the economy in an instant. Instead, they prefer for it to die more slowly, from dry land drowning. So, no chance of that ever happening...let the dollars role.

China: that nation blew a bubble bigger even than the nutty Yanks. Whole ghost cities, 8 lane super autobahns to nowhere and so on and so on. It tried to shut down the tap, somewhat, but found that like a good addict, the moment the high dosage of prime grade A currency is cut, the bends step in. Manufacturing falls, realestate purchasing collapses and crowds with torches and spears start to gather. Not good, not good. The war lords in Beijing like to stay in power as much as the Politburo in Washington.

So on with the taps and off goes the economy "growing" again, along with inflation. Another drowning victim waiting to happen.

Japan? Oh please, the land of the endless recession has been doing nothing but attempting to devalue its currency still further (though with little success against an even faster devaluing dollar) for the better of the past 20 years. There's nothing new under the Japanese sun and nothing is going to change.

The EU? That is France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the rest of the riff raff? Really? That Euro train wreck which has been going in mad scramble from one currency crisis to another, declaring victory and the final righting of all wrongs, only to look like keystone cops. The EU and its member cattle are screwed beyond the word's very meanings. They are the headless corpse. Even the head has stopped blinking and sticking out its tongue but the body still runs and runs.

Now France, the latest nation to once again prove that repossession and redistribution is a re-dead end to one's economy, has given that running corpse more things to run to. The French economy has managed to go from bad but manageable to end of the world cataclysm in one short year. Nothing like 75% confiscatory taxes on the job creators to kill the job creation. France's job laws have already been some of the worst in the world. Hire a new employee? Basically you've just added a family member until the end of their working days, since firing is all but impossible. Better be really really really sure you want him.

The UK? The nation that just discovered that it has a 30 billion pound...wait, 40 billion...or is it 50 billion...oh bloody hell, its huge, alright! hole in its nationalized banks. That's right, that's another 50 billion to 50 quadrakazillion pounds sterling (really there is no sterling in it, there wouldn't be enough in all the world) to fill and fill it only by printing more funny money...well actually most won't get printed, they'll just add a number with lots of zeros to the computers.

Thank God they found horse meat in the frozen dinners, to take everyone's minds off of those numbers with lots of zeros. Timely wasn't it?

So where does this leave Russia? Well, not in the not so nice place of having to play the same game or be priced out of the export markets. The dollar fell from 32R/1USD to 30R/1USD and was frozen there, by the Russian central bank, which too is now playing that game.

Our only hope is: with a minuscule national debt of $48 billion vs a $1.7 trillion economy we can outlast the debt laden leviathans of currency devaluation.

Either way folks, hold on tight, its finally come to that big big hill on the ride....now all we need is a few good wars to distract the peasants.

The Kuril Islands Solution: Joint Development with Japan

The Kuril Islands Solution: Joint Development

Let us begin with this: to both sides this is a matter of honour. Yes, the Japanese must understand that they are not the only honour bound people and equally we will not give up territory. Furthermore, on the legal front, we have the real law standing behind us proving that these islands our ours and that the Japanese had accepted as much.

In a 2005 article in The Japan Times, journalist Gregory Clark writes that official Japanese statements, maps and other documents from 1951 and the statements by the head of the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco conference, John Foster Dulles, make it clear that at the time the San Francisco Treaty was concluded in October 1951, both Japan and the United States considered the islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu to be a part of the Kuril Islands and to be covered by Article (2c) of the Treaty.[4] Clark made a similar point in a 1992 New York Times opinion column.[15] In a 2001 book, Seokwoo Lee, a Korean scholar on international law, quotes the October 19, 1951 statement in Japan's Diet by Kumao Nishimura, Director of the Treaties Bureau of the Foreign Ministry of Japan, stating that both Etorofu and Kunashiri are a part of the Kuril Islands and thus covered by Article (2c) of the San Francisco Treaty.[16]

Thus it is obvious that these were and are our territories.

Of course, the American elites stirred this controversy to make sure that first the Soviet Union and Japan and now Russia and Japan would remain enemies or at least in a cold peace. This is how the Anglos maintain power in regions, this is also why they will make sure that S.Korea can not conquer and reunify N.Korea, how else to maintain their own presence?

In 1952, the US Senate ratified a resolution that the USSR and thus Russia, had no title to the Kurils. Again, what right they had, as usual, none, but why should that stop them from the tradition of starting wars and conflicts and making money off of them?

As part of such advice and consent the Senate states that nothing the treaty [San Francisco Peace Treaty] contains is deemed to diminish or prejudice, in favor of the Soviet Union, the right, title, and interest of Japan, or the Allied Powers as defined in said treaty, in and to South Sakhalin and its adjacent islands, the Kurile Islands, the Habomai Islands, the Island of Shikotan, or any other territory, rights, or interests possessed by Japan on December 7, 1941, or to confer any right, title, or benefit therein or thereto on the Soviet Union.

The Americans spur this on, trying to maintain enemies around Russia, by stating that until a peace treaty is signed between Russia and Japan, these Islands are occupied territory. Of course they know full well that this means no peace treaty. Of course this had not stopped our development of trade and relations with the former ruling party of Japan, the Liberal Democrats. Is it any wonder that the Americans were so thrilled that Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his socialists of the Democratic Party of Japan came to power?

As with all socialists, American and British included, they have screwed the Japanese economy, making the small recovery disappear. Rotting everything they have touched and with their own popularity in collapse, they have allied with their natural friends and first cousins, the Fascists, themselves but a form of Marxism.

"Due to the spontaneous statement by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the foreign minister's visit to Russia which followed became absolutely pointless," said Shigeru Ishiba, a leader of Japan's major opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party.

The Kurils offer not only great fish stocks, but also off shore petroleum deposits, magnesium, titanium, and rhenium, amongst others (such as pyrite, sulfur, etc).

Thus the solution is cooperation in an exclusive economic zone for joint Japanese-Russian companies. In this way, both sides can benefit and money can flow in. If nothing else, the territories can be turned into a demilitarized buffer zone. Joint funding, joint exploitation. Upon this can be hinged further development, economic and military. In the end of things, Russia and Japan, once Japan is decoupled from Anglo vassalhood, have a lot more in common in defense, with giant China nearby, then as adversaries.

Russia is already crazy about Japanese culture, with more Soushi spots in total, then probably even in all of Japan. This is something that can and should be built upon.

But the reality is this: first, if Japan does not move and move fast, others, such as Korea and China will and are already making noises to help develop the chain and thus permanently edge out Japan.

To that the Socialists said this, proving to be amateurs:

Seiji Maehara, Japanese Foreign Minister, said, "Investment into the Northern Territories from a third country do not comply with the position of Japan, it complicates the situation. I would like to emphasize that."

And two, these talks must be held with realistic and responsible partners, not two bit, American backed amateurs, such as the ruling Socialist party. The Liberal Democrats are a prime, rational choice.

A Good Start But Not Nearly Enough

Our government has finally come to the absolute realization that science and technology is absolutely critical to the future of Russia's economy.

To be sure, two strong steps have launched Russia into the right direction but over all, they are not even nearly enough.

First came the reform of the work visas, with a new 3 year work visa for scientists, engineers and top management, that the government really is turning around in as little as 1 month, better then just about anyone in the world. Very impressive, considering the previous system was only 1 year and took a 6-8 month period to achieve the first visa.

The second step came with the announcement of the construction of our own Silicon Valley, about 20km west of Moscow at Skolkovo. 85 billion rubles will be invested over the next 3 years ($2.5 billion) to build the infrastructure from scratch and create a low tax zone for companies.



All are great idea, but there needs to be much more. I propose the following steps:

1. Comprehensive streamlining of the bureaucracy to allow internet based registration of businesses and cut out the infamous chenovnik.

2. An active campeign to bring in first Russian diaspora and then non-Russian university students for hard sciences. The student visa system must equally be streamlined and made quick. Most students will stay close to where they graduate, if work is available, so this will produce a steady supply of talent, in addition to our own. You really can never have to many scientists.

3. Tax holidays, say 5 years, both on corporate income tax and NDS (VAT) for all new high tech businesses that get set up. Nothing like money or the prospect of making money that will bring in new companies into Russia.

4. Total stream lining of the construction permit process. Russia is one of the hardest countries to get construction permits and requires up to 2-5% of the value in bribes, just to keep the process going. The 6-12 month delay in getting the permits is a major retard on new construction and thus new business.

5. Creation of skunk works by the government, giving gov scientists the free hand to pursue whatever research they want, with most of their pay based on 50% of the profits off of patents, the rest going back to the state. Patents should only be sold, by the state, to Russian companies.

If we follow on these five steps, I believe we will have a synthesis of events that will lead to a new explosion in scientific development that will place us back at the top.

Welcome to Survival: America, a 2nd World Nation

Recently, I was reading an article, at Economic Collapse Can A Family Of Four Survive On A Middle Class Income In America Today? on how the median American income of $50k (big money in Russia, but its all a matter of local costs) can no longer sustain a family of four, without crossing over into debt acquisition on a monthly basis. Very informative on the numbers. Of course, I have already known these statistics, but most Russians would find them shocking, those still harbouring some fantasy ideas about life in the US/UK, amidst flowing milk, honey and unicorns running on rainbows. Reality, as most in the know, know, is anything but.

What really caught my eye, were the comments, not of those who affirmed that the numbers were correct and they and their quality of life were sinking, but in those who denied this and showed how "well" they survived:

Andrew writes

My family of four has been surviving on ONE income of $45,000 (or less) for more than 10 years, and in the (overall) most expensive state in the union, New York. It can be done. First, lose the new cars, you don’t need them. Second, the food bills are too high, cut there. Cut the cable/dish and the internet. These are only the first places to cut. I’ve experienced two pay cuts totally 15% in the last 15 months, so, things are tight. If I have to I start cutting, or, get a second job (which I do have, now).

Mitch writes

We have two old cars–paid for, but of course it costs money to keep them running safely. We bought a house a few years ago for 100k–15yr mortgage, and have around 1k monthly payment when you include property taxes and the like. Gasoline prices and food prices have hit fairly hard in the past few years–and even with summer gardens and the like we can’t keep our food bill as low as we could years ago.

We have no credit card debt–as we worked extra part-time jobs for years to pay off our credit card debt and save up cash for cars and down-payment on our ‘nothing-special’ 100k house.

We feel like the working poor and have for this entire decade, we eat out once a month (that being a take out pizza/or chinese) and never go to movies anymore–but rather play board games as a family or other things that don’t cost money. We have no cable and no fancy cell-phones. It seems to us that we were taken for a ride, working for the last 15 years–to be doing only slightly better than many welfare people.

Annette:

I am a single parent with two teen daughters. We are scratching by on my income of $28k. No cell phones, no cable/satellite tv. We still have the internet. Costs are cut by hanging clothes up outside (reduce electricity), a large garden and a few laying hens. Squeaking by is the name of the game. School loans are on deferment atm and medical bills are not getting paid.

Lisa Z wrote:

Your numbers are almost exactly our life! We live in small city Minnesota, and were successfully living on one income of (now) about 50k per year. We are okay with living simply, purchased a home 6 years ago and used car below our income guidelines, and we make purchases very frugally. Our mortgage and escrow are about 1k/month. Groceries, etc. for our family of 2 adults, a DS13 and DD11, are $400-500/month because that’s all we’ve got (very difficult to do esp. as the kids get older, but we manage by cooking nearly all from scratch, gardening, freezing and canning, etc.)

The biggest problem is our health insurance has risen exponentially to where it’s keeping us from doing anything but getting by. It’s now $600/month to cover our family of four with a small deductible plan. My husband is a teacher so that’s a group plan. This can’t go on. Saving up for the deductible is nearly impossible.

Taxes and mandatory pension plan mean net income is only $2800/month. We can’t contribute much to the economy, that’s for sure. We have taken extra jobs–a first for me, a second for hubby–just to pay for choir for DD, horseback riding therapy for our autistic DS, small vacations to visit grandma/grandpa, etc. Those things absolutely can’t come out of our main income. Everything is a struggle these days. We’re still well fed. We’re still covered by a decent roof, and we’re dressed (in 2ndhand clothes mostly). But we’re treading water upstream and it’s more and more difficult every day, with pay freezes in the school district that won’t end anytime soon

Agoraphobic Plumber:

Those of you who are claiming $50K isn’t enough…have you ever been to a garage sale to buy clothes and household items? It’s dirt cheap. I picked up a leather jacket nearly brand new for $5. You can get canning supplies and equipment the same way for nearly nothing. Grow a really nice (huge if you have the room) garden for nearly nothing if you compost and use heritage seeds. Save a ton by buying in bulk. Cook most things from scratch.

NEVER buy a new car, and always pay cash. Drive a junker if need be…I do. I live in outstate MN and $1000/month will buy you an UNBELIEVABLE home. You can get by on half that for a 3BR, 2BA home, possibly with acreage if you can get a deal.

There are people here who have built ponds and stocked them with fish, keep bees, have small orchards and can the product, heat their houses mostly with wood they cut themselves and so on.

Bob Bois writes:

It’s not so much that you can’t make it on 50K on a monthly basis. That can be done with a little foresight and frugality. But forget about putting anything away for retirement at that rate. In fact, the middle class should just forget about retirement completely. As a concept, retirement is a relatively new development affecting a tiny percentage of the global population.

Pamela:

t’s a nightmare out there isn’t it?
my husband and I get by on his one income. We manage by growing much of our own food and i can and dehydrate as well. we keep our util. bill quite low by being diligent and turning things off all the time.
it can be done, but who wants to spend their lives scraping and scratching just to get by to continue living like that day after day.
there just has to be more to life than figuring out which mega rich corporation we are going to send money to this week

Angie:

It is absolutely possible to live on $50,000 a year for a family of four!! We are a family of 4 living on about HALF that amount! I stay home with the kids too! We bought a reasonably priced home, have 2 decent vehicles with no payments, no credit card debt, no student loans, no cable tv (who has time for that with kids to care for?.) We grow alot of food in our garden and can/freeze it to help cut grocery costs. I breastfeed and use cloth diapers. I buy 95% of the kids clothing second-hand (good stuff too!)We even have to pay for our own health insurance that goes up every year. I do everything I possibly can to make things myself from scratch. It takes alot of work, but we are doing it and we don’t feel like we are living without. We are even able to save money and pay cash for large items (furniture, appliances, vehicles, etc.) We ARE lucky to not live in the city and have the extra expenses they have. Although city folks can do alot of the things we do!

Well, I congratulate those who are making it, or rather surviving, by living more and more like their great grandparents, in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. When the so-called Richest Nation in the World has its average family living on par with someone 40 years prior, that is not Rich it is 2nd World at best. Sure, not being in debt is very important, but it says something when the average wage of the average person can not adequately feed a person and his spouse and two children and their cloths are bought from other poor people, who are a bit more poor and selling off what they own to stay above destitute.

America has now arrived or just about arrived at where we were in the 1990s.

Get real worried when you see grandmothers, on street corners, selling petro out of old soda bottles.

Russia Accelerates Free Market Reforms

Russia continues to move away from the Western Marxist states, taking the lessons it learned in the failure of socialism and creating a bright future for herself. This is of course, the exact opposite of the nations like the USA, UK, Spain and others. Least we further forget, it was Putin who warned first the Bush-Blair pair and than the Obama-Brown duet that Socialism and the Nationalization of industries do not work. To that end, these four fools and their shilling NGOs labeled our economy as semi-free, in their constant propaganda effort, while gaily dropping the blossoms of nationalization (that is, out right theft of ownership) on one of their industries after another, while creating literally tens of thousand of new laws (remember, the Americans pass bundles of laws of 10-20 thousand pages without a clue as to what is in them. Reading would be to difficult for these masters of humanity).

Several key projects are underway:

First and foremost is the sale of government stakes in eleven major corporations, the biggest privatization of the past 15 years. Not to mention that the worth of these takes, at approximately $30 billion USD, will make sure that the government continues to cover its deficit spending, as it really moves further away from the recession of last year. Yes, unlike the Anglos, Russia is growing again and quickly, without mafia style accounting and the mass printing of cash. A lot has been due to the cut in taxes to small business, the very engines of the economy that the Anglos have decided to pour liquid glass in and then chuck on the trash heap. Above all, the number one aim has been stated to generate a more competitive market, with less government enrollment and control.

Secondly, is the international teams scouring the best computerized systems in the world, for streamlining government. A key gold mine has been Singapore, where one can register a business online, with a credit card, in thirty minutes. Even President Medvedev, himself, visited Singapore to view first hand this miracle of streamlining and inquired at length about how to implement this system in Russia.

The third key development, equally tied hand in hand to the second, is the direct reduction of government head count. Over the next three years, the bureaucracy will be cut by 20%. That is going to be a lot of dead weight that is going to have to figure out how to earn a living.

All three key steps are aimed at improving Russian competitiveness and economic solidity, while the government continues, correctly, to defend our markets with high tariffs. Quite the opposite of the Anglo-Sphere nations and those others, like the Spanish, who have been pulled into their whirlpool of desolation.

Maybe in five years or so, we can start reading the Anglos and their fellow travelers, lectures on Free Markets, the way they so love doing it to us?

Anglo Finance on the March

This week has seen an unparalleled assault upon the Euro by the Anglos. But, like most things, this is only another play in the dollar/pound death throws, aimed to take everyone down and drown them in blood, before they themselves die.

As everyone knows, the Anglo finance has been a cancer upon humanity for well over a hundred years now. It is this group, as I mention in The Six Evils of Wall Street and the Suffering of Humanity that brought us the Communist Revolution in Russian, the Great Depression world wide, the Rise of Hitler and WW2 (from which they again profited handsomely), the Cold War, the Asian Flu, the Rape of Russia and now the Greater Depression.

In this last bought, feeding the world lies and hoodwinking everyone, using their good name (why they still have one is pure PR), the Anglo unloaded poison on every economy in the world. Hundreds of millions have lost their jobs and livelyhoods, while the Anglo bankers laugh in their palaces. Tens of millions have lost their lives, not that it matters to these spawn of Satan.

But to survive, these elites must have more credit, more life blood, but that can only happen if there is no other choice than the bankrupt dollar and pound. To that end, the assault on the Euro has been long in coming.

First, Goldman Sachs, the vampire squid rapped around the face of all humanity, early on, helped crooks in the Greek, Irish, Portugees and Spainish governments hide their debts, for a price, knowing this will undermine the Euro, when the Anglo sponsored con game falls. When these nations started to fall, but were not enough to topple the Euro, stage two started.

Stage two came into effect this week, when US rating firms started a mass devaluation of the credit ratings first of Greece, than of Portugal and now of Spain, with Ireland, Iceland and Itally on the horizons.

Now, two questions are obvious: one: if these nations deserve to be down grades, whey are the US and UK still enjoying AAA ratings? The UK deficit, after nationalizing half their banking system, is 12.6%, .1% less than Greece. The British are printing cash as fast as they can, while their zero interest rate is bankrupting their own seniors. But they have a AAA rating? And the Americans? Hell, a nation that has present and future debt obligations of over 500% of their GDP, who is running deficits 150% higher than their budget is AAA? A nation that is a debtor to every third world hellhole in the world, while running only one industry: military, and importing everything else, is AAA?

The second question is: after all the lieing that these rating agencies did to create this Greater Depression, why does their ratings, or opinions (for what is their ratings but opinions) still matter? They are thieves and liars, why listen to them?

But why do this? Because without the Euro, investors will be forced to buy dollar and pound bonds and thus help, if for a little further, prop up the Devil and his Anglo puppets.

The American Recovery, Lots of Puff But No Substance

Ok, ok, if one reads the US post and watches Wall Street, not to mentions listens to the "honest" American government, one "knows" that everything in America is perfectly fine, economy is thundering along and the Empire is back to full strength....or is it?

Behind the daily charade, the endless cheer leading are very unforgiving currents that ca not be hidden from an expert eye, no matter how much the Obama Regime and the rest of the American One Party Two Branch system wants it. Lets review:

1. Housing: American housing continues to be a disaster, absolutely and all the time. The second wave of resets, these in the Alternative-A category, that is, houses much more expensive than the Subprime, is just starting to crest and the full weight of this disaster will not hit until some time in late 2010, early 2011. All resets will not be out of the American system until 2013. So why the "good" numbers?

Well, first, it is hard to figure out what these numbers are. Every month, early in the month, one reads about issues and problems with continued worsening of the sales figures. Some of this is hidden by only comparing the numbers against the previous year's for the same month. Rather ridiculous comparison that does well to hide trends. A trend requires comparisons over a longer time period and more than a single data point. Further, by only comparing to last year's, a year already down sharply, it hides how far the numbers are down all together from the start of the Great American Collapse. Then there are the revisions, such as today's news that "Pending Home Sales Rise Sharply In February"....but wait, today is the 5th of April, and this news, revised and printed, is driving another bought of American stock inflation?

Then there are the numerous attempts to forestall the true state of the problem or hide it. One American program after another to keep the people in their houses, those who can not pay, are all sponsored by that single real American export, debt. But the cost of that debt has risen sharply, just in the past week, a full half of a percentage point. How much is that? We'll assume it is compounded only once for the year and we'll assume that we are only dealing with half a trillion, for nice round numbers. That's $2.5 billion in additional service fees, a pittance of a rise for the American printing machine. Of course, the problem is, this is a trend in itself. More on this later.

Furthermore, there is a year's worth of housing that is so far been kept off of the books, by the mega banks, who see no reason to put it on market since they will not sell anyways. Foreclosures, though with all government programs, continue to increase both in quantity and dollar volume. Prices continue to fall or are kept from falling by artificial means. Even the level of new house construction is done by artificial $8,000 stimulus, that is a credit, which is cutting into already lowered tax revenues.

2. Commercial Real estate
Just like the residential real estate markets, commercial is also over built, but unlike the residential, the Americans are still building commercial. Already this market has a 15% vacancy rate and growing, as small business and even large key stores go out of business. The latest in a long chain is Hollywood Video, leaving large store fronts empty in numerous strip malls. Unlike the residential debt, which was primarily held by giant banks who own the American regimes, the commercial debt is held by small family and company banks, banks the Washingtonians have no quams about shutting down, one after another. The government than sells these small fry to their big financial owners on Wall Street.

3. Cost of Financing
This is what will finally sink the Americans, surer than any iceberg. The costs are already increasing, on a long term trend. The 10-year bond notes are up, up and away, with interest rates rising to 4.01%, up .51% over the past 5 or 6 trading days, alone. There is no sign of this stopping as not only does the American regime have hundreds of billions more to sell of new debt, just for this month, but refinancing of old debt is needed and that refinancing is picking up steam.

Further, programs like Social Security (what passes for government pensions for the non-government workers) are finally bankrupt, 6 years ahead of schedule and will require some $30 billion in the first year alone. This sum will sky rocket over the next two or three years.

4. Infrastructural rot.
As for America as a whole, its rotting, quite literally. About 5 years ago a major bridge collapsed and killed over 30 people. Follow on investigations determined that over 700 major bridges were close to collapse. After billions of dollars wasted and stolen, none have been repaired.

The cities though are rotting to. Detroit, the former #3 city and main industrial center, is a total third world hell hole, where the average house sells for under $11,000 and no one wants them. Why? To live on abandoned streets, surrounded by feral dogs, feral peoples and Islamic lunatics? Or New Orleans, still rotting and the murder capital of America in body count, even while military police patrol it. Or LA, half of which is a war zone. Little Rock with a worse per capita gang problem than LA? Phoenix Arizona? Second kidnap capital of the world? Or maybe Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami and Reno, all crime ridden hellholes, just like Washington DC, once one leaves the government sector and the ultra rich chenovnik neighborhoods.

The US has not built a single new refinery or nuclear power plant in 40 years. It has an antique of a rail system. The massive automobile highways are jammed, even as the cost of gasoline is once again skyrocketing. The list goes on.


5. Anti-Business Government
Without a doubt, the government in Washington is extremely anti business, seeing the role of government not in guaranteeing a free market and regulating product quality and keeping corruption at bay, but in running the actual markets. From a massive socialist medical bill that is not a pay roll tax based sole payer (as in the very successful French and German models) but some Frankenstein of version of the NHS from the UK and Canada, this monster bill is already sucking out the funding of many thousands of large and small companies, who will be forced to increase layoffs. But most of its taxes do not kick in until after the 2012 elections, guaranteeing further depression. The government prescribed and mandatory private insurance will bankrupt many families and cause many other to go into sell off of assets, to pay penalties, thus will reduce the spending capability of most households.

Behind this is the Global Warming, anti-Carbon bills, as well as EPA regulation of carbon. This will kill off any energy intensive businesses, such as all manufacturing, and will increase the logistics costs of all goods needed for life. Most of this will be in the form of taxation through fines and business tax.

The American Marxists already control almost half the automotive industry, are taking over the small financial industries on behalf of their banker owners, are now able to take over the medical and medical services industry and have already started making noises about the aviation industry. This puts them in control of over half the American market. True, they will not take over the little family businesses, but than again, Leninist-Trotskyte Fascism, unlike Stalinist Communism, always cared primarily about the heights of industry, not the drags of markets. Remember NEP?

6. Outsourcing/Illegals...or Better Productivity
The disappearance of work for the American citizen continues, at an increased pace, as more and more well paying jobs are fleeing the American disaster. Of course, these same companies continued main market remains America, the disconnect has actually grown even worse not better. The present power regime has done nothing to stymie this, only complained, while pursuing the exact same policies of the past 22 years. Their one solution to stymie out flows has been to massive increase government pay rolls, and everyone know, bureaucrats only improve over all productivity of an economy...correct?

Mean while, Americans are now told a schizophrenic message: get used to high unemployment (from a liar regime who swore it would never get that high, just hand us your children's futures) and spend for all you are worth to save yourself from high unemployment. That the American unemployment rate is almost twice as high as Russia's, a nation that the American business world continues to belittle as a broken mercantilistic society, is ignored. After all, America has better worker productivity....that is, they have fewer people doing more work for less pay....see, the system can "improve" with no end. To say that the 60-80 work week of the 17th century is back, is redundant, for the Americans, it more than likely never really left.

Than there is the mind boggling 21% real unemployment, counting the semi employed, unemployed and the untouchables who do not really exist, that is people who have run out of unemployment benefits. These are not longer citizens to the American regime, but human garbage to be swept under the rug. Funny thing is, those hurt the most are black Americans, but then again, Islamic Arabs, like Obama's father's clan, always hated blacks, which is why one of the 40 Arabic words for slave is the same as their word for Black Africans and why his clan butchers and burns alive Black Kenyan Christian Africans. At the same time, it comes out that there are 8 million jobs in America, still occupied by illegal workers. Incredible, but the Americans take it, so they must deserve it.

7. War, War, War
That is right, not only is the war in Iraq continuing, even though the Americans are paying everyone off as they retreat from the ruined cities of that ruined nation, but the war in Afghanistan, both the real war and the imaginary war, are heating up. Imaginary? Why yes, like the report I printed of the conquest of the Taliban city of Marjah, where some 80,000 people lived and hundreds of Taliban stayed. Except that the city turned out to be a tiny village with a mosque and a couple of stores..

Now the Obama regime has intensified its air war on Pakistan's villages. Involved itself in the Yemeni civil war, as if the Saudi leading a Jihad against Shei rebels was not bad enough, but is now threatening and moving force to attack Iran, even as it ditches allies like Britain and Israel and continue to try and surround Russia with rockets...these being portable, though, while rearming Georgia, for round 2.

And, we must not forget, the trade war the US is now waging with its main financial backer and thus owner: China.

Over stretch has a whole new meaning for the "hyper"power.

So, if you are about to invest your monies in dollars or the US economy, one would have to be insane, knowing all this.

Paulson and the US Collapse, Lets Blame It On Russia, We Do Everything Else

It's good to see that US officials and former officials continue acting to par, God forbid they actually shock us and change their stripes. The latest tripe out of the mouths of the mega corrupted and their hand picked puppets is Henry Paulson's tripe about Russia trying to collapse the US economic bubble and that being the reason that the US is now down on its luck.

And why not? After all, Russia only had some $450 BILLION invested in the US and that is not counting the various steel plants and other assets owned by Russian companies. Why not just throw away all that money, surely it could never be the fact that the US, government and people and corporations, are debt drunk and indentured fools who can not live within their means and spend and continue to spend like maniacs. It is almost like an alcoholic in his final stages of death, knowing its all over, why the hell not just drink like crazy, the liver is done anyways? Or a man dieing from lung cancer who just keeps chain smoking, not going to make any difference at this point anyways.

But Henry Paulson is an egotist and a former top official who obviously 1. does not want to be seen as the fool and boob that he is and 2. go to jail or worse get lynched by angry mobs. So, he does what any failed US government or business hack does, who can try and get away with it: he blames it on Russia. Russia, the evil tyrant, the ones who have a spy under every bed, an assassin with a uranium filled syringe, in every closet and a banker with a nuclear money bomb at every stock market.

This is no different from the usual: blame Russia for Georgia's aggression, committed by a maniac US puppet. Blame Russia for a hyper armed Middle East, while the US hands out $12 billion in weapons to the Middle East, most of it to Islamics, each and every year. Blame Russia for Syria, while the US pays Syria to run black ops prisons and torture captives the US delivers. Blame Russia for Hamas and the PLO while the US saves the PLO from Israeli-Lebanese Christian extermination and then legitimizes them and arms them. Blame Russia for Serbia, while the US arms Islamic fanatics and wages a terror war of genocide on Orthodox Christian Serbs. Why not?

So now, while US banks and their lap dog English fellow sociopaths, were conning and robbing the world blind, till it all collapsed, lets now blame Russia for this to.

Of course, the US media is more than happy to join in and head lines are a buzz. Just to do a google search for the English versions. "Russia's risky roulette" declares the New York Post.

"Russia tried to talk China into waging financial war on the US in 2008, as the country was mired in a mortgage crisis. According to a forthcoming book by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Russian leaders wanted the Chinese government to dump billions of dollars worth of bonds tied to ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." They state this as a fact. Why not, its not like they will ever be called out on the lies.

"Paulson Says Russia Urged China to Dump Fannie, Freddie Bonds" declares Bloomberg via BusinessWeek. "The Russians made a “top-level approach” to the Chinese “that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force the U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies,” Paulson said, referring to the acronym for government sponsored entities. The Chinese declined, he said."

Of course, what Paulson and everyone else avoids answering is the simple question of: Why? What would Russia gain from loosing its invested funds? Secondly, at this point, the US would have done just what it did anyways, which is nationalize the two companies, which it was propping up anyways. Conspiracy is much easier to deal with than to answer for three decades of failed American social engineering financed with the savings and futures of much of the world.

The only proof they have is that Russia sold off its $65 billion in Fannie and Freddie in 2008. Oh my, you mean that our government had the brains not to ride the crashing plane to the bottom but decided to jump out with a parachute. Why not blame every other investor, who sold, for this also. My bet is, if Mr. Paulson owned any of that stock, he was out of it long before mid 2008. Furthermore, $65 billion is a drop in the trillions of debt that those two organizations hold.

In conclusion, it's business as usual in DC, London, NYC....rob, steal and bomb with impunity and if the floor falls out...just blame the Russians.

While America Drowns, Obama and the Elites Party

There is, yet again, something very Romanesque about the state of the Americans, their empire and their collapse. As the US continues to sink in its co-UK created economic armageddon, the ruling regime enjoys the fruits of its labour of looting and swindling. This is the great "Democracy" they sell us, overseas.

As the year ended, America suffered one of its worst months for employment. Sure, reading the official Ministry of Propaganda (so called free press) reports showed only a mere another 85,000 Americans as loosing jobs, or rather the work force shrinking by that amount, so it takes the UK Telegraph (America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels ) to report the real situation, that 650,000 unemployed were moved into a category named "No Longer Searching For Jobs". This is how the American regimes "honestly" tell the population that the unemployment rate is not going up and the lie they tell the rest of us, fortunate not to live under this deceit. This is the category that DC uses to dump the unwanted, unneeded and unemployable waste, its workers who no longer get government unemployment help and can go starve for all the elites care. After all, judging by the head lines out of DC, for the Haitians there is money, for their own unemployed, shelters and bread lines. This category has been growing by nearly half a million every month for the last year.

The hits kept on coming, too, for the former partiers of the American economic "miracle" of debt. Like a crippled Hercules, trying to lift a mountain of debt, or rather trying to keep it above their heads and from crushing them, the American populace continues to strain and tire and suffer, even as they deny reality while their legs sink deeper under their burden.

News came that inflation was really low in 2009, under 2%. Of course, the fact that salaries sank was not counted into that "fixed" model of inflation, otherwise the picture would not be so pretty. Outsourcing of jobs also accelerated, with predictions that up to 20% of the remaining jobs would still be outsourced, within the next few years. All hail the Marxist Free Trade. At the same time, news arrived that 1.4 million Americans went into bankruptcy last year, over a 30% jump from 2008. Food Stamps use, a form of government subsidy for food, was being given to over 10% of the population, with one third of the country's children living in the abject poverty it takes to qualify for the handout.

At the same time, a massive new wave of mortgage defaults in the resettling of exotic mortgages, continued loss of jobs and thus regular mortgages and a collapsing business/commercial real-estate market is just starting to break over the Americans and promises to be worse than the first wave.

To all this, the American military has increased its budget by some $100 BILLION from 2009's already mammoth $600 BILLION budget, more than every nation combined. And the people are continued to be led down the trail of slavery by their noses, in fear of being "invaded" or "attacked" while their sons sit in some 100 nations around the world, enforcing the Empire. Yet despite this giant spend on the military, families of US soldiers continue to have to buy body armour and other equipments and send them to their sons, since there are no funds for that armour and equipments, not after the elites and their companies get done pilfering the giant sum. Remember too, this does not include another $40 or so BILLION for the wars!

Equally, the evils of Wall Street, the pack of hyenas, the cabal of witches who brought us the lovely Soviet Revolution, the Great Depression, the Nazi take over, the rape of post Soviet Russia, the Asian Flu, (The Six Evils of Wall Street and the Suffering of Humanity) are now paying themselves $146 BILLION in bonuses, 8% more than the 2007 record, after stealing $700 BILLION from the American tax serfs, through bought and paid for farce of their so called "Democracy". That is some 20,000 people will be splitting $146 BILLION, or an average of $7.3 million each, for the people who are still laughing at all the Luciferien death and misery they caused by starting the lovely Great Depression II.

But best of all, it has now been brought out that the Obama Regime, much like Nero or Caligula, has been partying hard, with over 170 parties, receptions and big dinners, entertaining over 50,000 guests, flying in specialty chefs from around the world, all in this one year of power. That is, one party every two days. And the American serfs? They just bare it, grumble and pay their taxes, it si what they have been trained for. Oh sure, a bunch will get together here and there and wave signs and scream slogans for a few hours and then go home, feeling good that they did "something" and pat themselves on the backs for their "accomplishments" while promising to vote out the present elites and replace them with an exact same set from a different branch of the One Party Two Branch system. Someone famously called this: rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And their so called conservative leaders on TV will tell them what great deeds they have done and how great they are, even as nothing changes and these so called leaders hustle books and t-shirts and caps to the impoverished but good feeling tax serfs. In other words, the bleeding continues.

So Yanks, you can take your so called Democracy, nothing more than pilfering of the people, and your Free Trade Marxism and go pound your heads into the wall. We do not want it, we do not need it and we will not have it. We will take our so called "pseudo" authoritarianism, mercantilism, and government that actually cares about us and we will grow, ignoring your "advice", kicking out your so called NGOs who promote nothing but this "Democracy" and vassalage to your empire and destruction of our Christian Orthodox faith and we will be on our separate way. Now if we could only get our Monarchy back too.

Why a Strong US Dollar Foreshadows Economic Doom in 2010

Normally, in what passes for orthodox economics, a strong currency for a consumer nation is a good thing, a positive development. And America is the biggest consumer, and one of the smallest producers, in human history.

However, in these turbulent times, this economic train wreck that has been on an acceleration course since mid 2007, a strong currency or rather, specifically, a strong dollar is an absolute disaster. Allow me to explain.

Nothing has actually changed in the US economy since the absolute collapse and nationalization of the US banking firms, and along with it the British banking houses, of 2008. Indeed, in America, the exact same games that brought down the private banks are still being played by the now government owned (or is it that they own the government...that is for another thesis) entities and this is called now called recovery. Case in point: several major banks are paying back their TARP funds and the US press is screaming to the high heavens about the wisdom of the Marxists running America. True, many of the fools that are still the majority, though shrinking, of the electarite, buy into this, but let us look closer. The TARP fund is being paid back in one of two ways: 1. unspent TARP monies are being given back to the government (note I do not say owners, since the taxserfs will never ever see this cash again) and this is called recovery or 2. the banks are selling new stock through new IPOs to pay back the debt, which in turn delutes the value of the old stock which is held by the government, thus giving with one hand and mugging with the other, again, this is called recovery. None of the other US economic indicators have improved, especially when DC's fluff and out right lies are removed.

Now having established the continued progression of the US financial collapse, why than has the USD grown in strength so much in the past 2 weeks and continues to do so? For that we must look a the world wide picture and to the foundation of the next tidalwave that is about to sink us all.

The great Anglo Heist, the out right con job and mugging of the entire world by the Anglo Saxons (US/UK) has kicked out the supports of a lot of other nations, many of whom were dancing on supports of smaller EU and Gulf Arab con jobs. These have spent all of 2009 trying to balance themselves on a single stilt that itself is rotten through and through and again, the Western press has called this recovery or at least survival.

That all is about to change and the first dropping shoe, in what is about to be a shoe storm, was Dubhai. Simply, it defaulted on most of its debt and told its debt owners that it was their fault, which it was also, for giving it money and not its fault, is the heroine junky ever at fault for his addiction -- well yes, for spending it on failed indoor winter wonder lands, artificial islands and hundreds of near empty sky scrappers.

Following this came the news of Greece's down grading and eminent demise. Greece is part of the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) all of whom are on the edge. But in Europe, they are not alone, they are in a club that also includes Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland and possibly Denmark, Poland is also well on its way with massive government deficits for a "recovery". Healthy or recovering EU economies are faced with massive losses and bailing out nations who, like drowning men, will pull the healthier economies into the Abyss with them.

Behind these stand other nations, such as Georgia, Turkey, Venezuala, Mexico, Columbia, Nicaragua, Argentina, as well as much of Africa.

Than there is China, who has taken bubble blowing to unprecidented levels. It has masked over capacity by doing something incredibly stupid, increasing that capacity further and further, and using the extra capacity in the creation of yet more capacity. Sure, this puts off judgement day by a few years, but it is coming and 2010 will be that day. World demand has not only not returned to the levels of 2007, and Chinese production capacity is well above what it was in 2007, but what demand has remained, is now being guarded by every economy to make sure its means of satisfying that demand, and thus providing jobs, stays at home. China, reacting like a blind sided, and spoiled brat who is used to everyone pandering to it, has swung out at the world and wound up in trade wars with the EU, US and Russia. Of course, this only further cuts demand for that ever expanding capacity. Judgement day is indeed here, as the majority of China's citizens, who make up the shoeless peasants and the near slave labourers in the plants, will never be able to afford what they produce.

So, with all this happening, nations are running to buy the USD in a false hope of its stability. This in turn strengthens the USD, killing further any recovering local industries, while giving government the means to further indebt the whole of the nation. With moves like their new socialist health care and Cap and Trade, the Americans will smother their own industry, creating millions more unemployed and raising anger to a boil, all ahead of the November 2010 parlimentary elections. The temptation to spend with abandon, to ease the anger, at least until the elections are over, will be impossible to resist.

The hangover that will be felt, first by the Americans, than by anyone who owns their debt, pretty much everyone, on January 2011, will make every other year of the past 1,000 seem like a warm spring day.

The Lands of Sponge Bob Square Pants and His Wonderful Bubbles

Like the American cartoon that has flooded our televisions, for those who have cable and get the US channel Nickelodeon, and the minds of our children (yes I saw a Sponge Bob walking around taking photos with tourists on Red Square, right beside the Stalin and Lenin look alikes...very disturbing), watching the American financial leadership is like watching the Sponge Bob show. I am still assigning roles, mind you, but Bernanke, the chief of the private pirate bank called the American Federal Reserve is definitely Squidward the Squid and Gerthner head of the misnamed Treasury Department (a ministry that has no treasure outside of little pieces of debt paper it sells for other paper) is Sponge Bob, the ever eager, ever ready, ever energetic numb skull who loves most of all to blow his wonderful bubbles.

Not to be out done by the previous generation of American and English bubble blowers, who for the past 20 years have solved one train wreck after another, by constantly switching from one rail road to a yet bigger gage rail road, pulling a yet a bigger train to wreck. Now, with the US/UK and really the world economies in free fall from the insane housing/hedge fund/debt bubbles, these slap stick comedy characters have decided to solve it all with one more, one great, one magnificent, stupendous and stupefying bubble of all bubbles. But unlike Sponge Bob's $.25 bubbles, this mother of all bubbles (mother as Lilith was/is the Mother of all Monsters) is a King Bubble built upon tens of trillions of dollars of created debt and cash, all manufactured in a short 10 months and still being churned out at an incredible rate.

The mother of all this is the creation, for the first time, of the USD Carry Trade. What is a Carry Trade? It is where one can borrow money from a country at a zero or near zero rate and invest it with abandon into other higher paying investment and than repay the original debt for little loss. Add to this buying on leverage and you have a bigger disaster than ever.

What? Leverage buying is alive and well?

Well yes, absolutely. The Yanks and Limeys, you see, have done absolutely nothing, zip zero nothing, to fix the issues that got them and then pulled all of us, into this fine mess. Instead of fixing the giant corruption, the capitalism, which is nothing more than corporate fascism and instead of reimplementing real free markets, real free enterprise and a mercantalistic system, they have instead told their biggest thieves and destroyers of the common man's life that hay: You are to big to fail: so here, have plenty of more cash and debt and we will continue selling it to the suckers and fools of the world. In this category, I place our central bank, which for the life of me, I will not understand why, continue to invest in American debt.

Thus they created a giant American carry trade, which in turn has spurred a giant run on commodities, yet again, a continued selling of toxic assets and a new housing boom in the US. Yes, all those old bubbles are back, but linked together by the American Carry Trade monetary bubble, creating a yet even bigger disaster for the world. But how bad could a carry trade bubble collapse really be? Ask the Japanese, their decade old carry trade bubble collapsed a year ago and in the process, they lost 38% of their manufacturing output in 4 months and for the first time since the end of WW2, have shanty towns.

Of course the US can not loose the equivalent amount of industrial production that Japan lost, it no longer has it, it will have to start an industry borrowing, just to have enough to shut down and foreclose upon.

This will of course, again pummel our economies, as our central banks and investment funds, for some God forsaken reason and blind faith in American debt, continue investing in what has become the world's biggest money pit. But for all our suffering, the darkness settling on the Anglo world will be much, much worse.

Is it any wonder than, that my friends and contacts in America tell me everyone is buying up ammunition and weapons in insane numbers?

Keep Your Hands Inside the Coaster, We Are At The Top Of The Second Hill

It is becoming more and more evident, to the astute observer of realistic economics, that the second dip in the "W" global recession is coming up quickly. This is of course, identical to what took place between the 1929 collapse and the 1931 final landing. The world economy fell hard, bounced high and than fell into a deep black hole, that it took it thirty years to climb out of. This time will be worse, at least for the Anglos and more specifically the Americans.

The signs are everywhere: massive government stimulus (read money printing) whose only obvious effects have been on the stock markets around the world (again, just like in 1930), continued increases in global unemployment and thus a collapse in global goods demand, instability and a free fall in the shipping indexes. That is correct, it is not just the Baltic Dry Index, which is once again in a free fall, now that the Chinese have stopped hording iron ore, but also the various other indexes, including Chinese ones.

That is a sign of real doom, not only for China, but for many others. The fact that containers of goods are not moving out of China, in September and October, regardless that the Chinese stimulus has kept its factories producing as if nothing is wrong, means that the holiday shopping season will be empty and hallow, just like the Anglo mantra of recovery. Sure, France and Germany are out of recession and Russia and Italy are both heading out too, but that is because they have done the exact opposite of the Anglos, by cutting taxes, controlling spending, putting down real hard infrastructural investments and projects without tieing them in courts and hearings for years, cutting regulations while avoiding nationalizations, in other words the smart moves vs the Anglos dumb ones. The Anglos, specifically America and England and to a lesser degree, Canada, have done the opposite on all accounts, regardless of warnings. No amount of Hopy-Changy media Zombies will change the inevitable out come.

The British Police State got a rude wake up, this past week. The Bolshevik Labour and their Menshavik Tori allies were expecting to exit the recession with a +.2% GDP but instead had a further recession with a -.4% drop. Surely this must be the fault of those "evil" English Defense Leaguers, for not islamocizing like good little kaffer serfs. Go get them lads, show them that eve if no longer "Great" Britain is not dead either.

Oops, I guess this will now get me on the famous banned list to the British Police State, not that I have any plans on visiting that Orwellian prison camp.

As for the Russians, Germans, French and Italians, sure they will suffer in Europe too, but not nearly as much, as they are already on a much more solid foundation than the New Orleans financial foundation of the Anglos. Sinking and sinking and nothing else.

Now for the Yanks. The Americans, more so than any others are about to find out the shocking truth of their paper debt economy. Most prosperous nation on earth indeed. Biggest mooch and beggar and debtor to every third world country, does not make a nation "prosperous". Unlike 1929, America is not a loaner of cash, though it still gives it out to various puppets and fascists and Marxists around the world, oh my. Instead, it is the biggest debtor in all of history of human civilization. Furthermore, unlike 1929, it is not a net exporter of but an importer of everything short of the tanks, bombers (but not of the bullets and handguns) and heavy equipment. It must now import even food from China and Latin America.

With the holiday sales about to prove as absolute a flop as possible, we will know by mid November for sure, the US can look forward to mass unemployment come January/February 2010, that no amount of DC papering over can solve or hide.

To make things worse, by that point, the US will have Cap and Trade and thus skyrocketing energy costs and regulations and thus skyrocketing prices on everything. Jobs will not just hemorrhage, but will fountain out of the gaping neck wound where the head was just secured. Add to this the British modeled National Healthcare system that Americans will have by than and you get the image of a gang of pig headed little demons of regulation, chopping with their axes, at the headless and stumbling cadaver that was the US. economy.

A rush, no a stampede out of the dollar, will follow by the first half of 2010, followed by a police crack down, anarchy and possible civil war(s).

And all this is even before the bottom is ever reached.

Good night and good luck America, you are going to need it, in this very long winter night.

The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See

As my readers know, I am a fan of economics and of history, as well as politics, a combination that forms some very interesting cycles to research, discuss and argue on. None is so interesting than the death of great nations, for here there is always the self destruction that comes before the final breakups and invasions. As they say: Rome did not fall to the barbarians, all they did was kick in the rotting gates.

It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans.

While taking a small breather from mouthing the never ending propaganda of recovery, never mind that every real indicator is pointing to death and destruction, the American Marxists have noticed that the French and Germans are out of recession and that Russia and Italy are heading out at a good clip themselves. Of course these facts have been wrapped up into their mind boggling non stop chant of "recovery" and hope-change-zombification. What is ignored, of course, is that we and the other three great nations all cut our taxes, cut our spending, made life easy for small business...in other words: the exact opposite of the Anglo-Sphere.

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that's a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy. The great famine of the late 1920s was caused by quite the opposite, as the Soviets collectivized farms to force peasants off of their land and into the big new factories. Of course this had disastrous results. So one must ask, are the powers that be in Washington and London degenerates or satanically evil? Where is the opposition? Where are the Republicans in America and Tories in England?

The unfortunate truth here is: the Republicans and Tories are the Menshaviks to the Democrat and Labour Bolsheviks. In other words, they are the slightly less radical fellow travellers who are to stupid to realize that once their usefulness is done, they will go the very camps they will help send the true opposition to. A more deserving lot was rarely born. Of course half of the useful idiots in the Bolshevik groupings will go to those very same camps.

One express idiocy of Cap and Trade in America will be the approximately additional $.19 per liter of gasoline, which is a rather very large increase in taxation, however indirectly. Of course this will not only hit the American working serfs in the pocket at fuel up, but will hit them in everything they buy and do, as America has almost no real rail to even partially off set the cost of transporting goods.

But how will this work itself out? Very simple and the chain of events has been worked out often enough.

First, the serfs will start to scream at the cost of fueling up and the cost of all their goods. The government, ever anxious not to take responsibility, will single out the petroleum factories and oil companies for gauging the people. They will make demands for them to cut prices, which of course means working for a loss. When plants start to close down or move overseas, they will be called racketeers and saboteurs. Their facilities will be nationalized so that the government can show them how to do things properly. Shortages will follow as will show trials and that's as long as the USD holds up and foreign nations are still willing to sell oil and gasoline for other than gold, silver and other hard resources.

When food goes up, and it surely will, as the diesel the farmer uses goes up as well as his fertilizers, the government will scream that the farmers are hording, thus undermining the efforts of the enlightened. There will be confiscations of all feed crops while the farmers will get production quotas to meet or have their land nationalized again. Do not believe me? Look at the people running your governments and ask yourself: would they rather take some one's land or admit that they screwed up and ruined everything? After a point, only the corporate farms will remain, food by oligarch, just a like the factory farms. There will be plenty of dissidents to work them.

This will of course spread from industry to industry and within a rather short order, you will be living the new fractional dream, that is a fraction of what you have now. But on the bright side, for once, your children, working for government/oligarch run joint ventures, will be able to compete adequately with the Chinese, to feed the demands of Europe and Latin America. But that will take at least a generation or two first along with a cultural revolution or two.

Time To End the US Trade Embargo and Enter Into Fair Trade

For nineteen years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Americans have continued utilize their Jackson-Vanik Act to block the free flow of Russian goods to the Americas while screaming bloody murder when ever one or another American meat plants is blocked on account of their hormone and antibiotic packed products not meeting basic European food quality standards. Ah, but Russians are not Europeans thus should have no qualms about being poisoned or fattened. Yes, our standards are EU, since we sell to the EU and thus maintain the same at home.

The solution is rather simple: all American products not fully manufactured in Russia, to include subcomponents to any manufactured goods, will be tariffed. First, the US congress will be given a two month notice to act or be acted upon. Once the period is complete, a 1% tariff will be added per work day and until such time that the Americans see reason or totally lose market share. Furthermore, tariffs will come down only at 1% every two weeks.

Sure, the American congress and the hypocrites who inhabit it will scream bloody murder. They will scream that Russia is blackmailing them into an unfavorable decision. Well sure, yes that is so, but then again, international blackmail and strong arming are the favorite “trade” tactics of the US, so what is good for them will be good for us.

It is time to put away the attempts at reason or logic, since like the US police with their shockers, the US congress understands nothing of the sort either, only the “shock” of their own instruments used upon them.

And if they fail to see reason and take steps to enforce their pigheadedness? Well, the Europeans and Asians will more than happily take their place on better trade terms in Russia.

A Fall Pandemic Could Open the Door to World Depression

Whether one subscribes to the theories of starting recovery, or attributes it to statistical skull drudgery and slight of hand, all can agree that the world continues to be in a very precarious position. Whether on its knees or with one leg up and trying to rise, a swift kick to the chest will send the body on its back.

Enter stage right, Nature or as some suspect, Laboratory Creationism: the H1N1 or better named Swine Flu virus. This hybrid virus, so similar in it transmittal patterns to that of the Spanish Flu, may just be the iron clad jack boot that finally collapses the chronic patients lungs and puts an end to the order as it presently stands. What comes next is any body's guess. But I am, dear readers, getting ahead of myself.

Everyone knows, or should know, that early to mid fall is known for two things: economic slow downs and the flu.

Summer vacation times are done. Back to school shopping in the developed world is done. The harvests are done. For many firms, the end of the fiscal calendar is also coming up, a time when accounts are rapped up not opened up. Further, due to the bad weather, the very thing that transmits the flu virus, economic activity also slows. In dear Russia and much of eastern Europe, heavy rains bring things to a grinding halt. This is also true to a smaller degree in western Europe, North America and east Asia.

Any actual or made believe recovery would have to survive this natural down cycle in the early to mid fall, to have a hope of being built upon in the late fall, early winter holiday season.

Unfortunately, other issues are playing against economic growth: illness. This is a season when regular flu cases skyrocket, the damp cold weather and closed crowded office spaces breeding disease. As such, lost productivity and wages abound. Enter Swine Flu.

Swine Flu, even if at only a quarter the strength of the Spanish Flu, will leave .25% of the infected population dead. It seems to spread and infect about the same amount of the population as Spanish Flu did, which also first showed up in spring, went quiet in summer and than roared the roar of death through fall. If a third of Europe's and America's combined 900 million people fall ill with Swine Flu and .25% die, that will leave 2.3 million bodies in a span of 3 months. While this may not seem to be a huge number and it isn't, the cumulative effect of hundreds of millions sick and a population paralyzed in fear of being sick will crush what is left of consumerism and manufacturing.

At the same time, it will place an incredible burden on already bankrupt and over stretched governments and their public services. Where will the money come from, in nations like America, UK or Hungary, to take care of their populations. Government collapse and surely economic collapse would await all of us in this winter of our combined discontent.

Putin's First Move, Freeing Russia

It has become common fodder amongst the Oligarchical press of the West, specifically that of the Anglo-Sphere, to wax thoughtlessly about the corruption of Russia. Like screeching Scottish banshees they wail their dearth of stolen treasures. Of course, one must now wonder which treasures, when speaking of Russia, are these lepers of decent thought alluding to? Peal away the dead skin of their rotting hides and the lies of than President Putin and his clique stealing Russian treasures, falls off like so much diseased flesh.

It is interesting to note that the vampires who even now drain their helpless fellow citizens into abject poverty, the Nosferatu who own the liberals and conservatives of Anglo finance, were more than happy to loan massive amounts of funds (much of which was than rerouted back into their coffers after paying Yeltsin and his goons a fair share) to young, post Soviet Russia as well as to the Soviet Union itself, as it lay dieing in the late 1980s. Of course, those loaned funds, which went to benefit first and foremost the Central Asian, Caucus and Baltic republics of the SU, were first, foremost and only placed upon the shoulders of the Russian peoples.

The plan, of course was simple: a debt laden Russia, one unable to survive without direct infusion of funding, would have no freedom of action on its own but would be forced to always look at her creditors for permission before acting even in self defense. Thus the Soviet Union was dissolved as a territory. Thus did NATO expand, ripping away its promises. Thus did the West led by the Anglos butcher and maim and reign the Devil's terror upon helpless Serbian Orthodox Christians, whose one crime was to resist the Islamic onslaught that the Anglos so love to serve. Thus was the first Chechen war lost, as pressure built upon Moscow to always step back and negotiate, a process that had as much success as that forced down the throats of Israel, India, Nigeria and Armenia.

Thus, it is interesting that the Russian stabilization fund, a fund that in two parts firstly is invested in the US to the tune of almost $400 billion in various debt instruments and in Russia as a bad weather fund that still has well over $300 billion in it, did not exist for the entirety of the rule of the drunken horse's arse, Yeltsin.

In deed, the man the West loves to label a thief, Vladimir Putin, first and foremost paid off all of Russia's outstanding debts with oil monies that had seemingly not existed under Yeltsin the traitorous puppet. We shall not dive into the question of where that money went, under Yeltsin, anyone with a grade school intellect can figure that out.

Of course the Anglo media must lie, lie, lie, it would not dare tell its public that life without debits possible or desirable and how the world's 7th largest economy was able to shed it, to protect its industries and markets from Chinese dumping, to live within its means while growing industry at 7% annually, to work towards the good of its people, as well as its rich. Public ignorance and superstition is the saving grace of the Western and specifically Anglo oligarchs and their hand picked media mouth pieces.

Putin, in short order paid off $3.3 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he paid off $15 billion to the Paris Group, $4.3 billion to the World Bank, $1.4 billion to cover the deficit in the Russian Pensioner Fund and the $46 billion debt of the old and defunct Soviet Union. After that he grew the internal stabilization fund at an incredible rate. The fund, which by August 2006 had $82 billion in it, by January 2008 had $157.4 billion in it and continued to grow through the end of 2008. This fund has allowed Russia to continue without the mass liquidity bubble of the broken Anglos or the depressionary collapse of industry of the Japanese.

This has not only brought the Russian state a freedom of action it had previously not had, but it has allowed it, during this second Great Depression to act freely and avoid the death trashes of a bloated Anglo-Finance Cthulu. It has equally allowed Russian business to go on a buying spree of devalued Western assets, be it Opel, Porsch or Facebook.

Freedom from debt has its advantages.