a psychological uncertainty enters our soul, and we begin to go a little mad (funny money ain't so funny when it becomes worthless)

As is always the case with inflation, when the funny money is first issued, business boomed, the states debts were paid off, and everyone felt better off. Then prices began to rise and yet more money was needed to fuel the growing business boom. In September of the same year, a second issue of assignats was made, twice as big as the first, for 800 million livres. Inflation then took off with a vengeance and more money was needed. In June 1791 there was a third issue, in December a fourth, and in April 1792 there was a fifth issue.

Inflation now really roared ahead: the prudent middle classes were soon destroyed, their savings halved – soon to become worthless, and it was the opportunists who rose to power and influence. What is worse, a certain madness ensues: money is one of the great anchors of our life, a the measure by which so many valuations are founded, and if that measure suddenly goes awry, a psychological uncertainty enters our soul, and we begin to go a little mad. ~ Fiat Money: Inflation in France, by Andrew Dickson White (1832 – 1918). A historian, educator and diplomat, who co-founded Cornell University and became its first President, after which he became American Minister to both Germany and Russia.
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1927-1933 Chart of Pompous Prognosticators

"We will not have any more crashes in our time."
- John Maynard Keynes in 1927

"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."
- Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash."
- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

"This crash is not going to have much effect on business."
- Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

"There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday... I have no fear of another comparable decline." - Arthur W. Loasby (President of the Equitable Trust Company), quoted in NYT, Friday, October 25, 1929

"We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices." - Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

"This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years." - R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks... Unless we are to have a panic -- which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom." - R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929

"The decline is in paper values, not in tangible goods and services...America is now in the eighth year of prosperity as commercially defined. The former great periods of prosperity in America averaged eleven years. On this basis we now have three more years to go before the tailspin."
- Stuart Chase (American economist and author), NY Herald Tribune, November 1, 1929

"Hysteria has now disappeared from Wall Street." - The Times of London, November 2, 1929

"The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before." - Business Week, November 2, 1929

"... a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall." - HES, November 10, 1929

"The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most." - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

"In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect."
- Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain), editorial, November 15, 1929

"Financial storm definitely passed."
- Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929

"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress." - Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929

"[1930 will be] a splendid employment year." - U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year's Forecast, December 1929

"For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright." - Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

"...there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over..." - Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930

"There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about." - Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Feb 1930

"The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity." - Julius Barnes, head of Hoover's National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930

"... the outlook continues favorable..." - HES Mar 29, 1930

"... the outlook is favorable..." - HES Apr 19, 1930

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us." - Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930

"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." - Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

"All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S."
- President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

Government asks stores to stockpile food

The Sunday Times July 6

Ministers are in talks with supermarkets about emergency food reserves in case fuel protests lead to shortages at shops. The government wants to ensure retailers and suppliers can continue to sell basics such as meat, bread and milk if hauliers bring the country to a halt.

They have asked supermarkets to make contingency plans “in case the infrastructure of the country breaks down”. Among those who have taken part are farmers, dairies, bakeries and supermarkets.

At least four government departments are involved. The operation is being led by Bruce Mann, director of civil contingencies at the Cabinet Office. The government has commissioned IGD, a company that collects intelligence on international food and grocery chains, to supply data about how food is moved around the country and where stocks are held. The information has been used to put together a “map” of depots and supply lines.

$200 Oil and $6 Gas Just Months Away

We can argue about whether high oil is a bubble or not and who the villians are, but $200 oil is now a real possibility.

WSJ: Oil's historic ascent from $100 to nearly $150 a barrel in just six months is lending weight to a far grimmer prediction: Crude could reach $200 a barrel by the end of the year.

Oil at that price would wreak deeper havoc on the world's airlines and automobile industries.

In the U.S., $200 crude would push the price of gasoline to well over $6 a gallon, causing commuters to alter their driving habits more sharply than they have already, while putting extreme strains on large sectors of the U.S. economy.

The good news, such as it is, is that such theories no longer seem crazy. And the more that talk of an "oil bubble" is replaced by a sullen consensus that prices are headed straight to the moon, the more likely it is we'll get a major correction. Unfortunately, the main catalyst for this drop will likely be global economic collapse.

Schools used for 'social engineering'

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor telegraph.co.uk Teachers are being turned into "social workers and surrogate parents" under Labour, according to the headteacher of the country's most popular school. Rod MacKinnon: children need to be nurtured, educated and cared for, not thrown into the frontline of social reform.

Rod MacKinnon, the head of Bexley Grammar School, south-east London, said schools were being forced to shun traditional lessons as ministers manipulated the education system for the purposes of "social engineering".
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here's a "fine" example... "Toddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency." The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care. This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

FOLKS, Welcome to Globalism. It's here, this is it.

30 Million Children targeted for FluMist Vaccine

http://www.squidoo.com/vaccinenews (also from WND)
Between 10 million and 100 million viral particles will be forcefully injected into the nostrils when administered. — This "chemical soup" is the potential for the viruses to enter directly into the brain. The olfactory nerves pass through this bone and line the nasal passages, carrying messenger molecules to the brain that are identified as "smells" familiar to us. Intranasal injection of certain viruses has resulted in a serious brain infection called encephalitis, presumably by direct infection of the olfactory neurons that carried the viruses to the brain. Quote from vaccinenews author "Just so you know one Flu shot a year, 5 years in a row will increase chances of Alzheimer's ((Autism too)) by X10 Fold. It is criminal that now Babies at 6 month old are getting this TOXIC vaccine. "

Exemption Forms and Information
http://www.vaclib.org/exemption.htm
About signing waver forms

Mid July, Gas/Fuel Rationing?

Words on the farm, on the street...

A friend stopped by this morning, on his way home from town. He had just filled up a 200 gallon tank with farm diesel at $4.35, up a dime from last week. He said the distributor told him that starting on July 17, they would be allotting fuel to the distributors, & the amount he receives could be cut by up to 50% of what he normally buys.

My dad owned a gas station in the 1970s, so I remember how he could never get enough gasoline from his distributor to last between deliveries. The distributor was only allowed to sell him so much at a time, and it was never as much as he needed. He would limit the amount that his customers could buy to 5 or 10 (can't remember exactly) gallons per purchase to try to make it last longer. Most stations would be out of gas for half the week or so, and the ones that did have gas would have long lines waiting to get some.

Price of Food: May 2007 Versus May 2008

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=230814
Prepared By: Rob Cook, rob@cattlenetwork.com

"Wait" till the meat and milk prices rise an additional 25% when corn and grain losses kick in from the floods across the Mid-West (this is Kissinger's "wet dream")

Vacation this Summer?

FINAL GLOBALIZATION OF THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM

We live in a globalized world—a world without barriers or borders, which means every aspect of our economic structure has to change. A private corporation, we call the Federal Reserve, controls the majority of our monetary system. To understand the new set of powers being advanced by the U.S. Treasury Department to the Federal Reserve, we first must recognize that the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913 never gave them (the Feds) total power over our economy.

To appreciate the importance of what is currently taking place, we must first realize that as a private corporation, the Federal Reserve is not required to make public who sits on their board of Directors nor who or what banks and corporations hold stock in their private company. Additionally, they are not required to publish an annual report, and I am told, they pay no taxes. So why is it that the American people cannot forgive themselves the interest on their debt? It is because it is owed to a private corporation!

The entire financial and business cycle of market highs and lows is controlled by how much money the Feds pump into or glean from the banking system. When they add money to the system, interest rates fall and the market rises and when they take money out of the system, interest rates rise and the stock market falls or corrects. In doing so, this private corporate structure allows for an elite group of people to literally buy low and sell high, thus transferring the wealth into their pockets while those who continue to hold take the “hit.” newswithviews.com/Veon/joan54.htm

Here Comes the Flood ~ Peter Gabriel

"this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural"

Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.

"We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions," he said. "Agriculture must respect the limits of nature." http://www.washingtonpost.com

The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic

June 19th, 2008 http://cryptogon.com/?p=2753

World’s Largest Maker of Crop Nutrients: Famines May Occur Without Record Harvests http://cryptogon.com/?p=2061

As soon as I became aware of the flooding situation in the American Midwest, I posted the story with the EMERGENCY prefix on the title. Just so we’re clear, when I write EMERGENCY at the beginning of a post title, this is my way of indicating that the situation is as serious as it gets. It means that I feel as though everyone reading should consider taking immediate evasive action. All the jawboning about conspiracy, how things could have been, how things should be, etc. are behind us now. You know, EMERGENCY, act fast, eyes wide, nostrils flared, etc.

While the food supply situation has skated along a knife edge so far this year, with higher prices and many countries experiencing food riots, widespread famine did not take hold. In an incredible move, the Japanese quietly eased rice shortages by releasing portions of their imported rice stockpiles—from giant warehouses in Tokyo—into the system; a welcome but one off blip in the big picture. What happens next time?

Now, this growing season, when yields need to be at record levels to avert disaster, what do we find? Floods or droughts in several of the breadbaskets of the world.

Whatever your plans are, I hope that you’re ready to execute them (or, better yet, are executing them). I’m pretty sure that most people have done nothing, and I don’t know why this continues to amaze me.

How can so many people, even those who should know better, be content to hit the wall without doing anything at all to change course? This includes my own family, who lives in Southern California.

I view Southern California as one of the most dangerous death traps in the world. Since it’s such an important focus of economic activity, though, I like to keep tabs on herd activity there, just for my own situational awareness. I can’t get a meaningful response from my dad—who thinks that traffic jams everywhere in the region and at all times of the day and night represent ‘progress’—I emailed someone there who’s about to flee to a country in Northern Europe. I asked if there was even a subtle sense of panic setting in with regard to the food and fuel prices. Here is part of the response I received:

I have noticed that most people don’t even have instinct enough to panic and hoard, and they wouldn’t know *what* to hoard. They don’t cook, they don’t know what a ’staple’ means. A young woman in my training last week brought animal crackers and cheese ruffles for breakfast, and a box of Cheezits and Coke Zero for lunch. I asked her mockingly if she’d tried fruit or vegetables, she said she couldn’t afford them. I once saw a woman behind me at Ralphs with food stamps, and she was buying cottage cheese, dry pinto beans, and wheat bread, and told her kid to put the Doritos back. If you don’t have that kind of sense to begin with, the current situation is not going to give it to you.

We’re now well into a phase where system maintenance depends on the inability of the herd to grasp the nature of the immanent threat. “Yes, Kevin,” you say. “Same as it ever was.” I don’t think so. The food situation is far off the radar screens of Joe Average. It only becomes a problem after it’s too late to do anything substantive to ameliorate conditions. We’ve already seen food riots, armed escorts for grain deliveries, rationing, sharply higher prices. And still, I’m mostly noticing yawns and drugged gurgles from the herd. Meanwhile, the die is all but cast on this year’s lower crop yields.

If the herd had any idea of what was coming, this show would be over inside of 24 hours. You might be sick of reading this on Cryptogon, but, it’s worth repeating: Use your time wisely.

Via: Financial Times:

Consumers were warned to expect even sharper increases in global food prices after US officials said that some of the country’s best farmland was facing its worst flooding for 15 years. Agriculture officials and traders said the damage could push up worldwide corn and soyabean prices, which have spiralled in recent days as floods have swamped crops in parts of Iowa, the US’s biggest corn-producing state.

Iowans told they can't go home...

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

City officials — closed off access to flood damaged buildings Monday.

The shift upset people who have not seen their homes since the Cedar River rose higher than 30 feet and inundated 1,300 blocks Friday. Police have set up a security perimeter around the flood zone and barred anyone from going inside.

National Guard troops and police officers patrolled to keep people out. One man was arrested after he tried to drive past a police checkpoint and bumped a National Guardsman with his car three times, Police Chief Greg Graham said.

In suburban Palo, where authorities set up the same sort of control that Cedar Rapids did, cars lined up as teams of inspectors checked each home to determine whether people could be allowed back in. usatoday.com

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." ~ Benjamin Franklin ~

PS: Disasters are "great" learning lessons, if you are in the middle of it or watching it on the news. The follow-up reports, comments from "ground zero" are things to discuss with your family and friends. The three stages are DENIAL, ANGER and ACCEPTANCE. It's best to get the first two out of the way NOW, before it happens to you (again)!

“Catastrophe” Awaits Maine ~ Doing nothing is not an option

http://ellsworthmaine.com Written by Tom Walsh, Jun 19th

This is a human catastrophe coming at us in the state of Maine in terms of energy supply and costs,” King said last week at a daylong seminar on harnessing tidal energy and offshore wind to confront runaway energy costs, costs he sees as a direct threat to Maine being habitable.

“This winter, the cost of fuel oil is going to more than double,” he said. “What’s being quoted now is $4.96 — $5 a gallon. That’s $1,000 to fill up your tank in the basement one time, and most people are going to have to fill up their tank six times.

“How is somebody who is making $350 or $400 a week going to pay to fill up the tank to keep warm? How are they going to pay to fill up the truck to get to work? This is, I think, the most serious crisis to ever face the state of Maine.”

Tapping the energy of coastal Maine’s offshore winds will require development of wind turbines not unlike those phased into use last fall six miles off the coast of Liverpool, England. The Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm uses 25 turbines, each standing 459 feet above the Irish Sea, to generate enough electricity to power 80,000 homes.—PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORIES

King told an audience of 120 state, regional and national experts on alternative energy concepts that the time for talk is over and that solutions need to be found and implemented. An investor in an onshore wind farm in western Maine, King said the greatest and most reliable source of wind energy is in deep water, some 25 miles offshore. Although the technology for harnessing that wind energy has yet to be developed outside of Europe, it better be soon, he warned.

“This is a catastrophe,” he said. “This isn’t business as usual. This isn’t some minor little problem. This isn’t do not pass school buses or what’s the speed limit on the Interstate. This is a disaster in the state of Maine that’s coming at us.”

“Eighty percent of homes in Maine are heated with oil,” he said. “The national average is 9 percent. If you do the math, 87 percent of the total energy bill of the average Maine person is dependent on oil or natural gas, and that is a particularly serious problem.”

King notes that oil prices have more than tripled in the last 10 years. Only six months ago, he said, the price of oil was $75 a barrel. Last week it was $114.

“A non-hysterical prediction is that, by 2020, oil will be $300 a barrel, which means $10 a gallon for gasoline, which means $10 a gallon fuel oil. It means filling up the tank in your car will be $200, with incomes not that different. It means $2,000 to fill the oil tank in the basement.

“Here’s the catastrophe part,” he said at Bowdoin College. “In 1998, energy — all energy: cars, home heating and electricity — was 4 percent of the average Maine family’s budget. Today it’s 20 percent. It went from 4 percent to 20 percent in 10 years. That’s pain.”

Should oil hit $300 a barrel, King said, that percentage would increase from 20 percent to as much as 50 percent of the average family budget.

“We go from pain to lethal,” he said. “We simply can’t survive that. This state and this country are not viable at that level of energy costs. If this happens, it’s all over. We won’t have an election for governor in 2020; we’ll have an election for chief park ranger, because that’s all this state will be, a large park of some kind that is largely uninhabitable.

“Fifty percent of your budget for energy and 20 percent for health care leaves 30 percent for everything else: mortgage, rent, food. It’s just absolutely unsustainable.”

King predicted in Northport that $300 oil would see families pulling up stakes and dramatically changing how they live.

“The old thing we heard was people choosing between medicine and food,” he said. “People are going to be choosing between heat and food. People are going to be living together. People are going to be moving in to have five or 10 people in an apartment to deal with this problem.

“This is a really urgent problem, and I don’t think the world has come to grips with how serious.”

Doing nothing is not an option, King said.

GM, Ford, Toyota Plunge as BUYERS REJECT BIG

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the biggest auto retailers in the U.S., said June sales plunged as fuel prices above $4 a gallon drove consumers away from gas-guzzling trucks.

Economic Anxiety Distorder...

Washington Post's Dana Millbank sketches Assisant Treasury secretary Phillip Swagel. The video and commentary is worth watching, if you wish to see how government middle management do not know how to lie (or tell the truth). The Economy? Words Fail Me... WATCH IT. You are about to see an extremely nervous man. washingtonpost

Really Bad Things posted here...

Bad Cat! Bad Cat!