Bob Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs (but then I repeat myself) was out in the media warning of a coming "Bond Market Implosion.
Thanks, Bob... not really sure what we would do without your top level decision making and informed opinion. Weren't you Chairman at Citibank when they blew up the f&($#@!! world?
Every day that I wake up and don't read about a "crazed gunman" (or gunmen) at Goldman Sachs et al I am pleasantly surprised... Even Warren Buffett is getting into the act of opening his mouth when he should keep it shut. Seems Warren was out on the news wires today thanking the Federal government for all those bailouts.... Warren, didn't you learn ANYTHING from your nit-wit-curmudgeon-partner Charlie Munger? Ya know.... I even went with the TARP... even though I knew it would save many that deserved to blow up from blowing up... because it was better than the alternative - martial law.... but this has gotten ridiculous. Not only have we kept the establishment jag-off-emporors-with-no-clothes in f&*^ing power... we are handing them bonuses and helping them refi their luxury diggs in Manhattan (not that those diggs will be worth 2 nickels rubbed together).
WTF is with TPTB? I thought they were educated... knew their history... this "Let them eat cake" talk is a really, really dumb idea at a time when 50 million Americans are food insecure. Here's my response as to what the establishment should eat: "Let them eat S!#!".
The USDA has the freaking gall, the b@11$, to come out with that? More than half of those 50 million food insecure folks live in rural America - the same rural America that has been destroyed by government policies emanating out of the very same USDA that brings this to our attention. These knuckle heads have reduced working class people in rural America to Food Stamps/SNAP... and with the same policies encouraged the wave of illegal immigration our country does not know what to do about. Read this thoughtful article at Sharon Astyk's excellent blog. The USDA has conceived and enforces regulations that came about in the time before refrigeration and germ theory. We have 50 million unemployed Americans... but if one of them wants to go into the home dairy business they can't - unless they have $16,000 for a pasturizer. You mean Americans can't heat milk up to a certain temperature on their stove? Really?? We have 50 million unemployed Americans... but if one of them wants to open a butcher shop or a slaughter house they have to build a facility that includes all the comforts of home, including a PRIVATE BATHROOM, for a USDA inspector? And the purpose of this is to protect us? Or is it to provide a monopoly to the industrial food giants? It certainly isn't to protect us... last time I checked thousands of Americans were sickened or killed by eggs, cheese, spinach... just last year.
The regulators have made it IMPOSSIBLE to open a business, in food or anything else. The regulatory compliance our government's have created has hamstrung American entrepreneurship... and at a time when Corporate America isn't hiring, well this is baaaaaad JuJu.
Because Peak Oil is here.
That's right. As it turns out, despite all of the public denial from Big Oil, the MSM, world governments, and the rest of the establishment, after further review the IEA is out in print saying that 2006 was the peak in conventional Oil production... BUT we don't have to worry because Saudi Arabia's production will increase by 50% and the Canadian Tar Sands along with the Orinoco Tar Sands will save the day...
I got a better shot at getting pregnant.
Forget the IEA's silly assertion that we will find and then produce 50 million barrels a day from fields we don't know of by 2030... WTF is up with their models that say the exporter's will continue to export to us right up until they can't? What, they have no internal political debate? Those nation's will just altruistically keep sending their oil abroad when it is obviously in their best interests to retain the oil domestically? Or does somebody really think we'll send the military "over there"... and just steal it? Yea, those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq went sooooo smooooothly that we just can't wait to do it again.
Oil imports are down 3.5% this year from last, and down a little over 20% from their peak in 2005 - 20% in 5 years - and our body politic thinks the best thing to do is to print MORE money to try and grow the economy.... without Oil? And then.... what if? What if Saudi's ruling family falls in a revolution? What if Iran sinks a couple of tankers in the Straight of Hormuz? What if Nigeria decides they want the Oil internally? What if.... a lot of things...
There are no macro solutions for a system predicated on ever increasing oil imports... there are only individual solutions... every time I read one of those sob story pieces in the New York Times about some middle class person falling into poverty I want to reach out to the writer and say: "soon you too will be in the same fix... you and everybody else". This is not a problem with a solution.... this is a condition to be managed and lived with.
50 million Americans are "food insecure", according to our government, and; Peak Oil is 4 years in the past, according to the International Energy Agency... its all about you... its never too late to do something smart.