Economic Collapse/ Dooms day/ The Sky is falling thread

[TVCasualty]

Jeez, that's harsh. So what have sharks ever done to you??

[huntsman]

Originally Posted by roc

pelosi needs to fly with old Roc... I'd take real good care of her right up to the moment I kicked her ass out of the plane without a parachute over shark infested waters.

Care to armwrestle to see which of us gets to kick her ass out?
That is a damn fine thought!!!

[roc]

Originally Posted by TVCasualty

Jeez, that's harsh. So what have sharks ever done to you??

You are absolutely correct - I would never feed a shark poisoned meat - my bad!

[roc]

Originally Posted by huntsman

Care to armwrestle to see which of us gets to kick her ass out?
That is a damn fine thought!!!

If you think you could arrange for her to hit bidens driveway then she is all yours!

[eatyualive]

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes. The vendors' federal class action claims the state is trying to balance its budget on their backs.
Lead plaintiff Nancy Baird filled her contract with California to provide embroidered polo shirts to a youth camp run by the National Guard, but never was paid the $27,000 she was owed. She says California "paid" her with an IOU that two banks refused to accept - yet she had to pay California sales tax on the so-called "sale" of the uniforms.
The class consists mostly of small business owners, many of whom rely on income from government contracts to keep afloat. They say California has used them as "suckers" as it looks for a way to bankroll its operations while avoiding its own financial obligations.
"Instead of seeking funds through proper channels, the State has created a nightmare," the class says. "Many of these businesses will not survive if they are required to wait until October 2009 to have these forced IOUs redeemed by the State."
The class claims the state is violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. It demands that California be ordered to honor its own IOUs, plus interest. They are represented by William Audet.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/0...s_Own_IOUs.htm

[Hippie3]

that's fucked-up.
soon it might be the same for money-
no one accepting it.

[TVCasualty]

So I guess all these business owners should just send in their own IOU's as payment for the taxes assessed on the IOU's they were paid.

Then the State will reply by sending photos of handcuffs to the business owners, to which the business owners can reply by sending the State a picture of a bunch of angry looking lawyers standing in front of the Supreme Court (along with a complimentary copy of Constitutional Law for Dummies). I just hope this situation doesn't devolve to the point where they're sending threatening photos of guns to each other.

I wonder if anyone has started counterfeiting these IOU's yet? (counterfeiting fake money? Why not? I'm sure they're easier to copy than "real" money) Oh, wait, it's California so of course someone 's already on top of that!

Where I live, the local county government is just as broke as California but has not resorted to issuing IOU's; they simply laid off 62%(!) of the county employees, telling them "tough shit, buddy" and calling it done. One consequence is that we're being told that it's about 3-4 weeks now before a contractor can get an inspector out to a job site, so if you're a builder (or do any work requiring any kind of permit) you literally have to schedule all your inspections at the same time you apply for your permit, and then you'll often still end up waiting around for the inspector. That causes major screw-ups that have a domino effect on other jobs and work crews (and makes scheduling jobs a nightmare), thanks to purely administrative delays.

[Hippie3]

i think i might grow to like
a dirt poor government...

[catdaddy]

I was just thinking the same thing- as long as the inability to act comes with their being broke...

Laws that are not enforced don't amount to much...

[eatyualive]

Originally Posted by TVCasualty

So I guess all these business owners should just send in their own IOU's as payment for the taxes assessed on the IOU's they were paid.

Then the State will reply by sending photos of handcuffs to the business owners, to which the business owners can reply by sending the State a picture of a bunch of angry looking lawyers standing in front of the Supreme Court (along with a complimentary copy of Constitutional Law for Dummies). I just hope this situation doesn't devolve to the point where they're sending threatening photos of guns to each other.

I wonder if anyone has started counterfeiting these IOU's yet? (counterfeiting fake money? Why not? I'm sure they're easier to copy than "real" money) Oh, wait, it's California so of course someone 's already on top of that!

Where I live, the local county government is just as broke as California but has not resorted to issuing IOU's; they simply laid off 62%(!) of the county employees, telling them "tough shit, buddy" and calling it done. One consequence is that we're being told that it's about 3-4 weeks now before a contractor can get an inspector out to a job site, so if you're a builder (or do any work requiring any kind of permit) you literally have to schedule all your inspections at the same time you apply for your permit, and then you'll often still end up waiting around for the inspector. That causes major screw-ups that have a domino effect on other jobs and work crews (and makes scheduling jobs a nightmare), thanks to purely administrative delays.

lol one big cluster fuck. i kinda feel like thats whats happening now. one big cluster fuck..... give it a few more months of layoffs and i can only see more states having similar issues.

think they just put a 400 ton a year cap on gold now. which i think might be good. might actually reflect the true value of gold. seems like many central banks sell 400 tons a few times a year to lower the value of cost per ounce. imho.

Originally Posted by TVCasualty

So I guess all these business owners should just send in their own IOU's as payment for the taxes assessed on the IOU's they were paid.

Then the State will reply by sending photos of handcuffs to the business owners, to which the business owners can reply by sending the State a picture of a bunch of angry looking lawyers standing in front of the Supreme Court (along with a complimentary copy of Constitutional Law for Dummies). I just hope this situation doesn't devolve to the point where they're sending threatening photos of guns to each other.

I wonder if anyone has started counterfeiting these IOU's yet? (counterfeiting fake money? Why not? I'm sure they're easier to copy than "real" money) Oh, wait, it's California so of course someone 's already on top of that!

Where I live, the local county government is just as broke as California but has not resorted to issuing IOU's; they simply laid off 62%(!) of the county employees, telling them "tough shit, buddy" and calling it done. One consequence is that we're being told that it's about 3-4 weeks now before a contractor can get an inspector out to a job site, so if you're a builder (or do any work requiring any kind of permit) you literally have to schedule all your inspections at the same time you apply for your permit, and then you'll often still end up waiting around for the inspector. That causes major screw-ups that have a domino effect on other jobs and work crews (and makes scheduling jobs a nightmare), thanks to purely administrative delays.

exactly. round here. they laid off 90% of the build force in 2006. then the counties started making 4 day work weeks. now everyones losing their jobs. this area is highly tied to the building industry as well. i hear that on everything you said. they have 1 person doing 20 peoples jobs now. and im sure the county might even be cutting those peoples hours.

not to mention, the raise in everyones property taxes across the board down here. so many foreclosures equals less revenue coming in for county taxes. then you end up having the issue of raising the taxes for those who still have jobs. thus putting increasing pressure on the home owner. some people who have many bills. like house payment, car payment, boat payment and such are stretched very thin. a small flux in something like property taxes of a few hundred more a month can really make or break some people.

really a great idea if you have not done it already to tighten up the budget and account for random bullshit to happen. bc you never know when it will.

[eatyualive]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

so you think govt. officials should park those black limos
and ride the bus ?
maybe obama should sub-let the White House too,
no one needs that much space,
we could put the
president of the united states of america
up at a holiday inn .
and those fancy State dinners-
dump the chef
take the Prime Minister of France
out for a burger at mickey d's.

my point is that
perks like these are
appropriate to the OFFICE held.
they represent us to the world,
and we don't want the world to see
the usa as too poor to put on a good face.

besides
these people have targets painted on their backs-
you can't just dump pelosi , as much as i loathe her ,
on a frontier airlines jet with her secret service entourage,
comm equipment [she's in the line of succession to the presidency],
etc.
it's too risky for her
and for the other passengers as well.

ill live in the basement of the whitehouse. probably safest place anywhere near me lol...

you do have good points. and i do agree in that respect. yes they need protection seeing that we have been invading far too many countries in the last 20 or more years. i actually voted on the last congressional election for change. and these guys showed me why i never vote. they don't follow through on what they say. its all lies. circular arguments to give them better benefits, better everything while everyone else suffers. do i really want these liars to be more protected on my dime? hmmm. something to think about... guess i don't really have any say in the matter.

but these are the very folk who steal from the people. i have no pitty for them when this country is falling apart and they are upgrading their limos and airplanes. poor them, as if the super bullet proof ones they have aren't good enough. while at the same time, my 85 year old grandmother still works full time and takes care of her son who has cancer.

how did the cat get so fat? how did the family die? do you care why? -nofx...

kinda funny when i was 15 and listened to this song. i really never understood those lyrics. and these guys were saying it back then. now i understand it.

[Hippie3]

welcome to the machine.

[eatyualive]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

welcome to the machine.

yeah man. im just bitter. not hateful. just think there are better ways. not sure why we are stuck in this circle. hoping for better days! humans are strong, we will prevail.

[eatyualive]

looks like this is about the usps.

Consider the plight of John E. Potter, the chief executive of the second-largest employer in America. On the one hand, he has a guaranteed monopoly for much of his business. On the other hand, monopoly or not, the combination of the Internet and the recession is absolutely crushing his company, just as it is for so many other companies across the country. His last quarter’s results, which were announced on Wednesday, revealed a loss of $2.4 billion. The business is on track to lose a staggering $7 billion in 2009, on around $68 billion in revenue. That’s practically General Motors territory.


What can he do to fix the situation? Surprisingly little. His employees have clauses in their union contracts that forbid layoffs. Nor can he renegotiate their gold-plated benefits, the way, say, the auto companies did when their backs were against the wall. Political pressure makes it nearly impossible to shut down any of his company’s 34,000 facilities, no matter how outmoded or little used. He can borrow money, but under the law, he can add only $3 billion in debt a year — an amount that isn’t going to come close to covering his losses.



Oh, and get this. Every year between now and 2016, he has to put aside over $5 billion to finance health benefits for future employees. You read that right: future employees. There isn’t another business in the country that finances benefits for employees it hasn’t even hired yet.


Welcome to John Potter’s world. He’s the nation’s postmaster general. Yes, that’s right: for the last nine years, he has run the United States Postal Service, which, since 1970, when it stopped being a government department and started becoming self-sufficient, has been the oddest of ducks. It is expected to operate as a business, turning a profit and so on, and yet it is still subject to Congressional oversight and all sorts of legal constraints, like that ridiculous health benefit prefinancing for future employees, which was part of a big 2006 postal reorganization bill. (Its main purpose, it would seem, is government accounting: those funds get counted against the federal deficit.)


Even so, until recently, Mr. Potter had had a pretty successful run. A smart, likable, lifelong Postal Service executive, he got it through the anthrax crisis early in his tenure. He saw it through 9/11 (in no small part by engaging Federal Express to fly long-distance mail during the day, when its planes were empty, something it still does). He has overseen productivity gains and, according to a poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a rise in customer satisfaction. Between 2001 and 2006, he even eliminated the Postal Service’s $11.3 billion debt. That year, 2006, was also when demand for mail service peaked, with 210 billion pieces delivered.


But the last few years have been brutal. The Postal Service lost more than $5 billion in 2007, and another $2.4 billion in 2008. And, of course, it is on track to lose that whopping $7 billion in the current fiscal year. (Its fiscal year ends in September.) The amount of mail being sent is dropping like a stone — it will be down to 175 billion pieces in 2009. Mr. Potter has reduced the Postal Service’s head count to 650,000, from 800,000, almost entirely through attrition. He has cut costs every way he can think of. And still the losses mount.



A few weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office added the Postal Service to its list of “high risk” federal agencies, meaning that it is in such dire straits that it needs “to restructure to address its current and long-term financial viability.” Indeed, if something doesn’t change by the fall, the Postal Service will have to renege on those health benefit prepayments — despite its legal obligation to pay them — or start missing payroll. “U.S.P.S. must align its costs with revenues, generate sufficient earnings to finance capital investments, and manage its debt,” the G.A.O. said. Just like any real business would.


“If you are asking me to run it like a business, give me the same tools that someone would have in the private sector,” Mr. Potter said when I spoke to him recently.


But as I discovered on Thursday, when I watched a Senate hearing on the current Postal Service crisis, that’s not likely to happen. For one thing, Mr. Potter isn’t really asking for the tools he needs to turn the Postal Service into a real business. He is asking Congress to relieve it from the health prepayments, which he is likely to get, at least temporarily. He is also asking that the Postal Service be allowed to reduce mail service to five days a week, and to eliminate some postal branches. These aren’t exactly revolutionary ideas — yet they are viewed as highly controversial in Congress, which frets that constituents might get angry if the local postal branch closes.



But even if Mr. Potter were to get his way on these two items, they would still be only stop-gap measures that fail to tackle the bigger question. As the Internet continues to erode the use of snail mail, does the Postal Service’s business model still make sense? Do we even still need the government to deliver the mail anymore?


Think for a minute about the mail that comes into your home. In the modern age, very little of it is personal mail. The vast majority is commercial mail of some sort — advertisements, bills, movies from Netflix or catalogs. Once upon a time, said Rick Geddes, an associate professor in the department of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, the postal service was viewed as “a way to bind together the nation. In subsidizing mail service to rural communities you were keeping them connected to the rest of the country.” But today, he added, “it is kind of silly to say we are binding together the nation through advertisements and catalogs.”


These days, the main justification for keeping the postal service as a quasi-government entity is the belief that no private company would be willing to deliver the mail to sparsely populated rural areas of the country. People fear that it would be a little like airline deregulation: communities that weren’t large enough to justify flights in the newly deregulated environment lost their carriers.



But that mission of universal service has all but blinded just about everyone connected with the Postal Service.

Congressmen — many of whom, after all, come from rural areas — are loath to give the Postal Service too much free rein for fear that Mr. Potter’s minions will start shutting down post offices. (Never mind that 2,000 of them serve fewer than 100 people each.) The postal unions, with their no-layoff clauses, have used universal service to justify benefits so generous the Postal Service would save $600 million just by bringing them in line with other federal employees.


As for Mr. Potter himself, while he may want more freedom to run the Postal Service like a real business, he, too, seemed surprisingly wedded to outmoded ideas about mail service in America. “This country needs to have and to protect universal service,” he said. “Our business is all about making sure every American can stay connected with every other American.”


I failed to ask him the obvious follow-up question: Don’t e-mail messages now do that?


For most of us, of course, it does — and that will increasingly to be the case, as broadband makes it way into, yes, even those rural areas that everyone is so worried about. Michael A. Crew, a professor of regulatory economics at Rutgers told me that that while the Postal Service’s “short-term situation is bleak, its long-term situation is really bleak.” He is one of a number of experts who say they believe that even when the recession ends, the Postal Service’s woes won’t be over. As businesses look to save money in the recession, for instance, they are starting to do end-arounds the Postal Service. Online bill-paying is become ever more popular. Evite is starting to replace mailed invitations to parties. None of that business is ever coming back.


Which is why, instead of trying to find short-term, piecemeal solutions to the current crisis, those involved in managing and overseeing the Postal Service ought to be thinking harder thoughts about blowing up its business model. Maybe the Postal Service should turn itself into a giant outsourcer, handling some tasks but handing out others, for a fee, to more efficient companies. Maybe the government should allow companies to bid on lucrative urban delivery — with the proviso that they also deliver to rural areas. Maybe some areas should get mail deliveries less frequently than others. Maybe there should be radically different pricing structures. Maybe it should even lose its monopoly on first-class mail. I mean, why not?



Mr. Geddes, the Cornell professor, says he believes that the only solution is for the Postal Service to become “just another company” — lose its monopoly, shed its bureaucratic mind-set, become able to negotiate freely with its unions, and answer to shareholders instead of Congress, which is always going to resist significant change that might upset a constituent. Only when that happens will it be able to bring its costs in line with its revenue.



“The post office is not broken,” Mr. Potter insisted. But surely it is. And its current crisis brings to mind Rahm Emanuel’s line that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.


Alas, here in the middle of its worst financial crisis ever, the Postal Service and Congress seem utterly intent on wasting it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/bu...a&st=cse&scp=2

[eatyualive]

these are just speculation. discussing the idea if gold were confiscated. what might happen in todays world.

There’s a lot of Internet chatter these days about the possibility of the U.S. government seizing its citizens’ private gold holdings.
What are the chances?
Well, it’s always good to bear in mind that there is no telling what the government might do. It’s already doing things that were unthinkable just a few years ago. If President Obama believes there is political hay to be made from seizing your gold – or even if he sincerely thinks such a move would be “good for the country” – we’re sure he won’t hesitate to make the grab. After all, his favorite predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, set the precedent.
Many Americans don’t even realize that private gold ownership was forbidden for forty years, but it was. The relevant edict is Presidential Executive Order 6102 of April 5, 1933, which begins:
Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled

An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes,in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists,

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section to do hereby prohibit the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations …
There was, of course, no constitutional peg on which to hang such an outrageous crime against the people, so FDR decided to fall back on the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, which he claimed gave him the authority to do this in order to prevent gold from falling into the “wrong” hands. If that seems a flimsy argument, it is.
But it echoes eerily today. How much of our personal freedom have we already been asked to sacrifice to the Forever War on Terrorism? And note also the reference to an “existing national emergency in banking” that requires extreme measures. Sound familiar?
So, no question that Obama could follow in the footsteps of his mentor, if he wanted to. That said, though, the likelihood of a new gold confiscation is remote, for a number of reasons.
2009 is not 1933. Back then, the money supply was constrained by the gold standard. As Roosevelt concocted the New Deal, he ran smack up against that wall. He needed more money than he had, couldn’t raise taxes in a depression, and couldn’t print dollars that weren’t gold-backed.
His solution may have been reprehensible, but it was elegant. First, make the private possession of gold illegal, paying those who surrender their metal the official price, $20.67 per ounce. Then revalue gold to $35 per ounce. Voilà: Instant inflation, lots of new money, problem solved. And the New Deal was off and running.
But we have long since abandoned the gold standard, and Obama doesn’t face FDR’s constraints on monetary inflation. However much money is needed to finance his New Deal Redux, he can have it. All he has to do is rev up the printing press or turn an unlimited number of bits and bytes into electronic cash.
Given this kind of clout, what does he need gold for?
An argument can be made that the yellow metal is still useful. It runs like this: Creating money out of thin air is inflationary, and a large stash of gold, even if it doesn’t officially back anything, serves as a sort of counterweight. People around the world will have greater confidence in your currency knowing that, as a last resort, you can pay your bills in gold. And the more gold you have, the better.
Furthermore, confiscating gold and assigning it a fixed dollar value would also prevent the kind of runaway gold price that the coming massive inflation is bound to trigger. As those who argue that the gold price is already suppressed correctly point out, the government has decided to sacrifice the dollar in order to avert deflation. Thus a lower-than-free-market gold price helps obscure the damage that’s been done to the currency. People feel richer with more, albeit inflated, dollars in their pockets; a rapidly escalating gold price shows them that they’re not.
These two arguments aren’t empty, but they’re not convincing. Most folks in government subscribe to the “barbarous relic” school of thought about gold. Precious metals probably cross the minds of Obama’s economists only when they’re out buying jewelry.
And most American citizens have never even seen a physical gold coin, much less own one. Reeling in all the bullion out there will, in reality, do the government little if any good.
One final point. In the 1930s, when people were asked to turn in their gold, compliance was quite high. Americans believed their government when told that it was for the greater good. Imagine.
Today, that attitude seems laughably naïve. Those who have gold know that it is an unequaled storehouse of value. That they would meekly part with it at the government’s behest requires a belief that naïveté still rules the land.
Far more likely is that gold owners would resist. And since they also tend to be gun owners, there could be serious confrontations. The government doesn’t want mass resistance to one of its orders, nor an escalation of the domestic violence it will probably get anyway, when unemployment rises to Depression-era levels. It’s simply not worth it.
Never say never where government stupidity is involved. But all things considered, a modern-day gold confiscation is not high on our list of financial worries.

http://financialsense.com/editorials...2009/0807.html


another discussion about is the confiscation of gold likely? and if so how would it effect the markets?

http://financialsense.com/editorials...2009/0807.html

As part of a series we first look at this question: “If the U.S. decides to confiscate gold in the future, what impact might that have on Gold Shares and the COMEX Gold Futures prices?

We assure you, this is not a fatuous question. Is it possible you may well ask under what circumstances did this happen in 1933? [We will answer that more fully in a later part of the series]. What we can confirm is that in 1933 the U.S. government banned the ownership of gold by U.S. citizens and purchased all but rare gold coins from the U.S. Public. They did this, at $20 an ounce. Two years later they revalued gold to $35 an ounce, a 75% revaluation. So, there is a precedent!

[In a later part of the series, we will examine the reasons behind this first confiscation and compare these with today to see if we can expect the same in the months to come?]

So we continue this part on the basis that a confiscation will take place. And we further assume that the rare gold coins [trading at a large premium to the gold price] are excluded. This means that high caratage gold bars and coins trading at close to the gold price will have to be handed over to the Fed and sent to a place like Fort Knox.

Gold Share Markets.

It may sound strange to say this, but investors in gold Exchange Traded Funds will concur but gold shares have little to do with the gold price, except to define what a gold mining company will earn from its gold production. Buyers of gold shares don’t expect to influence the gold price when buying gold shares. They are buying equities only, with all the risks of any corporation. The way the gold price affects them is through the price received over the space of the half year and year when the results are published. This makes the average gold price of prime importance to these shares. Of course there are many who based on their forecasts of the average gold price will discount this average and reflect it in the price of the shares. Many believe that gold shares are six months ahead of that average.

Now imagine a regime where U.S. owned gold is confiscated. It may well be as last time that the gold is paid for at a fixed price. It may well be that gold mines in the U.S. are paid that gold price and no more. Then the average gold price achieved from that mine will be the new “fixed” price of gold. One will then be able to measure the earnings of a gold mine and allow some part of the price for the risks attendant on a corporation [management, balance sheet, etc]. Gold mines, where the gold price earned is entirely different from that inside the U.S., will trade at different levels commensurate with these different gold prices. [We will discuss different global prices in a later part of the series]. The price of gold mining company’s shares will therefore be very different than those in the U.S. It could be that foreigners will buy U.S. gold mines shares to get a higher price or U.S. investors will buy foreign gold mine shares to get their higher gold prices? There will be a separation of the two for sure.

We do expect that investors of any kind will continue to be allowed to invest in gold mines no matter where they are in the world. If foreign gold mine shares are trading at different price and higher ones at that, then the U.S. will benefit to the extent that dividends flow into the country. You can be sure that the U.S. will encourage this. After all the objective of a confiscation of gold will not, at this stage, be to restrain foreign investment, but to bring gold into the hands of government. It all depends on what Capital or Exchange Controls attend the confiscation of gold.

Futures and Option markets.

This is where life changes for an investor. If there is no free gold market inside the States [due to the continuous purchase of gold by the U.S. Fed] there will be no gold market on which to base the futures and option market inside the States. Perhaps the U.S. regulators will feel that that is an unavoidable cost justified by the reasons they confiscated the gold in the first place.

But the financial world is far too sophisticated to allow such a draconian result. We have absolutely no doubt that London or Paris or Shanghai or Moscow or TOCOM will step into the gap and widen their own Futures and Options market in gold or accept new business into their already established futures and options markets. After all, many, many foreigners buy futures and options on COMEX. Where will they go?

Will U.S. investors have access to these markets?

Again we have to understand why gold will be confiscated in the first place. It would seem likely that the acquisition of gold will be their purpose, no other, so why prevent U.S. citizens from going overseas to invest in a futures and options market when they can go to invest in any other markets there. It is possible that at some stage the U.S. would instruct that U.S. owned gold held abroad be repatriated, forcing delivery first. But this would be at a later stage only, we feel.

The only reason this would not be allowed would be because full scale exchange Controls would have been imposed on U.S. investment overseas. Usually these are not prevention measures but added cost measures. In the U.K. in 1971 two types of currencies were used, one for international trade and one for international investment [Dollar Premium]. At its worst the international investment currency stood at a 31% discount to the ‘commercial’ currency. This translated into the export of around 50% more Pounds for investment than for commerce. The U.S. could experience this in a $ meltdown.

another article talking about the fdic is in trouble. ill just post the link bc there are many graphs to illustrate it that i can't copy paste.

http://financialsense.com/editorials...2009/0804.html

[Hippie3]

i remember when gold was illegal ,
today i have none
so doesn't matter much to me.

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

i remember when gold was illegal ,
today i have none
so doesn't matter much to me.

Not even a toof??

I got a gold trigger on one uv my guns.

[Hippie3]

nope, no gold teeth- are you kidding ?
had to carve mine from wood...

[Oblivion]

Only thing I have made of gold is my word.

[eatyualive]

today cnn announced that house democrats decided to take off some of the recommended planes that were not necessary like the department of defense suggested...

good. i was pissed lol...

yeah if the gvmnt did confiscate gold again. that just isn't right. probably buy it back from you at next to nothing prices too. maybe silver ain't such a bad idea to have?

but with the internet these days. i bet there will be a black market for it...

[eatyualive]

as i read in the earlier info on the spp website. they spoke about pandemic outbreaks of the flu. crazy shit lol.. among other things.

[Oblivion]

Originally Posted by eatyualive

today cnn announced that house democrats decided to take off some of the recommended planes that were not necessary like the department of defense suggested...

DOD only wanted one plane. Our masters added in the others.

[eatyualive]

Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.
The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.
A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.
"It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed," said Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."
Regulators' concerns are twofold: that consumers will wind up with fewer choices for services and that big banks will assume they always have the government's backing if things go wrong. That presumed guarantee means large companies could return to the risky behavior that led to the crisis if they figure federal officials will clean up their mess.
This problem, known as "moral hazard," is partly why government officials are keeping a tight rein on bailed-out banks -- monitoring executive pay, reviewing sales of major divisions -- and it is driving the Obama administration's efforts to create a new regulatory system to prevent another crisis. That plan would impose higher capital standards on large institutions and empower the government to take over a wide range of troubled financial firms to wind down their businesses in an orderly way.
"The dominant public policy imperative motivating reform is to address the moral hazard risk created by what we did, what we had to do in the crisis to save the economy," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview.
The worry for consumers is that the bailouts skewed the financial industry in favor of the big and powerful. Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing. That imbalance could eventually squeeze out smaller competitors. Already, consumers are seeing fewer choices and higher prices for financial services, some senior government officials warn.
Those mergers were largely the government's making. Regulators pushed failing mortgage lenders and Wall Street firms into the arms of even bigger banks and handed out billions of dollars to ensure that the deals would go through. They say they reluctantly arranged the marriages. Their aim was to dull the shock caused by collapses and prevent confidence in the U.S. financial system from crumbling.
Officials waived long-standing regulations to make the deals work. J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were each allowed to hold more than 10 percent of the nation's deposits despite a rule barring such a practice. In several metropolitan regions, these banks were permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines typically allow, Federal Reserve documents show.

3 pages rest of article here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082704193.html

[Lazlo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...-starting.html

[Hippie3]

well
this thread was started
a bit over 6 months ago
and i'm not in a bread line yet.
so far, so good.

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

well
this thread was started
a bit over 6 months ago
and i'm not in a bread line yet.
so far, so good.

Somehow I don't think YOU ever will- you have been living around the edges for a long while, and I imagine that is what you will continue to do.

That is a compliment, BTW.

For the rest of us- many of the burdens slated for us by recent legislation have yet to be placed upon our backs. It was IMPERATIVE for ALL the planks of the platform of totalitarian control be put into place ASAP- but to be nailed down near the END of this administration- so they could be the heroes AGAIN by promising to fix our problems- again.

The nationwide uprising centered on the healthcare debacle is a glimmer of hope. America is waking up to just what "hope and change" means to those who offered it as a campaign slogan.

Perhaps we WILL survive as the freest nation, and the last place of sanctuary for the oppressed. In some form.

Personally, I could wish for change in the OTHER direction- LESS government, MORE prosperity, MORE freedom.

[bbd2]

obama will free the wage slaves
in the old south, the masters took care of everything, food and board
in the north, they gave an allowance (wages), but still controlled whether you work or not based on their hold on the cost of things you need (housing, healthcare)

its straight up bullshit that a human is earning 500 million dollars (half billion) a year
there is no way he or she is producing that much value
their pay establishes them as a master
and im sorry but i feel that supporting a system that enables such blatant siphoning off of the production of others is unAmerican and anti-freedom

sub $30,000 for many and $500,000.000+ for some
fuck that, i will die before i accept that as the natural order
straight up thievery

the power of the office of the American president cannot be curtailed
and will only increase as english civilization and language propagate throughout the world

everyone will want miranda rights, and the right to eat mickey d's

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by bbd2

obama will free the wage slaves
in the old south, the masters took care of everything, food and board
in the north, they gave an allowance (wages), but still controlled whether you work or not based on their hold on the cost of things you need (housing, healthcare)

its straight up bullshit that a human is earning 500 million dollars (half billion) a year
there is no way he or she is producing that much value
their pay establishes them as a master
and im sorry but i feel that supporting a system that enables such blatant siphoning off of the production of others is unAmerican and anti-freedom

sub $30,000 for many and $500,000.000+ for some
fuck that, i will die before i accept that as the natural order
straight up thievery

the power of the office of the American president cannot be curtailed
and will only increase as english civilization and language propagate throughout the world

everyone will want miranda rights, and the right to eat mickey d's

Damn straight, Comrade!

Barack Obama has indeed joined the ranks of other world leaders who promised that kind of equality.

Except it never really happened- just that a different group of Masters became the ruling elite.

And everyone got poorer- except them.

Ever get a job from a poor man?

[rags724]

I don't know if anyone said this already or not but Japan has been in debt for about 170 to 180% of their GDP. Our country(USA) is at about 60 to 70% of GDP. Japan still manages to have a worker retirement, welfare, and many other social system programs with the debt they are in, though they struggle to do so. All China wants from our country is for us to reform our currency into a new currency. They don't even want us to consolidate with other countries currencies. They just want us to use hard assets to back a new and stronger currency. It's not as if we actually go to the Big Bank of China and sign a loan contract like you would for a loan from your bank. China's government just happens to hold lots and lots of Treasury Notes. Something like 800 billion worth. So it really would not be in China's favor if we totally went bust. The truth is that over forty percent of China's wealth is in US dollars. They just want us to solidify our woeful currency. It will benefit them and us. We aren't going to do that, though, because in all of their ignorance our government wants to see an economicly weak china. They will cut our noses off to spite their shameful faces.

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by rags724

I don't know if anyone said this already or not but Japan has been in debt for about 170 to 180% of their GDP. Our country(USA) is at about 60 to 70% of GDP. Japan still manages to have a worker retirement, welfare, and many other social system programs with the debt they are in, though they struggle to do so. All China wants from our country is for us to reform our currency into a new currency. They don't even want us to consolidate with other countries currencies. They just want us to use hard assets to back a new and stronger currency. It's not as if we actually go to the Big Bank of China and sign a loan contract like you would for a loan from your bank. China's government just happens to hold lots and lots of Treasury Notes. Something like 800 billion worth. So it really would not be in China's favor if we totally went bust. The truth is that over forty percent of China's wealth is in US dollars. They just want us to solidify our woeful currency. It will benefit them and us. We aren't going to do that, though, because in all of their ignorance our government wants to see an economicly weak china. They will cut our noses off to spite their shameful faces.

I don't think you will see an economically weak China again EXCEPT as a result of being screwed over by the US MIB complex- after all, they have taken our place as the producer of goods for the world- inferior though they may be- and they have LOTS of cheap labor to exploit.

[bbd2]

Originally Posted by catdaddy

Ever get a job from a poor man?

when they had a government grant

ever stronger government is a fact of our lives
if they want to enforce the morality of issues like drugs, and guns
they should also enforce the morality of ensuring people have good access to opportunities to improve themselves e.g education, work in the form of giant construction projects like a continent-wide maglev train network similar to freeways, local projects etc.

for the freedoms they have taken, i want something back

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by bbd2

when they had a government grant

ever stronger government is a fact of our lives
if they want to enforce the morality of issues like drugs, and guns
they should also enforce the morality of ensuring people have good access to opportunities to improve themselves e.g education, work in the form of giant construction projects like a continent-wide maglev train network similar to freeways, local projects etc.

for the freedoms they have taken, i want something back

A poor man who got a government grant and became an employer- that's interesting! Whose money was he paying you with?

Sooo- you would gladly trade your liberties for some security of some kind- or a larger piece of the money pie taken from working Americans? (There's a quote of some kind about trading liberty for security...)

Just how large a portion of my income should I gladly give up so these make-work projects can happen?

I think you just might want to get a better overall view of WHOSE money it is, and where it comes from. Also that there currently is none to spend- they already took care of that.

I want my freedoms- fuck their bogus security.

[Hippie3]

gee, think the government will drug test ??

hmm,
work for government,
live in government housing,
attend government schools,
get government medical care-
sounds like a worker's paradise to me-
Cuba.

[bbd2]

im no fan of government control of all aspects of life
and would not gladly trade my liberties for security
however, my freedoms have been taken, many before i was even born
its not like i can walk into any store and buy what ever i want

i am against covert rule by the rich
and i dont think public works projects such as repaving roads and building more cost and energy efficient transportation is make work, it improves our standard of living
the f-22 is make work (no defense use, "but we need it for the jobs")
but somebody rich is paying to push that

since the government is already robbing us,
we need to push their agenda to things that benefit the many instead of the few
health instead of fatter bank accounts

it should not pay more to let patients get sicker, but it does
and there are smart resourceful people implementing strategies that ensure that more people will get sick in a no holds barred kind of way
it generates more revenue and they get a big cut of it

we have to de-incentivize this kind of viciousness
but you cant tell ppl what to do and still claim to be free
thats why you tax high incomes high
ensure some of these kinds of ppl pay for their money

[catdaddy]

Originally Posted by bbd2

im no fan of government control of all aspects of life
and would not gladly trade my liberties for security
however, my freedoms have been taken, many before i was even born
its not like i can walk into any store and buy what ever i want

i am against covert rule by the rich
and i dont think public works projects such as repaving roads and building more cost and energy efficient transportation is make work, it improves our standard of living
the f-22 is make work (no defense use, "but we need it for the jobs")
but somebody rich is paying to push that

since the government is already robbing us,
we need to push their agenda to things that benefit the many instead of the few
health instead of fatter bank accounts

it should not pay more to let patients get sicker, but it does
and there are smart resourceful people implementing strategies that ensure that more people will get sick in a no holds barred kind of way
it generates more revenue and they get a big cut of it

we have to de-incentivize this kind of viciousness
but you cant tell ppl what to do and still claim to be free
thats why you tax high incomes high
ensure some of these kinds of ppl pay for their money

Circular logic to justify your position on healthcare.

"They're fucking me, so at least I should get to pick the lube".

Government controlled health care is THE giant straw in complete control of the populous. Your desire for it demonstrates either a limited knowledge of the outcome as demonstrated historically, and/or the content of the bill(s) being considered/pushed, or you really don't mean what you say about big government and control of the wealth of the citizen- his time/money (wealth).

I DO understand what you feel, but asking the government to "give some back" because we're getting screwed ALREADY is simply ludicrous.

I love ya, man, but it don't make sense.

How 'bout they get the FUCK out of it all, remove the barricades to a better system (government regs on insurance, torte reform, blah blah blah, and let US keep our wealth?

BTW, tax and spend NEVER stops with "screwing the rich".

[Hippie3]

i follow his logic-
'i am a slave anyway
so i might as well be
a healthy employed slave.'

but i think many hidden assumptions
behind it-
like the freedom to chose your job.
but working for the government
when they are the only employer
means you get assigned to a job.

[bbd2]

yup, its a bad situation we find ourselves in

thing is we are already assigned to jobs
mostly profit-making ones
we cant just do what we want, like be artists, or artisanal farmers, research scientists, musicians
its very hard to survive when you are not doing something commercial

i think its bad for civilisation to have everyone be a telemarketer, salesman (not that theres anything wrong with any job if you like it)
you just shouldnt be forced into it by things like lack of higher education due to high cost
or need to maintain health insurance for your family

i say load the system down.
boob jobs and penile augmentations all around free of charge. cover everyone
when the shit hits the fan down the line
i wonder whose budget they would cut first? medicare for everyone or the dea?
i certainly would not let them touch my medicare

since your gonna take it, spend my money on the shit i want

[catdaddy]

Yeah, I follow it too. I'm just not willing to bend at all to government control.

The outcome has never been good.

"Give me my share" ignores all who work their asses off to provide "your share" and refuse to partake in the system- cause they value their freedom above ANY compromise.

THIS is what will instigate "civil war" or class war in the new system- those who will bend and those who will not- and the clash of the two.

BUY INTO THE SYSTEM- then tell them what you will and will not accept....

See where that gets ya.

BTW- I DO work at what I choose to do- and I LIKE my job- but as soon as the state gets off my ass for child support, I'm back off the grid, and under the IRS radar. FUCK the GOVERNMENT.

[catdaddy]

Well, that was sorta self-righteous of me- considering that I just admitted to bending to the system long enough to pay child support and stay out of jail.

The point is- I will never willingly submit to government- but I did what I HAD to. (In a way, hip this is like your wllingness to have some access to higher level healthcare than you can afford now- you NEED to do it. I DO understand. I NEEDED to stay out of jail. And truthfully, I begin to see the need to take better care of what's left of this carcass.)

Here's my big issue. We all want a better world, a better life for all of us. I do NOT believe that Big Government is the answer. I think personal freedom is. (Controlled anarchy- did I coin that phrase?)

Just because someone promises that to you, does NOT mean that is what you will get. I earnestly believe that not only is there a better way to achieve a better world for all than what is being proposed at the moment, but that those who are making the promises are not ALL interested in making a better world for us.

I have examined carefully the agencies WRITING the legislation being proposed and find their expressed aims at direct opposites with my idea of living free. This is important to me in a way I'm sure you can understand.

I say we re-examine all the ways government intrudes into our lives and reduce everywhere possible, and make the necessary COUNT. We waste the vast portion of our lives paying for shit we don't need- at ALL levels of human activity.

We face a battle in our immediate future with aggregated forces of immense wealth and power who want more of who we are. Of our most basic and only real possession- our time. In terms of what we produce with that time, and in service to the State.

This is reality, and it is happening.

Each man must choose what he must do. Some will do what they NEED to do- as I have recently. Some will do what they must to survive. Some will buck the system just to prove they will not bend.

Just an observation.

Nighty.

[Ras Asad]

everyone ready for a "bank holiday"?

[catdaddy]

Ras- maybe you should explain the term as differentiated from a day off with pay...

And why some astute men are predicting a rerun of the FDR "bank holiday"...

[Ras Asad]

well...
as a preface...
i really dont know much about 'money' and all the that it includes...
and i truly have no bank account, ( or even enough to open one!)
i just read and gather/remember what seems 'important'. lol
i also see money as one of the most absurd, and retarded things in 'existence', so i dont study anything that has to do with it.

but to put it simply...
they can take whatever you have and restrict your access to it in any way they wish.


lets say.. just for fun..
that there was a recent document or two released by a large midwestern bank... ( from a memo, nothing concrete, no i cant 'prove' it)

with the statement that they had been prepared at the behest of the Federal Reserve and that an Executive Order (though # not stated) was specifically going to be cited in the finished product that would go to all bank account holders and employees sometime after 8/21/09 though no exact date was listed. The content of these two letters was :

1. All account access was to be limited by the Bank and that any withdrawls, checks, debit cards, or access of credit lines , and IRA's could total no more than $500.00 per one or a combination of accounts every 7 business days until these limitations were lifted by Federal Authorities.

2. All lock boxes were to be sealed and access to contents disallowed by regulations imposed by Executive Order, the IRS, FDIC, and the Federal Reserve Bank until further notice.

These type restrictions have been seen before during Bank Holidays of the 1930's where contents of lock boxes (particularly gold and cash) were in fact confiscated and also in more recent IMF/WORLD BANK imposed scenarios in South American countries such as Argentina and Brazil in the early 2000's, 90's, and 80's.

When one looks at a potential limit on withdrawls of $2000 per 28 business days .......and then calculates that many households budgets are much greater than that especially if the Mortgage Payment is included.


lots of shit involved.
lots more could be added..............
enough 'lunacies' for the morning already. lol

[Ras Asad]

that 'memo' could be bogus... wouldnt doubt it....
more fear or something.

but it is not all
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sch...ture-of-future

tbh...
i think 'they' want a revolution rather than a recovery. lol
either way...
as long as we can/will be there for each other...
we can stay standing and say "fuck you ".

[Ras Asad]

since we're in the TZ..... why not ...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/28/773537/-The-Secret-That-Will-Destroy-the-Worlds-Financial-System

The Secret That Will Destroy the World's Financial System

Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 06:11:34 AM PDT

There's a secret out there.
A secret so incredible, so horrifying, so toxic that if the public ever heard about it, it would destroy the world's financial system.


That sounds like a big claim.


Who's making it? Not some scary Chicken Littles in the Daily Kos diaries. Not some Doomer site. Not wacked-out gold bugs. Not Ron Paul.
This claim is being made by a consortium of the world's biggest and most powerful banks.
What's the secret they don't want you to know?
It all starts here:
In November of last year, the Bloomberg news organization sued the Federal Reserve bank of the United States. The goal of the suit was to force the Fed to disclose information on the alphabet soup of lending programs it created in 2008 to help prop up Wall St. banks:

Bloomberg News asked a U.S. court today to force the Federal Reserve to disclose securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks.
The lawsuit is based on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and the public, according to the complaint. The suit, filed in New York, doesn't seek money damages.
"The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry," said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, in an e-mail.

The suit sought to reveal which banks were getting which part of the $1.5 trillion dollars and what assets the banks were putting up as collateral for the loans.
The Federal Reserve fought the case and ...
They lost it:

The Federal Reserve must for the first time identify the companies in its emergency lending programs after losing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled against the central bank yesterday, rejecting the argument that loan records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions.
The Fed has refused to name the financial firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, most put in place during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued on Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.

The Federal Reserve has to identify the companies to whom it gave the $1.5 trillion dollars and it has to list the assets used as collateral for the so-called "loans."
The Federal Reserve says that this might "unsettle shareholders."
OH MY GOD NO, NOT THE SHAREHOLDERS, NOT OUR PRECIOOUSSS SHAREHOLDERS!
Apparently, that is the standard these days.
And since when has the government felt obligated to protect the share prices of certain private businesses over others? Is that role in the Constitution somewhere?
Anyway, an industry group representing the biggest and most powerful banks on the globe, including British, French, Dutch and German as well as American banks, have issued a warning about the disclosure:
If you tell who got the $1.5 tril, you're gonna destroy the world financial system.
The secret is just that big.
(Note that I'm linking to Zero Hedge here, not because I endorse the editorial theme of the blog at all, but because they are the only place I could find that carries the original document in toto.)
The world might "get destroyed."
But we've also got to have access to this information.
For the simple reason that, if we don't, we're going to see a repeat of this in a couple of years with even bigger numbers, bigger handouts from the Fed and the Treasury, bigger payouts to Wall St. executives and other insiders ...
And even bigger secrets that the public can never know.

...........

read the banks actual filing, .......
whatever it is.. "it aint good" lol

Full Filing Found Here - PDF

[Ras Asad]

Just wanted to pass this along in the event that it is true so that you can prepare or whatever you need to do.

An O3 pay-scale Captain in the Army National Guard was informed by his superior to have his family out of any metropolitan city they were in, by mid to late October. No reasons as to whats up are forthcoming but I've been able to get confirmation from a second source saying that this is reliable intel that is currently floating around Army National Guard units.

Whether you believe it or not is up to you, I am simply passing this along.

regards.

[Hippie3]

flu season is here/
metro areas of usa-

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ical_Areas.png

been out of city 1 year now.

[eatyualive]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...n000211D96.DTL

A report released Sunday says two of five working-age Californians do not have a job, underscoring the challenges in one of the toughest job markets in decades. A new study has found that the last time employment levels among this group were this low was February 1977.
The study was done by the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit research group that advocates for lower- and middle-income families. The report said that California now has about the same number of jobs as it did nine years ago, when the state was home to 3.3 million fewer working-age people.
California Budget Project executive director Jean Ross recommended Congress adopt a second extension of unemployment insurance benefits. Those checks pay between $200 and $1,800 a month depending on a worker's previous earnings.
On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the nation's jobless rate had climbed to 9.7 percent, the highest since 1983.

[eatyualive]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1252...od=rss_US_News

California drivers can't line up to renew their licenses Friday. Wisconsin natives can't order copies of their birth certificates. Georgia consumers will have to postpone registering complaints with state watchdogs. And stranded motorists in Maryland may have to wait a little longer for highway-department help.
Across the country, cash-strapped state governments are shutting down business for a day at a time to save money. State offices are shuttered Friday in California, Maine, Maryland and Michigan. Rhode Island had planned to join them until a judge on Thursday blocked its closure plan.


Some state agencies are closed in Georgia and Wisconsin, and most Colorado state offices will be shuttered on Tuesday. Other states, such as Arizona, have been trying to keep their operations open while furloughing thousands of workers.
So far the effect of furloughs appears to have been muted, with most people able to take care of state business in advance of closures or by filing forms online.
But at the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy, which helps low-income families avoid sending children to foster care, furloughs have already slowed assistance efforts, said managing attorney Tracy Green. The center's work often involves crisis intervention, but some cases have sat unresolved for days because workers in the Department of Human Services were on furlough. "It has been real problematic," Ms. Green said.
A Department of Motor Vehicles office in San Francisco, meanwhile, was packed Thursday with more than 150 people. Last summer, without furloughs, wait times rarely exceeded an hour, but with three furlough days a month, people are waiting more than two hours each day, said Maria De Guia, a motor-vehicle field representative. To make matters worse, inability to keep the office staffed meant roughly a third of the office's 26 services windows are closed at any given time.
Outside, Jerry Oliver was finally putting a registration sticker on his 1977 green Chevy Impala after waiting about three hours. "Today was a nightmare," he said. "I understand they're trying to save some money, but it's inconvenient for everybody."
Jordan Wells said he visited the DMV office two weeks in a row to renew his driver's license, only to find it closed both times because of furloughs. He understands why the furloughs are necessary, he said, "so I tolerate it."
The furloughs, which basically act as salary cuts for state workers, are the latest response to plunges in tax revenue because of the recession. State legislatures have struggled to cover shortfalls that have ballooned to $168 billion, or 24% of their general-fund budgets, for the current fiscal year, which for most began July 1, according to a report released Thursday by the left-leaning Center on Budget Policy Priorities.
Consumers have reined in spending, eroding sales-tax receipts, while job losses have cut income-tax collections. States have already responded by raising fees and tapping rainy-day funds, and are now forced to deal with wage costs, which make up about 13% of their budgets, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y.
For political and practical reasons, states have been reluctant to lay off workers, policy analysts said. Instead, furloughs have become the hot trend in budget management, in part because the savings are "easy math" to state officials, said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers.

But furloughs do little to address fiscal problems such as ballooning pension costs, and some policy watchdogs fret they are a short-term solution to what is likely to be a long-term problem.

"Many states expanded health-care funding over the last decade and are now having real trouble paying for it," said Robert B. Ward, deputy director of the Rockefeller Institute. Educational programs and economic development also ballooned, he said.

Furloughs may provide a political benefit to politicians who must placate powerful unions while dealing with taxpayers who fume that government employees haven't shared the pain of a recession that has cost more than six million private-sector jobs.

Government jobs have traditionally been an island of stability during recessions, and states kept adding workers well after the recession began at the end of 2007. But since August 2008, states have shed about 33,000 jobs, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Experts say more layoffs are inevitable. Furloughs have already affected hundreds of thousands of workers -- more than 200,000 in California alone.

More than 20 states have considered forcing employees to take unpaid furlough days, according to anecdotal reports as well as data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, which says it is too early to calculate exactly how much these moves save the states. About five million Americans work for state governments, according to federal statistics, from colleges and prisons to public hospitals, parks and all kinds of administrative offices.

In some states, labor unions have turned to the courts to try to stop shutdowns. The situation has been particularly contentious in Rhode Island, where a union lawsuit alleges the governor violated collective-bargaining agreements by ordering 13,000 workers to take 12 unpaid furlough days over the next nine months to help close a $68 million budget gap.

Gov. Donald Carcieri has countered that a shutdown is within his authority. On Thursday, a state supreme court judge blocked any closure until the whole court can consider the case, expected to happen Sept. 11.

On the other side of the country, SEIU Local 1000, which represents 95,000 workers in California, has filed five suits challenging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to close down the government three Fridays a month, which the union says amounts to a nearly 15% pay cut.

But in many states, unions have accepted the furloughs as preferable to layoffs. "There really wasn't a point to sue, because if you looked at the budget there was no money," said Sheri Van Horzen, president of the Arizona State Employees Union. Arizona has furloughed 15,101 workers and laid off 1,537, according to the Department of Administration.

One sign of the trend's novelty: Few states had any procedures for running them. Wisconsin "had some back in the '80s, but there was very little information about that," said Jennifer Donnelly, director of the Office of State Employee Relations in Madison. The state hopes to help save $225 million over the next two years by shutting down for eight set days and requiring employees to schedule eight more furlough days.

States choosing shutdowns rather than rolling furloughs say that they think residents will be better able to deal with the occasional closed office, announced in advance, than with long lines and overloaded clerks every day. They also generally exempt certain critical workers; in Maine, state troopers, corrections workers and staff at two state hospitals aren't part of the furlough program.

Some budget-watchers hope furloughs and financial constraints result in more efficiencies. In California, for example, where furloughs began last January, the DMV says that during the first six months of 2009 more than 473,000 people chose to renew their drivers' licenses online, an increase of 32%.

[Lazlo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...its-debts.html

[catdaddy]

"Or we can try to right the ship by paying down our debts, very slowly, by sweat and toil, navigating a treacherous course between the Scylla and Charybdis of the twin-flations, for as long as it takes. This is the only responsible course left we as we face the devastating consequences of our own credit delusions. Are we up it?"

Will our government wise up to this, or is there an overriding reason to continue poor economic policies to accomplish a different goal?