The Black Knight Economy

Retail sales doesn't just suck it sucks something fierce -

...Unadjusted data set: the plunge from $459.8 billion in December to $361.4 billion in January, or -$98.5 billion in one month, was the biggest one month drop in retail sales in history.

Denninger clears it up a bit more -

Grocery stores were 45,833. Last year was 44,538. Here's the problem -- the CPI on food at home is claimed to be 6%, so the price-adjusted parity level is 47,210.

In other words this report sucks when adjusted for price changes on food -- people are either unable or unwilling to maintain their food spending due to price changes. You pick, but the facts are what they are.

Gasoline is up 10% year over year as well. Gas station sales, however, went from 38,216 to 40,991 and should be 42,038 on a parity price basis. We have heard about a collapse in demand for gasoline -- well, here's your proof folks, as on a gallons-sold basis it sure isn't going in the northbound direction. And gasoline is not used for heating purposes, so this is all travel (by car.)

Finally, dealing with the energy issue, ZH makes it clear that this is not an isolated commodity problem with oil -

Mark W.also forwarded these charts of Electrical power consumption. Not only has electrical consumption never recovered the levels of mid-2008, it peaked in mid-2011 and has begun a sharp decline in late 2011.

The Real Effect
I had originally intended to make this into a much larger, comprehensive post, however the news dictates that this needs to be dealt with now. The forthcoming article will show up later, but for now we need to look at some of these issues.

Last night, a large swath of Europe was downgraded by Moodys, Greece continues to be a thorn in everyone's side and fraud continues to be rampant with no sign of slowdown. So the consumer is doing what he should do in this situation which is to reclaim his natural right to protect himself from the government by removing himself from the marketplace.

This is why air travel has collapsed, sales of CD's has collapsed and the Greeks continue en masse to remove their money from the banks. (As do we) If a person contracts with company X for $100 to perform a service and company X assesses a 'fee' and takes the $100, rightfully the consumer cries foul and stops conducting business. At this point company X cries poverty and goes to the government for a 'bailout'. In reality, this is the company forcing you to do business with them via the government. Even further, the government often tries to re-engineer the industry to make it 'profitable'.

Then when confronted about the reality of the situation, the government lies to the people in an attempt to keep their racket going as well. We dealt with some of this in this post, over 2 years ago -

What we have here is a scene out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which The Black Knight of government being mortally wounded states that it’s "merely a flesh wound". This attitude reveals the attitude and perhaps the intent of our great leaders.

What I and the people of the world should tolerate to an extent is ignorance. Everyone is ignorant of all knowledge at some point in their lives. What should not be tolerated in any way shape or form is outright fraud.  This economy is in the tank, it continues to be in the tank and is getting significantly worse. As a nation, we have barely begun to look at step one of the 12 step recovery process -

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable. 

Tens of thousands of Greeks protest in violent clash over debt plan

Removal of Support for Gary Johnson 2012

Good afternoon all, just a little housekeeping to be done. I removed the link, and with it my support, for Gary Johnson 2012 under the blogroll. While I will support most candidates that advocate a return to a more libertarian mindset, I cannot support a candidate who is intellectually dishonest about the crimes that the banking population has committed against the country and the world. (See here for further clarification)

Syrian Baby Slaughter - Where Have We Heard That One Before?

History doesn't so much repeat itself as rhyme -

This morning, reporter Alastair Beach of The Independent newspaper based in London, cited “evidence” in his article entitled “Assad’s slaughter of the innocents“, claiming that Syrian President Assad’s security forces have indiscriminately killed scores of newborn babies in Homs this week, as his article claims:

“Bashar al-Assad’s bloody siege of Homs intensified yesterday as clear evidence emerged that his indiscriminate shelling of the restive town had started claiming innocent victims, including at least 18 premature babies and three entire families. The evidence came as civilians in the besieged city endured a fifth day of incessant shellfire – the worst yet, according to eyewitnesses – with dozens of other people being killed as the brutal assault continued.”

The Real Effect

It's as if the terrorists like to immediately do the one thing that will create the sort of moral outrage that will get them invaded every time. My goodness, they never learn do they?

But now that I think about it, I believe I remember this incident... (Scooby-Doo flashback lines)

URGENT
Syria | The electricity was cut today from the city of Hama, and the outage included the hospitals. Following this, the Shabiha [state militia] deliberately destroyed the electricity generators in the hospitals which led to the deaths of all the premature babies (more than 40 in a single hospital).

Oh wait, that was in 2011 and was a hoax? Oh, now I remember back in Iraq...(More Scooby-Doo flashback lines)...Wait. That one was fake too...

But this time it's DIFFERENT!!! Certainly there must be a good source?

Surprisingly, the Independent’s chief source for the alleged horrors in question is a nearly invisible organization known as the ”Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”(SOHR) (and to make matters worse, there are two competing SOHR orgs in London- with the same name although the Independent does not provide a link to either org), who claim to have an office based in London, but apparently have no address or contact phone number listed - only and email address. Even murkier however, is that fact that there are no names associated with the SOHR on their website, and many of its articles have been written under the fictitious pen name known as “Rami Abdul Rahman“.

P-R-O-P-A-G-A-N-D-A

When one lies during war to get what one wants it's called, now come on, say it with me.... propaganda. Just like the miraculous resurrected terrorists that die repeatedly, the Pat Tillman story, Bin Laden, Nick Berg, Jessica Lynch, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, 9/11, most politicians' campaign promises (cough Romney, Gingrich, Bush, Obama)...would you like me to keep going?


You...are...being...lied...to.............A LOT.

Unintended Consequences and Responsibility

Just why are these Muslims overrunning Europe? I bet it's some weird reason....

Girls as young as 13 have been fitted with contraceptive implants at school without their parents knowing. 

The procedure was carried out in Southampton, Hants, as part of a government initiative to drive down teenage pregnancies.

As many as nine secondary schools in the city are thought to have been involved.

But it has caused a backlash from parents who weren't aware that their daughters had been fitted with the 4cm device, which sits under the skin.

It is currently unknown exactly how many youngsters have taken part in the scheme.

I bet there's a real good reason why this is happening. Let's turn to the techon-fascists to get our answer -

Health chiefs have defended sexual health services going into schools, saying teenage pregnancies had dropped by 22 per cent as a result.

The Real Effect
Oh, well pregnancies are dropping. Whew. We really dodged a bullet there. I mean, pregnancy is the worst thing that can happen to anyone...right? Now that we got the mandatory sarcasm out of the way we can can continue with some real substantive discussion.

I know it's fashionable today to bash 'fundies' and religious folks as being crazy and unthinking. While it is certainly true that some individuals in the religious realm are legitimately crazy the same could be argued of just about any subset of people. At this point it becomes necessary to argue about the merits of a particular argument and its ideal situation actually being applied. History is replete with 'well meaning' individuals who foist off their 'tyrannical chains' of that filthy moralism (cough) only to realize too late that those chains were the only thing holding them in on the ride.

Naturally, these individuals waste little time in pointing the finger elsewhere when the chicken comes home to roost. Indeed, 'didn't see that one coming' is quickly becoming the unrecognized meme of the decade where individuals, households, counties, states and above all look to duck any sort of responsibility and make someone else pay!

But now we find ourselves at the point when not only have we taken all the eggs, but we have subsequently slaughtered, dressed, BBQ'd, and feasted upon the golden goose. Hungry, we turn to the cupboard but find it surprisingly bare.Slowly it dawns on us that we've consumed everything and we produce nothing. True, we'll eat the furniture for a while, but sooner or later we'll perish.

So it is with shades of atheism, amorality, and progressivism. These individuals argued for the removal of certain constraints with the idea that they were making progress. Everything that originated in a moral setting was viewed increasingly with a suspicious eye, then subsequently castigated, demonized and outright rejected.

Nuclear family - Gone
No-fault Divorce - Accepted
Property Rights - Gone
....and so on...

Eventually, covetousness reared its ugly head as we began to hate people simply because they possessed. Since only a select righteous few can now societally possess, the middle class is quickly evaporating.

But who, ultimately is to blame? Specifically it resides with each individual that decides to break just one of these commandments. Most importantly, it resides in the Church. 

If the Church can claim credit for 'society' becoming more civilized, then certainly it bears the blame for its downfall.  But that post can wait for a different day. For now, we get to reap our rewards that we have sown.

Covert to Overt: 'Revolt how-to' earns big for US freedom factory

Civil war looms as mass media caught in Syria crossfire

Paul Ryan Taking On Bernanke

Denninger points out the culprit in the room -

Ryan is going to town on him as I write this and I have to wonder if he reads Tickers, as he's pointing out:

• He's bailing out fiscal policy with near-zero interest rates.  That is, we are able to run trillion dollar plus deficits because he is playing with ZIRP and QE.  Ryan basically told Bernanke that Congress is not comprised of adults and that Bernanke must pull system liquidity in order to force Congress to do its job!
  
• He used the words stable prices.  What he did not do is bend him over the desk and give him one or two good ones from behind on the "2% inflation" game, but it's a start.
  
• He's pointing out that trashing saver's investment income and forcing them into risk is counter-productive.  Mr. Ryan recognizes capital formation will get the job done?  THAT is a change.

 Exactly. This is the exact reason why socialism, communism and the like continually fail. You cannot control human nature. You can cajole, penalize, even imprison but in the end it becomes a financial question. Is the perceived benefit worth the risk? To some, the answer is a resounding "Yes" and eventually you end up attacking the very institutions which make your country possible. In the end you prop up organizations that are unproductive in an attempt to save things. (Solyndra, GM anyone?) This is achieved via massive expenditures which price you out of the markets and seal the fate on your government as debt piles on resulting in a slave class footing the bills.

This grossly understates the case; we will not make it through the next one cycle (eight years) say much less two.  To believe we can manage to spend over three trillion dollars at the Federal level in 16 years is an outrageous lie and the idea that we can absorb another $400+ billion annually in deficits before 2016 and $800+ billion annually by 2020 is preposterous.

That which cannot happen will not happen.

This puts the lie to claims by Ryan, Southerland, Miller and others that "those over 50 will not see their Medicare tampered with."  Oh yes they will, as for them to "not have it tampered with" they'd have to make it through four cycles of doubling, not two, which would increase Federal health spending at present rates of acceleration to more than $13 trillion by the time that person reaches 85, or some 16 times the present amount.

The Real Effect

This, incidentally, is why I have beef with Paul Ryan. It's akin to invaders breaking down the door to the castle and Mr. Ryan wants to put up some 1/2" plywood to "patch" it and then deal with it in half-an-hour by asking one of the invaders to eventually put up maybe some actual braces on the door. By that point, it is far too late and we're all dog food.

Paul Ryan continually talks of 10 year unenforceable budgets that slowly chip away at part of the problem while continuing the pork fest on the other side. On the flip side, Ron Paul just so happens to be running for President and is actually talking about fixing this real and deadly issue whereas his counterparts simply bring up a country half way around the world an our 'responsibility' to protect it.

One simply needs to realize that once the invaders break through the castle door, our current leaders will no longer be calling the shots and all of that discussion will be moot. Or have they broken through already?