First One To Say It

Hats off to Sir Mervyn King of the U.K. The first major politician to say: Yes folks, we're all fubared. The rest of the pols have all been hiding behind the Ministries of Disinformation long enough and it takes true guts to come out of the closet like the good Sir and tell it like it is. He's also giving us the possibility of no pensions and no savings. I'll repeat that: No pensions and no savings. I would add healthcare might be in jeopardy. You start pouring meaningless paper into a tanked economy and it might slow the fubar for a month or three but we are all facing the black chasm. No one is spared. Even up here in smug old Canada.

I love how he advises us all "to do the right thing".

As if the unregulated wankers who got us into this mess to begin with ever did or ever will.

World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says

"The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.
Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.

Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.

Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.

Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.

“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.”

Read more here.

Sorry, My Head is Exploding

Per capita government debt in 2010 in descending order, thank you Irish Times. Big changes in 2011?

I wrote here quite a while ago that I would only touch upon this crazy world of ours and all its ills if I felt my head exploding.

My head is exploding with the confluence of all that is happening. I have many questions. And very few answers.

Why is everyone so shocked that the global economic meltdown is happening?

Did everyone seriously think that this unsustainable way of life would continue forever?

Didn't the serious imbalance of food, water, housing amongst the wealthiest and the poorest (of which there are far, far too many) weigh on those who are so privileged?

Why on earth was the population of the world allowed to explode (and continue to explode) to a completely unsustainable level while the majority of the Woo practitioners and their worshippers condemn birth control and abortion? And allow thousands upon thousands of birthed children to die each and every single day?

When and why did we allow psychopathic corporations to dictate who gets into the highest offices of government and then allow them to pull the puppet strings of their patsies?

How on this tiny planet did one country spend one trillion dollars illegally invading another (not to mention all of the others) and not expect it to come back and haunt them. For generations yet to come.

How can we be so flip as to say “technology will solve everything” whenever the subject of finite oil (peaked and gone in my humble estimation) is mentioned. And people run out and buy these great gas guzzling rigs to get their weekly groceries? Using decades worth of gas and oil that would supply tiny cars like mine for another 50 years if we all drove environmentally responsible vehicles?

Do those in charge (Demz Wot Rulez) not give one single shyte about their own grandchildren?

Whatever happened to making the way we run our little portions of the world smaller – i.e. Locally supplied power, etc., community gardens, etc. Instead we are planning multi-billion dollar hydro developments here in Newfoundland. I won't get into the destruction of tribal lands and environmental degradation this will entail. Mortgaging our great-grandchildren's lives (if they survive) and doubling our utility rates. All this in a province where wind and waves can be harnessed at a fraction of the cost. And locally.

Gaia is beginning to shrug us off like the pesky bunch of fleas we are, is there anything we won't destroy for money?

But, of course, the ICH* will save the repentant and the prayerful, like Rick Perry.

*Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper

The View from Here

I feel cast out in an alternative universe. Observing the ants running around on earth. Scrabbling to (or pretending to) fix the unfixable.

Ireland's economic woes being what they are, billions are now being offered by the IMF to inject some more coin into the broken piggy bank.




Is anybody else struck by the irony of the old man begging beside the bankers on their important, oblivious walk through the streets of Dublin?

The US warns Canada that we are facing the same housing bubble burst that they are continuing to deal with. Well, duh. We never knew.

I've been saying for oh, well over a year now, that Sarah Palin will be the next US President. It seems fitting. It seems right somehow. In that appalling, awful, doom-ridden pall of a nightmare that has descended upon the world. A fitting finale to all that has transpired.

And will Barrack Obama go down as one of the most ineffectual presidents ever?

Did anyone else want to barf as the Bushling ran around with his book launch (with 650,000 copies sold in the first few days) and strutted proudly on to talk shows, waving his breach of the Geneva Convention by authorising horrific torture like a flag?

And Stephen Harper, our prime minister, with the assistance of his appointed Senate (a pork barrel reward system that he promised to end to get elected and of course did not) terminated the climate change bill in another strike against democracy (see also proroguing parliament when things got too sticky for him) with another almighty f*** you to this broken planet.

The only good news I see is so very many people both here and elsewhere turning their backs on the whole sorry mess and striking out recreating their daily living from the ground on up.

Like I've said before, we, the downtrodden, are on our own. Self sustainability and off the grid living should be a priority with any thinking person.

We have just witnessed the greatest transfer of wealth from the peons to the wealthiest few in the history of mankind.

But stop all this nonsense. Don't we have the wedding of the decade to look forward to?

Thanks for cheering us all up there, Wills & Kate!

Who Needs Nuisancy Rules & Regs?

Amen, bro, amen!

Travelling

So I'm in Toronto. In the bliss of Highspeed.

Only when you're without what others take for granted does one appreciate the Small Stuff that makes life so much easier.

And talking of life ~

I wonder what it's like for the 12% of US homeowners now walking away from their houses. "Strategic Abandonment" is the new buzzword for this.

I wonder what it's like to be a fisher in the Gulf of Mexico and have this toxic spill swallow everything in its path.

I wonder what it's like in the EU and particularly in Greece and in the UK where life is about to change irrevocably with further economic collapses.

I wonder at the magnitude of this confluence of what is happening on our tiny planet as it twists and turns in its death throes. A commentary I heard on CBC Newfoundland as I was driving Ansa to the kennel summed up this whole disastrous way of life so beautifully:

"In the last fifty years or so we started to reverse the economic methodology of our ancestors wherein we now placed consumption before production when it HAS to be the other way around."

Amen, I thought. Of course. We have to produce before we consume. Is it too late for our grandchildren to rethink their worlds having been taught the opposite by their parents and grandparents?

And did you know that offshore in Newfoundland, they are digging even deeper for the oil than BP was in the Gulf?

And when the Newfoundland government was challenged on what we are doing to prevent another massive spill, here's a summary of what the minister said:

Natural Resources Minister Kathy Dunderdale says the oil industry is watching the events in the Gulf of Mexico to see what lessons can be learned from a massive spill there.

Ms. Dunderdale said earlier this week that the offshore industry is too vital to the province to ever curtail drilling.

Yes, Drill, Baby, Drill is the modus operandi in Newfoundland.

And flying over vast swathes of clear cutting gives me time to reflect on all of this.

And resign myself to the fact that those times I read about as a child are here. Now.

• When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
~ Cree Prophecy

The Bum of the Celtic Tiger

(Sorry, couldn't resist the headline).

In an effort to save money, (and the portend of things to come, I've no doubt) Irish parents in Carrigaline, Co. Cork - my home county in Ireland - are requesting that pupils be furnished with their own toilet paper by their parents to lighten the economic load of the school.

Seriously.

The school's principal said the measure had been taken in order to save money in the face of education funding cuts.

"We are endeavouring to trim down expenses and ensure we use our grants towards [educational needs],"

.

Read about it here.

Now I know why I always thought bidets were a good idea.

What am I offered for a slightly used Senate?

Does anyone else get the feeling that governments everywhere are waiting for Tinkerbell to appear and make everything all better? I keep reading/hearing/seeing that we have ‘turned the corner’ on the economy, markets are on the ‘upswing’ and peak oil, no, no, no such thing.

Forget about Bush and his Keystone Cabal hiding all the evidence of climate change during his sad and sorry terms of office and Halliburton/Blackwater playing a brand new version of Murder Inc., over there – look here comes Tinkerbell!

Well not in Arizona, no sirree Bob, seems like in Arizona, Dems Wot Rules are planning on selling the State Capital Building. And the Senate Building. Seriously.

Pull up yer chair and read all about it.

Could this be a prelude to the White House and its contents in a yard sale next Saturday?

Economics 101

The following came in on an email today and was too good not to share with you all:

It is

the month of August, a resort town sits next to the shores of a

lake.

It is raining and the little town looks totally deserted. Times

are

tough; everybody is in debt and everybody lives on

credit..



Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.





He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 dollar bill on the

reception

counter and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to

pick one.



The hotel proprietor takes the 100 dollar

bill and runs to pay his

debt to the butcher.



The

Butcher takes the 100 dollar bill, and runs to pay his debt to

the pig

raiser.



The pig raiser takes the 100 dollar bill and runs to pay

his debt to

the supplier of his feed and fuel.

The supplier of

feed and fuel takes the 100 dollar bill and runs to

pay his debt to the

town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her

"services" on

credit.



The hooker runs to the hotel and pays off her debt

with the 100

dollar bill to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that

she rented

when she brought her clients there.



The

hotel proprietor then lays the 100 dollar bill back on the

counter so that

the rich tourist will not suspect anything.



At that

moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the

rooms and takes

his 100 dollar bill, after saying that he did not like

any of the rooms,

and leaves town.



No one earned anything. However, the

whole town is now without debt,

and looks to the future with a lot of

optimism.



And that, ladies and

gentlemen, is how the United States Government

is doing business

today.

Canadian Breaking News

I think I must be living in an alternative universe to the pundits and politicians out there. Am I alone?

Just about every few weeks our eminent ministers up here in the Great White North revise their expectations for an economic recovery. First it was going to be the summer of 2009, then the end of the year, then the end of next year and now it is shoved off down the road to maybe end of 2011.

Every month there is astonishment expressed at the level of unemployment. Way beyond predictions they say, shaking their heads, baffled. And British Columbia – what the hell has happened, they say, puzzled yet again, the unemployment rate is through the roof there, worst in Canada! They just can’t explain it.

And yes, the fisheries are in trouble, and the forests too and good grief, look at the farmers, they can’t afford fertilizers, but hey, over here Canadian Auto Makers, here’s another handout.

And we’ll make a lot of noise about credit cards, just like Mr. Obama did in the USA, but hey, noise is good because just like him we have no intention of legislating the capping of the usurious interest rates these avaricious loan sharks beat you with . Your local payday loan dealer could do better rates than Mastercard’s 30%, go there and stop whining, what's that? oh oops, it slipped our minds, silly us, you don't have a job! And yes we know, those payday loan outfits are all owned by the major banks anyway. Multiple pockets, tee-hee, and one of the pockets is for us, hefty campaign donations being our thang ‘n’ all.

And Mr. Obama admits last week that yeah, alright, OK, the USA is broke now. And today I hear on the radio, that Canada could be in some economic trouble too, yeah maybe serious, for even though our banks are the soundest in the world, brag, brag, it seems like with all this unemployment and ZOMG so many retirees - how dare they mooch off the public purse - and corporate and personal bankruptcies and outsourcing to India and Mexico, and oh yeah all our troops over there in Afghanistan that costs erm, not sure how much but A LOT, there are not enough taxes being collected to cover oh, lots of stuff, like McHighways and oh, tar sands projects in Alberta, and ahem, unemployment insurance.

And when all this is said and done, our lovely and brilliant Governor-General of Canada, Michaëlle Jean, goes and eats the raw heart of a freshly killed seal. (She gutted it first, so that was OK). Because you see, the EU has banned all Canadian seal products and that is affecting our economy even more adversely than anything else. So what's a governor to do?

And there was just too much to link in and I’m too tired to do it, but Google any of this and you’ll see it all verified.

And who said Canada is dull?

Our Governor-General eats raw hearts for us!

Top that, USA and UK!

{Picture courtesy Canadian Press}

Changing Landscapes

Newsweek has captured many of these changes in the latest edition. I intend to pursue photos of the more local in my community.



What strikes me most is the story I imagine behind this stark picture. The jobs lost, hundreds I would think, the rentals unpaid, the mental and emotional toll on the families affected.



This abandoned development in Florida tells the story of dashed dreams and lost opportunities. How long will it take for these houses to fold themselves back into the landscape?



And finally, this curved serene moonscape in Arizona, abandoned. Soon to be a blight on the landscape.

I'm left wondering why funds weren't allocated to plough these sad sites under with the prospect of arable land and the recently jobless workers gainfully trained and employed in small farming.

Surely this is a more pressing necessity with farmers now challenged with no funds for seeds for the planting season just ahead?

{All photos courtesy of Newsweek}

Wake Me When it's Over?

Most people I know and care about are currently in an enormous state of denial about the catastrophic economic upheaval in the world.

They walk around with their hands over their ears, their eyes fixed straight in front of them, the cliff face about 100 yards ahead, and keep saying nah-nah in a loud and piercing scream.

Even when faced with zero value portfolio statements from their broker/advisor, they refuse to listen to the advice they've asked of me and others who are a little more awake to the burgeoning crisis. Convert to cash? Convert to a 1% GIC? No, no, they bleat, the markets will pick up. I've already lost a ton, I can't afford to lose any more. Duh, I say. Duh.

Don't ask me then. Don't ask me what you should do about your house now worth $250,000 with a mortgage of $300,000. Don't ask me about the bargain of an SUV on the dealer's lot.

No, no, they say, hands over their ears again when I mention supermarket aisles with empty shelves, it's only temporary.

I hear of continuing unrest in Europe and read in the Irish Times a devastating article from the country of my birth and where many of my family still reside, all dismounting or been thrown from the Celtic Tiger that has stumbled and fallen and needs to be shot and put out of its terminal misery.

The province of Quebec has posted a loss for its provincial pension plan of 40 billion dollars (some sources say it's actually 46 billion). What do these pensioners live on now? It seems like no sacred financial trust was immune from drunken bankers crapshooting in Vegas with their retirement money.

Each day brings fresh reports of more misery, more losses, more fraud, more economic turmoil.

But hey, wait a minute: I read of a new industry that is doing incredibly well in the U.S. and growing in leaps and bounds:



Yes, the Trash-Out Industry, they go in on behalf of those drunken bankers to clear out the sad remains of the broken dreams of foreclosed houses.

This is the newest growth industry. Invest in that for high returns. If you can stand the stench. I know I couldn't.

Crying In the Wilderness, yet again!

I wouldn't call myself particularly prescient (I'm not an economist, but then again economists haven't been doing so hot, now have they?) but in September 2005, when I'd just gotten this blog off the ground I wrote about the coming collapse of world markets, here.

And here in 2006 I wrote about a life and not a 'lifestyle' which is something that has been sold to us in the name of rampant consumerism and is one of the root causes of all our ills.

Yet all these politicans are 'taken by surprise' at the collapse of the economy. Why on earth do we continue to vote these double digit IQ holders into office?

I watch all the hoopla around the bailouts (both the US and Canada) of failing industries (automobiles, really?) and the criminal banks who fleeced us suckers with the usurious interest rates that funded their CEO's private planes and lavish multi-home lifestyles, and the masses, sedated by endless re-runs of something with an Idol in the title, snore on.

Our tax dollars. Entrusted to our masters. Now bleeding through their pockets and into the ones of those that robbed us. Construction. SUVs. Infrastructure. Insurance. Banking. Oil.

Nowhere do I see, by any politician, even the slightest awareness of the coming food crisis, water shortages, civil unrest throughout the planet, famine, birth control (the current population is unsustainable), economic development for feminine collectives. I could go on. You catch my drift.

No, let's toss the last few of our tax pennies at the robber barons, when community gardening and urban farming might be the beginning of the real solutions to the reality of our predicament. Community stability - what a radical concept!

The News Beneath the News

It is extraordinary how much real news gets buried beneath the trifling, petty and ultra-light spoutings of the main stream media, who are merely sycophantic outlets for the fascist regime in power. No real issue, no matter how important and alarming, is given to the sedated masses either by broadcast or main stream newspaper. Rightly named “presstitutes’ in recent years.

Radio – and I mean public radio, of course, not the bought and paid for kind - is becoming a curiosity of the past. Sad really, for often there are some extraordinary gleanings from it.

For instance, I heard on CBC radio on the weekend that fiction readers have been deemed more intelligent than non-fiction readers. There was intensive testing and research done. The results were that fiction readers are more cued to nuances, more curious, more open to new ideas.


Did you know that murder and suicide statistics are through the roof in the USA due to the current economic meltdown ? The current repressive regime has resorted in some cases to sending in the military, with guns, to seize property and shooting those resisting in cold blood. Some families, with the threat of foreclosure, feel they have nothing to live for and murder their entire families, including pets, before committing suicide.


My friend at Sparrowchat talks about the voter frauds perpetuated by the current regime and gradually worsening as the election gets closer. He cites this brilliant Rolling Stone piece which explores it all in depth. Good luck down south with the so-called election, long predicted by me (with a heavy heart) to be ‘won’ by the GOP as it ‘won’ the last two.

Did you know that baby plastic bottles in Canada, the first country in the world to do so, are now completely banned? In spite of the U.S. FDA (heavy duty lobbies + massive donations) saying they’re OK? They severely compromise infant health. Read all about it here.

And why on earth would anyone drink from a plastic bottle knowing what we know now?

And finally, on a cheery note:

We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet with regard to the financial collapse of our existing economic system. We are already into irrecoverable debt with our looting and non-replenishment of the oceans and the forestry systems of the world. To the tune of $5 trillion a year according to Monbiot.

On second thoughts, maybe we’re all better off not knowing all the bleak stuff ~ Eat, drink and be merry. Forget about the dying and, um, fiddle?

And posted a little later: Could this be the October Surprise? Why are all these military honchoes congregating in the Adirondacks?