Pottersville - My Second TB2K Editorial [12/9/05]

"Pottersville"



Merry Christmas! At least that's what the bankers are muttering under their breaths these days. For their Christmas has been delayed by the PPT. Oh, I know, you may begin your hand wringing now all you pollyanas, but in the spirit of TGMGAAS (The Great Mogambo Guru's Arogance and Sarcasm) I have come to biotch slap you one more time.

Do I hate bankers? Not the honest ones that play by the rules. But then that eliminates the Federal Reserve and 90% of all United States based banks. So of the trillions of dollars allegedly being managed, er, invested, er, held by these trusting souls, 1 in 10 is to be trusted. And when that 10% is found by the other ninety, remember that the phrase "acquisition" will be used.

So what does all this have to do with the theme of this essay, editorial, or 500 word whinefest (that's for the cheerleaders)? Simple. America is about to face a major economic reversion into a time and standard of living that about 99.5% of the American people are not prepared to face. The banking cartel is about to cash in on the ignorance and cowardice of the average American citizen. How you dare ask? Well, let's look at some new realities:

1. Eminent Domain - If your home has a view, is paid off and in a semi-desirable area, or sits on a fresh water aquifer, then the banks and politicians want it. And now that the Supreme Imbeciles have upheld the 1933 Reichstag Constitution, bypassing ours written in 1776, you had best sell that home to the state at 50% of the market value or be prepared to be "rescued" (That's Mayor Michael Brown's term, not mine) by the powers that be. Bottom line: If you as a middle class citizen was smart enough to purchase, invest in, or inherit some prime real estate, so what. It's not yours and if the Bank of America thinks it would serve a better purpose such as Mayor Brown's gold plated outhouse, there's not a government in the world that can't be purchased to make this happen. Bye, bye speculative boom or why should I invest in something that someone else can steal from me....

2. Mortgage Crisis - But there's a boom? So there's no crisis. Believe that if you'd like. But the reality is that the baby boomers made a major faux pax. Can you believe those fools actually believed that a company they worked for all their lives would actually honor a contract? I mean hell, so what if they took 12% of their annual pay and produced mimeographed printouts of how hunky dorey their retirement program was doing. The CEO's momma needs a new Gulfstream so how dare you peons think that you should get the retirement you were promised, even if you paid into it. So now, you're 64 years old, retired in the Sunshine/Hurricane State, and your Social Security aka, other defaulted pension program, pays you enough for 7 cans of Alpo and a 12 pak of Nattural Light per week for meals, and that's if you elect to heat your home, and you have a mortgage payment due on your original second home, which became your first home after that home up north you sold was dumped at a loss. Well, welcome to Florida and them thar happy sunny retirement days. Your pension was just cut 66% by the Federal Bankruptcy court and your homeowner's insurance just increased by 66%. Hmmm. guess it's never to late to go back to work and surrender that Social Security blanket. But you've retired where it only gets cold for a little while, so to save money you turn off the heat and get a job at the local 7-11.

Knock, knock...it's the court. Here's your foreclosure papers and before you leave, can you clean up the frozen cat in the corner. Oh, and because you work, you don't qualify for any Federally assited housing and that wouldn't matter because it's all being used right now by those poor pathetic illegal, er, migrants from Mehico.

Ain't retirement great?

3. What's gold got to do with it? (Sung to the tune by Tina Turner "What's Love got to do with it?")

Hmmm. Gold is causing a real estate crash and people to live like crap in that holiday movie, It's a Wonderful Life. By now, many of my loyal readers, detractors and online moderators are debating if I've lost it, should be censored, or just mailed some Xanax to keep the flow of this editorial rocking and rolling.

Gold has nothing to do with the current real estate deflation, but everything to do with foretelling it. Many of us evil doomer and gloomers warned of the real estate deflation when gold was cheap, so to speak. I preached like a fool that when your neighbors, barber and best friends (who will become my former best friends when they swear they never heard me say "get out" like in 1999) were the warning sign when they all said they were taking out their home equity and buying speculative real estate. For some, at the start, this worked great. But as they expanded, what happened? Hmmm, non-performing assets. That's funny, the $179.95 video I purchased on real estate investing at 2 a.m. off of HSN never mentioned that phrase. Well, isn't that a mess. The (fill in the blank) now has an asset which is costing them $1800 per month to own and they are using the income from their other investments to try to cover this loss, but now they are becoming non-performing because the other renters invested $179.95 and now are buying more junk from the old time real estate investors who are laughing their way to Antigua to retire and watch this circus.

And gold? Well, that bellweather is over $525 as I write this, and that indicates that the guy in Antigua, the central bank in China and Russia, and those loving, caring, American hugging Saudis are buying more gold because they think the party is up. So as the dollar is devalued, in reality, the value of real estate investments is dropping also. This is known as inflation boys and girls. Jimmy Carter educated me about that in the late 1970's and wow, it was great. I was unemployed by 1977 and couldn't afford anything but that miserable sweater the SOB told me to wear to save energy.

But I digress. Gold is the bellweather. GM is a bellweather. The dollar is a bellweather. And they all tie into Pottersville, that mythical place from a Christmas movie that most ignore or watch only to feel good, without realizing that we could be living it soon.

Because soon, all you'll be able to do is rent from the banks if you're a debtor. And creditors do not care one iota about your hardships. They want money or property.

So be prepared to rent. And be prepared to enjoy your new homes.

As America becomes Pottersville.

America is about to face a major economic reversion into a time and standard of living that about 99.5% of the American people are not prepared to face.

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Lacking finances, knowledge and skills of the past, determination, morals, and values. It doesn't seem we will fare as well as our ancestors, and it sounds like they suffered a great deal.

Thanks for the post JGfla! Glad you hurried on back and didn't leave us waiting anxiously for your posts!

Very, very, very well-written! IN FACT, I was 100% sure that was another Mogambo piece! Didn't even realize it was original... Damn John, you're a talented man!!

Tough times are coming on strong and fast, yet the sheeple continue with their errant ways, completely ignorant of the freight train that is coming to demolish their white picket fences and shiny SUVs...

The middle class is about to go the way of the dodo, and there's nothing any of us can do to stop it...

Now is definitely the time to kick it into overdrive and prep like there's no tomorrow (cause let's face it, there may not be)...

Gold and silver are great if you're otherwise stocked to the 9s, but for the rest of us, it's all about lead, meds and bread... The staples of life that are about to become immeasurably more valuable in the weeks and months to come...

I'm afraid that for many, a can of Alpo a day will be a distant dream, and that anything that even remotely resembles heat or comfort will be farther out of reach than ever before, and for longer than before...

Strange days and long nights are heading our way... That we can count on...

Great article! It sums up the mess we are in. It's too bad our fellow citizens don't wake up and prepare in time. They are going to make our lives miserable in the future.

Hey gapped out,

John is auditioning for an (MIT) position .... Mogambo in Training ....

John:

Excellent post. !!!!!!!

it's rice and beans at mealtimes, kiddies.

breezyhill

EXCELLENT POST!!!

oh and ..

Gold and silver are great if you're otherwise stocked to the 9s, but for the rest of us, it's all about lead, meds and bread... The staples of life that are about to become immeasurably more valuable in the weeks and months to come...

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damn straight.

Agreed, excellent post! We were talking about the gap between the classes at work the other day and that it was polorizing the upper and lower class and driving the middle class to the bottom. The concensus was that nurses are definately being driven to the bottom and not lifted to the top!

Even though our jobs are fairly secure, the working conditions are worsening, pay is flat, health care costs are rocketing upward, along with benefits declining. Most have mortgages, families, leased automobiles or 7-10 year payments for their $30,000 4WD monstocities. Credit cards maxed out and no place to go. How do we stop the cycle, can we stop the cycle?

Many here have good answers and have been prepping for years while making sacrifices, most have not.

JohnGalt...do you see a timeline for the decline? I thought it would be here years ago and just when I start to think I was wrong for prepping and thinking about returning to my sheep mode, something drags me back to my senses.

I am just tired of living on pins and needles waiting for the bottom to drop. When will we know it has begun and if you still have a job, albeit not a great one, what will the effects be?

Will we just see more and more layoffs, more people losing their homes to foreclosure, more people on the public dole because they can't buy food, housing, etc.

Help give us a clear picture of how it will progress. You have our complete attention! And is there anything we can do about it if we already on the paycheck to paycheck cycle of existance?

HERE is your summary of how it will progress. Read the introductions linked on the left, then download the book linked at top center, then look at the news items listed.

Interesting link, and I added it to my bookmarks. thanks.

Dixielee said:

JohnGalt...do you see a timeline for the decline?

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It began on June 23, 2005 and will hit rock bottom by the next Presidential election in 2008, IMHO.

This will insure a socialist President like FDR and in all likelihood, after the economic destruction of the middle class, a Constitutional convention which will allow us to join a new more perfect union.

No happy ending here boys and girls.

splicerswife said:

Lacking finances, knowledge and skills of the past, determination, morals, and values. It doesn't seem we will fare as well as our ancestors, and it sounds like they suffered a great deal.

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Now that I've had my coffee, I'd love to address this excellent observation. This generation is not prepared to give up their SUVs, X-boxes, etc. because we now live in an entitlement generation. Victory Garden? Hah! Most people think that a "Victory Garden" is where Del Monte grows things in Mexico.

We are stuck with a situation with a morally and economically and armed populace are about to lose everything they've borrowed money to get and have no means of self-preservation or concept of that idea.

I fear what we saw in Paris will pale compared to here.

Y2kO said:

Great article! It sums up the mess we are in. It's too bad our fellow citizens don't wake up and prepare in time. They are going to make our lives miserable in the future.

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Bingo. If you can't sustain yourself, the philosophy of the masses is to steal from those that can. No matter the cost.

Unfortunately we have become a totally materialistic society. We became emeshed in legalized stealing (credit cards) and kept acquiring things we had no money to pay for these items.

We made health care a number one priority as long as it's been someone else that takes care of our health. We refuse to accept responsibility for our own health in nutrition and exercise. We load our bodies with the worst crap imaginable then holler about the price of health care.

And the problem is, there are no free lunches anywhere. The banks take complete control over our lives and so does the health industry because they can. We sold out ourselves to these neg. entities and they know it.

How many people say, I am no longer going to be owned by the health system and make a true step towards getting healthy? Hey, it hurts to take the bull by the horns and do this. This step is almost as painful as withdrawal from drugs or alcohol.

Same with credit cards. And buying endless amounts of we don't need. Christmas is the perfect example. It's suppose to be a holy day and yet everyone is using credit cards to buy stuff with money they don't have. This is basically stealing.
I know people have intentions to pay it back but there's an old saying that" the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

This info about a takeover by the banks and other corporations has been available for years and years. But people ignored it and called the people that tried to get this information out, conspiracy freaks. Well, here it is.

And everytime more warnings come out, the same thing happens. Those doing the warnings are still called conspiracy freaks. Oh well. Live and learn.

BTT ^^^

For all those who have yet to read JGfla's latest and greatest...

I was under a rock in June, this past summer so I'll ask WTG happened on that day???

Or was that the day that ED was opened up by SCOTUS???

Good rant, John............here's a bit of fuel for the fire.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wall___main

NEW YORK - It's an addiction. Every day, the United States sucks in more and more of it from abroad, just to keep the nation going. We speak, of course, about foreign money.


At our current rate of trade and budget deficits, foreigners need to purchase $2 billion in dollar-denominated assets each day just to keep the dollar stable, said Axel Merk, who manages $60 million at Merk Investments and runs the Merk Hard Currency Fund.

Over half the national debt is now financed by foreigners, according to Roger Ibbotson, chairman of the financial consulting firm Ibbotson Associates in Chicago and a professor at Yale School of Management. That's been true since 1980, but the difference now, he says, "is the scale of the game."

"I guess everyone wants to keep this game going," Ibbotson said. But if one of the countries we're most dependent on drops out, it could be "like a bank run."
David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's, is also concerned. "If this money stopped coming, the dollar would take a dive and U.S. bond yields would have to come up. That would constrain capital spending and housing and slow down the U.S. economy."

Foreign investments in U.S. bonds and equities set a record in September, the last month for which data is available.

Foreigners bought $1.01 trillion in U.S. securities in the 12 months ending in September, up from $866.6 billion for the same period in 2004, according to U.S. Treasury International Capital, which tracks foreign purchases of U.S. securities.
Why did foreign investors' interest in the U.S. intensify?

For one thing, investors can get a better return on U.S. bonds than they can in their home countries. Yields in the United States have been near 4.5 percent, while yields on Euro bonds are closer to 3.2 percent and yields on Japanese bonds are near 1.5 percent.
Second, our massive trade deficit has sent tens of billions of dollars abroad, as imports increased while exports declined, which has helped foreign business owners sock away plenty of dollars. And our budget deficit means the federal government keeps issuing more debt.

Then, there's our personal savings rate, which has been hovering near zero.
"We need the money because we're not saving any," Wyss said. "We need it from anyone who has a spare yen to lend us."

At the same time, economic growth in Europe and Japan has been weak, Wyss said. "The U.S. was the only large safe market where the yield looked reasonable."
The gush of foreign money "is critical to keeping the U.S. dollar from collapsing, because we have a large trade deficit," said Daniel Katzive, foreign exchange strategist at UBS. "If the deficit wasn't financed, the dollar would fall until it reached a level where U.S. assets were more attractive to foreign investors."
It's simple accounting, he said: Cashflow in must equal cashflow out. "If it doesn't, you have a big adjustment until you reach equilibrium."

Some argue that the waterfall of foreign money has also prettied up U.S. Treasuries. A study released as part of the Board's International Finance Working Papers Series asserts that the yield on 10-year Treasury notes would be a full percentage point less without abnormally high flows into bonds. That's because increased demand for U.S. Treasuries has pushed the yield on Treasuries lower than it would be otherwise.

Normally, Wyss said, foreign investors would be reluctant to stake so much on the Treasury market because they would be worried that a decline in the dollar would erode their returns.

But, in recent years, the Japanese and Chinese central banks have intervened to keep the dollar high.

"Central banks have trained investors that there's not much risk there," he said. "That's scary."

Thank you John, that was excellent.

If you study how most of the world has lived in hard times, you notice the housing difference.....three families per house, one family per room sort of thing. Folks with a home renting out extra bedrooms.

In the USSR republics it was standard to have three families per house, one skirt per girl to wear Sunday, bread and potatoes three times a day with occasional eggs or sausage. Chocolate candy a rare luxury, fresh fruit seldom and cabbage regularly.

We can adjust, and stay healthy doing it, but like you say, it'll be whiners and complainers whose anger will make life miserable for us all.

SmartAZ said:

HERE is your summary of how it will progress. Read the introductions linked on the left, then download the book linked at top center, then look at the news items listed.

Click to expand...

Good link, thanks.

ltd said:

Hey gapped out,

John is auditioning for an (MIT) position .... Mogambo in Training ....

John:

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If he keeps this up, soon it'll be the Mogambo auditioning for a JGflaIT position....

Excellent article John

Great Artilce John.

The Difference between you and Mogambo: I can understand what you say without twisting my brain into knots of oozing pain while wraping around the wierdly written prose. And TBA! [Those Blasted Acronyms]

night driver said:

I was under a rock in June, this past summer so I'll ask WTG happened on that day???

Or was that the day that ED was opened up by SCOTUS???

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My sig line says it all. It was the day in fact where private property was declared property of the state for all practical purposes.

That day marks the day America went off the respirator and died. What we're doing now is like ants in a coffin...living off the carcass.

lynnie said:

We can adjust, and stay healthy doing it, but like you say, it'll be whiners and complainers whose anger will make life miserable for us all.

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It will be the whiners and complainers who will advocate communism and forced redistribution.

That's when it will get very interesting and those high caliber preps come into play.

Bumping this great thread back to the front page.

rafter said:

Bumping this great thread back to the front page.

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Another bump.

Dean Miller said:

Another bump.

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I just want to thank you and rafter-man for the kind words. And everyone else. I shall, and will continue to contribute. For those that ignore reality, I say bully. For those that deride my opinions, I don't care. As long as there is someone who wants to listen to my analysis, based on ours and world history, then so I shall post. I shall have a Christmas rant beyond belief. Not about the holidays, but about the coming final days.

Enjoy what you read, because I could be one of those that "dissappear" in the night as things begin to deteriorate.

As long as there is someone who wants to listen to my analysis, based on ours and world history, then so I shall post. I shall have a Christmas rant beyond belief. Not about the holidays, but about the coming final days.

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I want to listen! I want to listen!

I'm eagerly awaiting the "Christmas rant." Your articles have been helpful to many, enlightening to all, and offer a refreshing amount of common sense with information that allows a commoner to digest it without having a dictionary of financial terms nearby. Thank you.

I am bumping this oldie but goodie because the ideas I have expressed then, some two years ago, have become quite relevant now.

On December 30, 2005 gold closed at $516.60. No big deal, but a decent advance since then to where we are tonight.

The mortgage and banking crisis have impacted right on schedule.

Enjoy it folks. This is only going to get a lot worse. I hope that everyone understands that the banksters will want to own subdivisions full of renters in substandard homes as opposed to letting them sit empty.

It's coming. Watch and see.

Just like I warned everyone on December 10, 2005 when I posted this Op-Ed.

Your last sentence said to be prepared to rent...what happens if the landlord loses that property as well? Oops. You should have said be prepared to 'tent.' I think I'll start looking for some nice big ol tents; maybe a military one...cause that is what some of us will be down to....

Tundra Gypsy said:

Your last sentence said to be prepared to rent...what happens if the landlord loses that property as well? Oops. You should have said be prepared to 'tent.' I think I'll start looking for some nice big ol tents; maybe a military one...cause that is what some of us will be down to....

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There is always a landlord. It just means finding the one that isn't part of the bankster cabal and who is a decent honest soul. That's what we did. I'm keeping my powder dry for two more years and praying the system does not fly apart like an engine running out of oil.

Unfortunately, my worst case scenarios keep looking like they might happen.

Like a fine wine- not whine lol- you get better and bettera John

kiwi said:

Like a fine wine- not whine lol- you get better and bettera John

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Thanks for the kind words kiwi; I'm partial to Ports myself....

Any port in a storm ?- sorry couldnt resist

I'm listening big time, John, don't stop 'cause we need you to keep us up to speed.

I must have missed this one the first time he posted it....

I was reading right along and had not noticed the date of the thread...

And it sounded right-on (for right now) until I got to the price of gold at $525...

Then I looked up and realized this thread was almost two years old...



Kris

Same here, Kris!

Jan

Thanks Again

Thanks Again John for keeping my nose to the grindstone as I set up my mountain top for a LONG STAY

Kris Gandillon said:

I must have missed this one the first time he posted it....

I was reading right along and had not noticed the date of the thread...

And it sounded right-on (for right now) until I got to the price of gold at $525...

Then I looked up and realized this thread was almost two years old...



Kris

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exactly DITTO !