Цитат на деня

"Никога не се знае кое на кого е и до кога".

Мирон Иванов

Charles Hugh Smith: What Is a National Nervous Breakdown?

Преречатвам този пост на Чарлс Хю Смит.

When the citizenry cease to believe the lies, the nation suffers a nervous breakdown.

Last week I used the phrase National Nervous Breakdown without clarifying its meaning. (The War on Our Intuition That Something Is Fundamentally Amiss)

By National Nervous Breakdown I do not mean the breakdown of civil order or the economy; I mean the breakdown of the officially sanctioned narratives that underpin the Status Quo. These Master Narratives legitimize the current arrangement; once they erode or break down, the legitimacy of the Status Quo is lost.

The shell remains in place, but nobody believes the system is a fair, just meritocracy.

1. No accountability for abuse of power. The core narrative is no one is above the law, which means not only that everyone is supposedly treated equally before the law, but that abuses of power are punished or limited.Let's consider the erosion or breakdown of these master narratives.

Now that police departments are essentially stealing from private citizens without due process via civil forfeiture, it's clear there is no accountability for abuses of power.

This is simply one example of many in which blatant abuse of power is sanctioned by the Status Quo, and there is little recourse for citizens who have been abused unless they are wealthy enough to fund a high-powered legal team.

In effect, our legal system is broken. This mirrors the erosion and breakdown of accountability in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when abuse of power was rampant and there was little recourse for the citizenry.

2. Though U.S. foreign policy is guided by realpolitik, it is fundamentally based on the high moral ground of defending liberty, democracy and civil liberties. Wars of choice that squandered American lives, treasure and credibility and the use of torture for dubious gains have demolished the credibility and legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy--once again, mirroring the delegitimizing result of the Vietnam War and all the official lies that were issued to mask that war's true costs and failures.

3. The manipulation of official data to mask the reality that the U.S. economy now operates to benefit the few at the expense of the many--crony capitalism writ large. Vested interests control the political and financial machinery to expand their share of the national income and power.
Meanwhile, the income and wealth of the vast majority of citizens stagnates.

4. The middle-class roadmap to financial security--earning a college degree and working hard for a corporate employer--is broken. A college degree leads to debt-serfdom in the form of crushing student loans, but the education gained has little value in the emerging economy.

In the corporate world, loyalty has been reduced to a facade of rah-rah PR that masks a culture of insecurity.

5. The government at all levels--local, state and federal--responds to any questioning of its authority or abuse of power with increasing over-reach and violence. There are so many examples of this, it's difficult to know where to start: the federal government's war on truthtellers regarding domestic spying abuses, and the state of California's blatantly unconstitutional confiscation of taxpayer bank accounts with zero due process--the mere suspicion that income hasn't been fully reported in california is sufficient grounds for the theft of citizens' money by the state.

Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 2: Law-Abiding Taxpayers Are Treated as Criminals While the Real Criminals Go Free (March 27, 2012)

When the master narratives have broken down, legitimacy is lost. What's left is authority without accountability or recourse and abuse of power without limits.

When the citizenry cease to believe the lies, the nation suffers a nervous breakdown. 

Коледно мълчание

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/255508978835028757/

Банално -корупция

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c3/5f/a5/c35fa51f8837ee2cc73ce08dbb3bc661.jpg

"В България корупцията е достигнала кризисно ниво, което влияе негативно върху живота на всеки един гражданин, посочи заместник-посланикът на САЩ в София Брус Бъртън пред представители на българската съдебна власт по случай Международния ден за борба с корупцията."

Все отвън говорят за българската корупция. Говорят чужди дипломати, като дипломатическият език все пак дава представа за корупционния дизастаър на тази територия, където държавата я няма, или по-точно - има я, но е заета само с грижата за себе си. Българите незнайно защо плащат данъци. Публичните услуги - здраве, обучение, лична сигурност, неприкосновеност на частната собственост са толкова трудно достъпни на някакво прилично качество, че гражданите нямат избор. Само един път има - в чужбина.

От бългаските политици не се чува една дума за корупцита, та как ли да се очакват някакви действия от тях срещу нея. Те дори не знаят как, те самите са символ на корупцията. Няма сделка без рекет от страна на администрацията в тази бедна и все по-бедна страна.

Коя институция държи палмата на първенството по корупция? Дали прокуратурата, съда, полицията, или мутризираните общински   администрации в морските общини? Сложен въпрос. Та те всички са си държавички в кухата държава. Мафиотски държавички с техните правила и закони, които решават кой да работи и кой не, но всички трябва да  им плащат рекета - с пари, с имоти и така.

Политиците дирижират всичко това, обаче нагло и лицемерно се чудят как така магистратите не искат да си реформират системата. Те не им пречат и не са ги оплели във всевъзможни зависимости, нали. А на магистратите така им е комфортно и доходно.

Може да приемат България в Шенген - и на еврократите им омръзна, но докато институциите са парализирани от корупцията, просперитетът все ще се отлага. Вече сме по-бедни не само от румънците, но и от хърватите.

България е  банановата република на Европа, но без бананите.

Цитат на деня

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well.

Rene Magritte

Бил Бонер: How to Commit Financial Suicide

Препечатвам този пост на Бил Бонер, за модерните източници на богатството, което,  уви, ще се изпари в следващия спукан финансов балон. 

How to Commit Financial Suicide

Hey… you want a wealth effect? I’ll give you a wealth effect!”

By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners:

Stocks are trading at a new record. Works of art hit a new record too.

From Bloomberg:

An almost 6-foot-tall Jeff Koons white plaster sculpture of a woman holding three Hermes Birkin bags sold for $4 million last night at a charity auction in New York, 60% more than similar works fetched in the past.

The sale of “Gazing Ball (Charity)” followed last week’s tally of $673 million for Impressionist and modern art sold at Manhattan auctions, setting the stage for a potential record season if high prices continue this week.

“I’m long-term bullish on the art market,” Rajiv Chaudhri, president of Sunsara Capital LLC in New York and an art collector, said at the event at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. “Prices will keep moving up. There is still so much private wealth being created. Art is the ultimate asset.”

Mr. Chaudhri is wrong about several things…

First, private wealth is not being created; it is being fabricated by central banks.

Second, art is not the ultimate asset but probably a poor and unreliable one.

And third, the art market is not going up the way he imagines. When the money drains away, the aficionados will be punished: They’ll be stuck with their purchases.

Oceans of Liquidity

Still, Mr. Chaudhri is right about one thing: There’s a lot of money around.

Yes, rich people have gotten a lot richer in the last few years. The top 1% now own 35% of America’s wealth. The bottom 80% owns only 11% of it.

Where did all this money come from?

We’ve seen estimates for the effect of QE on the balance sheets of the country’s asset holders. Over the last five years QE has added between $2.5 trillion… to as high as $9 trillion. Now, with so much loose change in their pockets, the rich can bid for Jeff Koons’ confections, Manhattan condos, or whatever they want.

But that still leaves the question: Where does the money come from?

You already know the answer: from the central banks. And you know where they got it: from nowhere.

Central banks have created oceans of liquidity. Like water, it had to go somewhere. In the event, it went into stocks, real estate, art… and many other things. And now that the QE program is officially on “pause” in the US, the Japanese and the Europeans are taking over.

Trendsetters

“ECB council backs €1 trillion euro-zone rescue,” was the headline in the Financial Times as last week came to a close.

“Mario Draghi has secured unanimous support from the European Central Bank’s governing council to inject €1 trillion to rescue the Eurozone economy from stagnation,” continues the report.

And that comes on the heels of remarkable reports from Japan. The Bank of Japan has a new governor, Haruhiko Kuroda. Apparently, he is even more reckless and retarded than Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.

Kuroda has upped the central banks asset buying to ¥80 trillion ($700 billion) a year. And part of the deal includes direct purchases of Japanese REITs and ETFs. As the Real Time Economics blog reports:

In addition to bonds, the BoJ is investing heavily in private assets [...] by buying stocks in the form of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, and real estate through Japan real estate investment trusts, or J-REITs. Those assets had been in the mix before, but will be tripled. The figures are small compared to the JGB purchases – ¥3 trillion for ETFs, ¥90 billion for J-REITs – but can have a big influence on markets.

“Hey… you want a wealth effect? I’ll give you a wealth effect!”

The Japanese are the trendsetters – at least in the world of suicidal financial policies. So, it probably won’t be long before the Fed gets back into the money-printing business.

Most likely, it’ll wait for the stock market to crack. Then it, too, could begin buying stocks directly.

The US stock market will fall because there is less and less fabricated money holding it up. The $3.6 trillion in QE helped push up the S&P 500 by 200% since its crisis low on March 9, 2009.

But QE is, as we said, now on “pause.” And the money-printing operations in Japan and Europe will probably not leak fast enough into the US to keep the water level high. Instead, liquidity will drain away – gradually… and then suddenly.

The Other “QE”

Not only has QE stopped, but so has the big boost that the US used to get from its trade deficits. At its peak, America’s current account deficit reached $800 billion. That money – largely credit-financed – went out of the US to buy foreign-made goods.

To stop their currencies from appreciating versus the dollar, foreign central banks – particularly the People’s Bank of China – had to print local currency to buy these dollars. They then reinvest these dollars back in the US. This was like QE before there was QE, says our friend Richard Duncan.

The US got a flood of liquidity from overseas money-printers. This is what helped inflate the stock market bubble of 1999 and then the housing and financial bubble of 2008.

But that’s gone too.

The current account deficit is only about half of what it once was. And as America’s oil industry coaxes more and more crude from the ground, there will be fewer US dollars headed overseas to buy energy and a lower current account deficit as a result.

This will mean less buying of US assets by the foreigners… and “excess liquidity” to float asset prices. The energy boom will not buoy up asset prices; it will help sink them. By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners.

Споделен цитат

Нямам враме да пиша тези дни, но ще споделя цитата на Любослава Русева, които има 

интересен политически подтекст по повод новата властова върхушка в България.

"Сред моите любими басни е „Тиква и бор“ на малко известния словенец Антун Гледжевич 

(1656 - 1728):

„Тиква с лазещи ластари

тъй високо се издигна,

че овошки изпревари —

до върха на бор достигна.

Самохвалка и надменна,

тя прегърна здраво клона

и доволна, възхитена,

дигна взор към небосклона.

Почна да се смее бора,

изруга я, вежди свъси,

но възвишен, заговори

с думи праведни и къси: —

Твойта слава кратко трае!

Щом завее зимен вятър,

осланена, то се знае,

ти ще рухнеш на земята.“"

http://reduta.bg/v2/article/%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82-%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B2%D0%B4%D1%8A%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE