The joke is on you......you need to learn to adapt and work within the system

[galileoreloaded]

otherwise you aren't going to survive this.

I mean, Deutsche Bank owns Cleveland. Of COURSE they want to foreclose.......Christ, this was in 2007!



http://seekingalpha.com/article/53004-deutsche-bank-owns-cleveland-who-knew

The Chinese are on deaths door, they aren't going to reopen factories. If you were a bank you would concentrate assets, options and their underlying control in areas that have capacity in 10 years, not today. Cleveland, and the rust belt are appealing:

located within 100 miles of primary food source
inexpensive shipping via Great Lakes
inexpensive housing/ idled factories ready to be re-opened w/ the remaining skilled labor force (willing to work for China Cheap (tm) labor rates)
Oh, and don't forget the central location and access to rail as well (I mean, why oh why do you think Warren Buffett bought BNSF?)




You don't really think this inventory expansion (the pathetic GDP bump and grind caused by the completely ineffective Cash for Clunkers, and housing tax credits) is going to last forever do you? Oh yeah, if you bought a house in the last 2 years thinking they were cheap, over half of you are going to default on those as well, over 50% of vintage 09/10 sales are already underwater and the coming crush from Alt-A and Stated loans in gonna make sub-prime look like a McDonalds playland romp.



Now look at what is happening to inventories, our factories are again slowing down as the inventory is no longer being "pulled forward".



http://www.businessinsider.com/albert-edwards-inventory-boom-end-2010-11#ixzz15h1GDrkM

I mean seriously, the banks are taking out the Chinese and will eventually re-import those jobs and environmental damage here, because frankly, they can, and you will beg them to. The Chinese and their massive reserves coupled with their unwillingness to get in line with our perpetual administration/banking cartels FX policies make them a target, and the Bretton banking system is more than happy to oblige while quietly consolidating assets and power and taking a ten year view while helping to topple the Chinese.

Oh, and FYI to the PTB. If you don't want people to get crazy over the perception of a Ponzi when it comes to Social Security, take this shit down from your own website you dipshits. I mean really, whoever is managing your image blows goats. Fucking idiots.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html

[rfranklin]

1. that social security information is meaningless...

Social Security has trillions in surplus. It's just that they (the wealthy) don't want to pay back what was borrowed to finance their tax cuts and the war machine. Social Security has been totally funded for the next fifty years. That's right, back in Reagan's day, Greenspan told us we had to pay it forward because of the baby boomers. We did. Meanwhile they spent it on tax cuts for the uberwealthy and "winning" the Cold War, which meant funding the military industrial complex to the point of insanity.

There is no reason why we should accept this claptrap con job.

[galileoreloaded]

3. Ok, I appreciate your perspective...

but here is the deal.

SS holds a paper representation (bonds) that are denominated in a paper representation (dollars) of stored wealth, as their "surplus".

The work/effort/labor that the paper representations represent are long gone. The energy has been transferred and it is fungible. It is GONE. There is no "there" there, only in a paper (and honestly more digital every day) "promise to pay". It only exists in the constructs of man, and let me tell you, humans aren't very reliable. Social Security only exists as a good faith effort between human beings, and that is where you win the argument, not from defending their solvency. Which it is not solvent. Like our monetary system. It is NOT SOLVENT.

I'm more surprised people really thought it would work, ya know?

[ljm2002]

6. Well at least you acknowledge...

...that your position on solvency does not apply only to SS.

It irks me that people point to the bonds in the SS fund and claim those are not "real", when they are just as real as bonds in any other context. These arguments that SS is insolvent logically amount to arguments that the whole system is insolvent. Which may be the case, but if so, why bring it up only in relation to SS? Either our leaders are acting in good faith or they are not. If they are, then the bonds in the SS trust fund must be repaid. If they are not repaid, then the government is acknowledging its own insolvency and one presumes that other bonds would be defaulted on as well. If ONLY the SS bonds are not repaid, then the government is acknowledging its own bad faith and deserves to be dissolved at that point IMO.

[galileoreloaded]

7. Well, SS seems to be the topic du jour....and it seems to ...

be analogous to more structural and fundamental issues. And its screaming towards a brick wall along with the expectations of millions.

[ljm2002]

8. SS is the "topic du jour"...

...precisely because the monied classes want to gut it, nothing more. They would rather we did not apply logic to the issue, that is why you hear them shouting that it is insolvent, a Ponzi scheme, is funded "only" with government IOUs (i.e. Treasury bonds). But if we apply logic to the issue, we see that (a) it is not insolvent and won't even need adjusting for another 25 years in the future; (b) if the government chooses not to honor its IOUs, then the government is insolvent; (c) if the government is insolvent then everything is moot.

So again I must ask, why focus on Social Security? If your position is that the government is insolvent, or that the financial systems in general are insolvent, or that the money system is all just a bunch of bits and bytes and pieces of paper anyway, well then make that point. Please don't pin it on Social Security, which is a program that pays for itself. If the government has borrowed SS funds, then the government damned straight owes the money and must -- I repeat, must -- make good on the obligation. If it does not do so then it is insolvent; or, if it only targets the money owing to SS to not be repaid, then it is acting in bad faith.

[Toucano]

2. I've seen your system, and your system sucks.

Time for a new system.

[galileoreloaded]

4. I agree, but until then, I do my best to fuck up this one....

things get darker before they get lighter......

[jtuck004]

5. That's pretty good. The stuff about who owns what, and of course

the coming dip in housing. People really outght to pay attention to that one. Banks are holding real estate at artifically inflated values - under a policy assumption at higher levels that we would be doing better in a year or two. Hah! Jokes on us. And that is gonna take out more wealth from people for whom their home is the only thing they had to count on to keep from living on the catfood recipes provided by SSI. Read a story awhile back in which an Alabama (I think) town had a sewer project go from $250 million to $1.3 billion, (yes BILLION), placing their citizens on the hook for the whole amout. It has cost them jobs and part of their future. Because they got involved with credit default swaps from the large investment banks.

I question the China stuff. They still have a billion untapped people for whom even a few bucks a month is a help to their lifestyle, (and they all want your job, folks), they are spending hundreds of billions on the next century's energy, on canals bringing water to the North. (Applied Materials is building a new plant there - why would they do that if the future says they will be expanding here?). China is brokering deals around the world making sure that they don't have to depend on our purchases to insure their future. Even if they lose that it means less growth, but until we decide to re-invest in our industrial base (what does that need to look like in 2112?) we are still at a huge disadvantage. We would have to retrain people, re-employ them, re-build - all of which we can and should do, but no one seems all that excited about it.

Thanks for that.