Think I'm scared about the future?

NO WAY OUT - US FACING POSSIBLE COLLAPSE BY 2012 - 15 MAJOR PROBLEMS SET TO STRIKE SIMULTANEOUSLY

By Stephen Leeb, Ph.D. - Senior Editor, The Complete Investor - Chairman, TCI Enterprises

It was a great run, but after 232 years, we're on the ropes and getting wobbly in the knees.

As late as 1965, we could have made some better decisions and kept the country on course, but we were too short‑sighted, too madly in love with free government benefits, and frankly, just too pathetically dumb. Now we're in the hole $81 Trillion, and no one in either party has a clue about how to pay it off.

Yet we urgently need to find another $10 Trillion or so for roads, defense upgrades, and most urgent of all, inventing a replacement for gasoline. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but it's not going to happen.

It's twilight in , and suddenly we find ourselves fighting to keep the lights on:

> The dollar is dying, and the world will likely dump it. Soon!

> The planet is almost completely out of some essential metals.

> Within ten years, the trading floors of Wall Street will dwindle by 70%‑80%, becoming a bit like ghost towns.

> Global warming (real or not) is turning into a fiscal black hole that could suck in every spare dollar for the next century.

> Worst of all, the traditional fixes for these problems simply aren't working anymore.

For the past 20 years, I have been optimistic and bullish, and perhaps I’ll be a bull again someday. But for right now, you can call me the Bad News Bear. Most of the long-term financial indicators are going absolutely in the wrong direction.

As a bull, I looked on gloom & doom scenarios with scorn all my professional life. They usually had holes you could toss your hat through. In the past, the country has always been able to muddle through.

Not this time. We are heading straight for the Crash of 2012 which we may never fully recover from because we no longer determine our own destiny. For the first time since the War of 1812, exactly 200 years before, we will face a world almost totally out of our control. I believe there are 15 major problems that now threaten to put America into a kind of "receivership". Any one of these problems might be manageable by itself, but please note that they will erupt almost simultaneously, and that is what makes this situation so different from any in the past and so catastrophic.

I know this sounds like scare mongering, but let me be clear: You may be seeing the last great years of prosperity of Western Civilization. It's the end of the line, and there is no way out for the U.S. and the West apart from some very painful repair work on our budgets, our government, and our lifestyles.

THE 15 CALAMITIES WE HAVE TO FACE, AND WHY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

Past crises were largely invented by the media. Today’s are real and intractable.

Here is a brief survey of 15 reasons why there is no longer a way out, no way to detour around our problems. From now on, we must learn to face every challenge, whatever it takes.
The Actual Facts

1. We're almost out of 12 essential minerals. At present consumption rates, the Earth would completely run out of indium, lead, silver, antimony, tin, uranium, and tantalum in the next 4 to 20 years. Within 40 years, we'd be out of zinc, copper, and chromium. Platinum and nickel would soon follow.

2. By about 2025, gas and diesel fuel will not be made available for cars or trucks. We won't run out of oil, but eventually gas won't be worth the time and effort to retrieve it. That is, a dollar's worth of gas will cost $1.01 in salaries and drilling rig fuel to locate, drill, pump, refine, and transport it to market. At that point, the global pinball machine will flash its final message, GAME OVER, and (by international law) remaining pools of oil will be used only for goods like plastics and polyesters, whose price can be bid up infinitely.

3. China and India have become a juggernaut. With billions of U.S. dollars in hand and an annual growth rate of 8% for India and 11% for China, they can no longer be dismissed as minor players in the worldwide bidding war for commodities. The total savings rate for Indians is 28% of GDP, and for the Chinese it's 42%. How on earth are we going to compete with them when they outnumber us eight to one and out-save us by an average of 35% a year? They're going to eat our lunch and the rest of the developing world will dine on our dinner.

4. Inflation will reach 25%-30% a year. Causes: the commodity run-out, massive Third-World competition, federal and personal debt, the trade deficit, runaway Medicare growth, the always-nagging threat of a mega-depression, and other multi-trillion-dollar necessities. Inflation will touch levels Americans have never seen before. For example, if the S&P 500 were to rise by 8 percent a year over the next generation, your purchasing power would decline by nearly 98 percent. Losses in the purchasing power for investors in bond market and T‑Bills would be as bad or worse. For the foreseeable future, unless you are willing to think far outside the box, you are facing utter financial ruin.

For the past 20 years, I have been known on Wall Street as a rather consistent bull, but the above factors have changed the world picture drastically. So with the mailing of this bulletin, I am going on record as a bear. I wish it were not so, but until some miracle happens, the raw numbers give me no choice.

Eleven More Problems That Won't Go Away Anytime Soon

5. Total future federal obligations (debt + Medicare, etc.) are now over $60 trillion. We don't have it, and there's no way to get it.

6. The 5 billion people in the developing world now want TVs, cell phones, cars, and computers . . . and they're going to get them, come Hell or high water.

7. The U.S. trade deficit has rocketed to $6.8 trillion. These dollars have been coming home to buy U.S. Treasuries, but that will end shortly.

8. As soon as the dollar grows weak enough, OPEC nations will cheerfully dump it as the world's reserve currency.

9. The delicately interlaced derivatives market is an unimaginable $681 trillion house of cards.

10. The stock markets will fade to gray. Within ten years, the nation's major exchanges will become a shadow of themselves as trading volume falls by 70%-80% simply because investors won't be able to make much money.

11. Iraq or no, defense spending will rise as the US attempts to secure access to vital minerals in unstable countries.

12. We must immediately find and begin spending $2 to $5 trillion to locate alternative energy sources for cars and electricity plus $500 billion more for highway repairs and LNG projects.

13. For the next century, any remaining money will be sucked up by global warming (real or not), which is turning into a fiscal black hole.

14. Our complex, information-based economy will flatten badly and revert to a more industrial one. Eventually, assuming that our civilization survives at all, the social order will morph into simpler forms in which income differences shrink dramatically. Simply put, money will be scarce; $900-an-hour lawyers and S&P 500 CEOs (who now average $15.2 million a year) will find themselves on much the same level as skilled blue collar laborers.

15. We can't buy our way out of the above problems because we are fatally overloaded with both private and corporate debt.

Sincerely,

Stephen Leeb, Ph.D. - Editor
The Complete Investor

Says it all

I wish I could write like that

At $5.00 an issue, Barrons is a guilty pleasure, but I usually pay it every Sunday I can find it to enjoy the insights and unbelievably clever writing of Alan Abelson. Mr. Abelson is as old as Daniel Schorr and easily as wise. Here's this weekend's issue, and an astute prognostication as well as terrific turns of phrase.

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET
Great Expectations
By ALAN ABELSON


IT'S SPRING, THE TULIPS ARE IN BLOOM AND THE SAP IS RISING. Which may explain why the whole world seems to be going around the bend.

Here, in this blessed land, for example, we're supposedly engaged in the momentous quadrennial quest for a leader. So instead of a reprise of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas when they were in solemn pursuit of that role, we have Hillary and Obama putting on their traveling Punch-and-Judy act, with John McCain playing the happy spectator, urging each, with a fine display of nonpartisan gusto, to bop the other. (There's some suspicion John, imbued with an old-fashioned sense of chivalry, whenever he gets a chance has been stealthily slipping Hillary a pair of stylish brass knuckles.)

Hillary is proving beyond cavil the validity of the adage that hell hath no fury like a woman being denied a shot at the presidency. And Barack, for all his transformational and transcendent claims, is giving a pretty good imitation of a crybaby because that nasty little girl is intent on taking away his rattle. For gosh sakes, if he thinks those powder puffs being tossed at him in what strikes us as a disappointingly tame dust-up are rough, let him just wait until, if and when the clones of Karl Rove are unleashed.

Meanwhile, the present occupant of the White House, whose lease is unremittingly running out, again last week insisted there's no recession. Of course, we haven't been able to get a verbatim account of his remarks so he may have been talking about Saudi Arabia. Any day now, we expect Dubya to unveil a novel plan to whittle down that looming half-trillion dollar budget deficit by selling New York City -- Bloomberg included -- to a consortium of sovereign wealth funds headed up by China and Abu Dhabi. If it came down to it, to close the deal, insiders assure us, he'd throw in Rudy Giuliani.

We don't want to imply the sap is rising exclusively in the U.S. Far from it. Fact is, there's a veritable pandemic of goofy goings-on all over the blamed map. China, for example, is earnestly seeking to repair the damage done to its global image in advance of the Olympics by Tibet and all of that. More specifically, eager to do a good deed for an old friend, it has tried to send ammo and arms to Zimbabwe so Mr. Mugabe -- the country's eternal president, in grave danger of losing the recent election -- can be assured of winning a recount by eliminating, and we mean that literally, the opposition. As Confucius said, you can't make lamb stew without breaking chops.

In Congo, meanwhile, according to a Reuters dispatch, rumors of penis theft, supposedly the dastardly work of sorcerers, spread like wildfire and has touched off an outbreak of attempted lynchings of the suspect perps. The country's call-in radio programs have been filled with descriptions of the thefts (the FCC wouldn't like that at all), and listeners have been warned to keep an eye out for men with gold rings on their fingers. Don't laugh -- the other morning we noticed quite a few guys fitting that description in just one subway car.

Why, hard as it may be to believe, even Wall Street -- yes, the very same Wall Street that's normally, as everyone knows, a paragon of reason and rational behavior -- has lately become a hotbed of quixotic episodes. By way of illustration, consider Ambac Financial Group (ticker: ABK), which insured municipal bonds and made a pretty if rather unglamorous penny from doing so, ventured into the jazzier precincts of insuring less stodgy paper and was rewarded by capturing investor fancy.

Came then the credit crunch, the death spiral of subprime mortgages, a sizable chunk of which Ambac had glommed onto, and its stock suffered a bit of a setback, shriveling, virtually without let, from $96.10 a share a year ago to less than $4 last we looked. It won't surprise you that the blame for this precipitous descent was laid at the door of those nefarious short-sellers. We harbor a dim suspicion that Ambac's loss of $31.56 a share in '07, and an additional loss of nearly $12 a share in the first quarter, may have contributed to the stock's sad fall from favor.

But the truly odd thing about Ambac is not so much its gargantuan losses or even the extraordinary shrinkage in the value of its stock. Rather, it's that despite all this, its principal insurance subsidiary retains its triple-A rating. With all due deference to the kindness of rating agencies, man, that strikes us as really wild.

LAST THING IN THE WORLD we want to do is give the appearance of picking on Ambac or its equally blighted counterpart, MBIA. For, in truth, perhaps it's merely spring and the hope of rebirth and promise the season traditionally inspires in all of the human race as we trudge through this vale of tears. But Wall Street is aburst these days with a growing conviction that the storm has passed, the dark clouds are scurrying to wherever dark clouds scurry, and happy days will soon be here again.

This heartening upswing in optimism is all the more impressive in view of the recent less-than-ebullient forecast by one of the worthies at the New York State Department of Labor -- that the Street will cut its payrolls by some 36,000 over the next couple of years, a sizable bite out of the rolls of the 182,000 folks who now earn their daily bread in the canyon of capitalism.

It could be that banks and brokerage houses are populated by a much more altruistic bunch than we ever dreamed, splendid souls who are more concerned about the market than themselves. Although, we guess, it's at least conceivable that the 182,000 still employed shrug off those prospective firings with such estimable calm because they haven't a scintilla of doubt it'll be the gal or guy in the next cubicle who gets the ax.

In any case, the sharp reversal of mood among investors from gloom to rising expectations of good times is reflected unmistakably in the market's recent revival in the face of some pretty dreary communiqués from the economic front. Apart from equities, consumers don't seem to want -- or find they simply don't have the scratch -- to buy much of anything, as the latest lame numbers on durable goods orders point up. And their level of confidence continues its melancholy slide, as evident in the most recent survey by the University of Michigan hitting a 26-year low. Moreover, housing is in free fall, with new-home sales down by about 40% from a year ago and prices off some 20%. The only things pushing resolutely higher are foreclosures and inventories of unsold houses, which have swelled to an imposing new peak (it would take 11 months to work off the pile).

The credit crunch, despite the strenuous exertions of Bernanke & Co, shows little sign of easing, much less ending. Yet, financial shares have risen from the grave and are enjoying a dandy whirl. As Stephanie Pomboy, the perspicacious proprietor of MacroMavens, points out, this pop amid dauntingly ugly corporate reports by the banks and the rest of the financial gang is something we've seen before, and often.

"Since the wheels first started falling off last summer," she relates, "the financials have posted no fewer than 12 rallies of 5% or more.... It bears note that none of these stints, separate or combined, have precluded the financial sector from shedding 28% over the stretch."

Maybe 13 will prove the lucky number. Stephanie, though, sounds more than a bit skeptical, and so are we. At some point, we suspect, investors are going to sober up and stop popping the cork to celebrate the latest lender to take a multibillion-dollar bath.

OUR FRIENDS DAVID AND JAY LEVY, the astute duo who put out the insightful Levy Forecast, dismiss all the talk about the worst being over as wishful thinking. The worst, they insist, is yet to come, and real recovery might take its own sweet time in making an appearance. And they wouldn't advise anyone to hold their breath awaiting a propitious moment to go bottom-fishing.

The time for bottom fishing, they declare, "will be after a long, deep recession, when employment is down sharply and still falling, commodity prices have plunged, the scent of general price deflation fills the air and global financial and economic conditions are in turmoil. The risk pendulum, which reached extremes of complacency in 2006 before starting to swing back, will be near the other extreme, paranoia, not just in mortgage-related markets, but in asset markets generally. Fire sales to meet liquidity needs will abound."

We're not there yet, and there are many days, sleepless nights and wearing miles to go. And, the Levys counsel, stoutly resist the temptation to take the plunge prematurely, for even when we start scraping that magic bottom, there'll be no great rush. On that score, they reckon "the period of great opportunity," which they envision coming out of "fear, uncertainty and illiquidity," will likely last for a few years. But when it finally dawns, they're firmly confident, it'll prove very much worth the wait. All the more so since investments in what they dub "exciting long-term growth areas" such as natural resources, alternative energy and rapidly developing markets in emerging economies are likely to be there for the taking at "great long-term entry points."

Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and batten down the hatches.

A joke from Paul Krugman

A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked in. "Hey, we're rich!" shouted the conservative. "The average person in this bar is now worth more than a billion!" "That's silly," replied the liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing the discredited politics of class warfare."

The Fat Man From Flint Rants

Monday, April 21st, 2008
My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore

Friends,

I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come -- but it won't be you. We'll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.

Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It's foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that'll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!"

But no, Obama won't throw that at her. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be decent. She's been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That's why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That's why he'll take us down a more decent path. That's why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is... 'can he win? Can he win in November?' In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it's possible to hear the words "President McCain" on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She's counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only "three fifths" human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Ya gotta love Tom Tomorrow

Hope for America

We're here in Nashville, Tennessee and I've got to say, I'm feeling a little optimistic. This is a sign in front of a Presbyterian church (I assume PCUSA) that shows some mercy, kindness and grace in spite of the general Evangelical calls for deporting anyone darker than a grocery bag. Maybe there's hope. After taking the pictures, I stopped at a small tienda (store) to pick up some dinner, and had the following conversation:

Me: "Hola. Hay comida caliente?"

Him: "What you want?"

Me: "The sign says "Hot Food To Go"."

Him: "Oh. Solly."

I realize I'm speaking with the Chinese proprietor of "Tienda de Mexico" in Nashville. There's hope for us.

Thanks for the great economy, W!

Even though I've been calling it for years, it's a little frightening to see it in print. And yes, I have 50 pounds of dried beans and 50 pounds of rice on top of every refrigerator I own.

Food scarcity in America. Ouch.

Not much to say...

Hard to rant here

Again, the scenery is not conducive to ranting, rather it moves one toward the aesthetic. First we see me and the girls at the beach house on Upper Captiva Island (no roads, no cars, no problem) and then my thoughts on the state of the US economy as rendered in fabric. I call it "A Bad Day for the Dow", and it's an original design.

What's next? Ranting in Haiku?

The Bush White House crew?
Disaster for all of us.
Impeach, convict, kill.

The Very Best Thing about Barack Obama

My friend Liane sent me this. Thanks, Liane. I agree.

This sums it up for me...


The Very Best Thing about Barack Obama

Nope, it's not what you might think. The best thing about Barack Obama has
almost nothing to do with him as a person or as a leader or even as Oh My God
The First Black President Who Could Really Change Everything I Mean Wow. It's
not even the wondrous oratory power or the charisma or the sweet sense of
deeper change overlaid with all kinds of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.

There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it's rather startling.

See, I've read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent analysis
the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the valient attempts
to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening about Obama and his
family, his past, his middle name, his beliefs and his pastor and his favorite
flavor of ice cream — attempts that, rather amusingly, have all failed.

I've read, too, the glut of wonderment, how Obama is this generation's
JFK, how he makes Hillary Clinton's brand of retro cronyist politics feel
like the equivalent of rubbing salt on a paper cut. He is, they say, that
once-in-a-lifetime candidate, a fantastically rare mix of intelligence,
consistency, inspiration, hope, charisma, humanity, articulation, and an
almost shocking lack of manipulation and sheen (well, relatively
speaking), all packaged in a strikingly handsome unit in whose closet
apparently live almost no skeletons at all.

I also nodded in agreement when snark-master Jon Stewart appeared
slightly stunned and taken aback and very nearly jokeless as he pointed
out, following Obama's remarkable speech on race in America, that at
long last, here was a top-tier politician who dared to speak to us like we
were adults. It wasn't just refreshing; after seven-plus years of humiliating,
monosyllabic dumb-guy Bushisms, it was downright jarring.

And I even enjoyed the overall assessment that the fact that Obama is
untested and inexperienced in the higher and more dire realms of
government is actually a good thing, just the kind of wild card we crave
and need, given how he shows absolutely zero signs that he'd screw it up,
not to mention how the last thing anyone really wants is more of the same
old-school, inbred crap we've had for decades.

Still, this wasn't what riveted me the most about Obama, still not what's
most fascinating about this moment in political history. It was still
something more.

Initially I thought the most impressive aspect of Obama's run was, well,
how the guy made it this far at all. That someone of his caliber and
obvious intelligence could survive what has become a truly caustic, brutal
political system and still emerge into the international spotlight as, well,
not deeply f—ed-up and insane, not possessing that creepy demonic
gleam shared by so many politicos (hi, Sen. McCain!) that suggests they've
had souls eaten whole by the same scabrous trolls of greed and war
and corruption that birthed two Bushes and gave Bill Clinton that nearly
intolerable aura of ego and slickness.

See, I've long believed that, if nearly eight years of the World's Worst
President has taught us anything, it's that the American political system
has moved well beyond merely deeply flawed and broken and sad, and is
now wholly rotted, ruined from the inside out, a true moral wasteland barely
suitable even for cockroaches and leeches and Rick Santorum. I thought
George W. Bush had actually managed to do the impossible: make an
already defective system truly unbearable, turning something already gray
and murky to turgid and pathetic, toxic to all decent human life.

And I'm happy to report that the fact that Obama exists at this stage of
the game is proving me very wrong indeed.

But I'll even take it a step further. Because the greatest thing about Obama
isn't really about Obama at all, per se. It's actually about, well, us.

This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective unconscious,
the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that borders on a
kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can actually look
beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the presence of something
great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?

See, this is what I hear most from relatives and readers and friends and
newborn activists who were never activists before: Obama speaks to the
intuition. It's about the sixth sense. It's not just what he says or how
he behaves in the debates or the policy wonking or the "Change" banners or
any of the typical, tangible factors — although those have proven to
be remarkably positive, too.

It's this: People feel it. They hear an Obama speech or read the articles
or talk to like-minded folk, and they squint their eyes and weigh everything
and then dismiss all that surface crap and get that look on their face that
says, you know what? This guy gets it. He feels right. It's not a trick of
light. It's not complete bulls—. It's not the usual spin and manipulation
and fakery. There is actual meat on this bone. What a thing.

Of course, I've plenty of readers who are die-hard cynics and jaded
anarchists who say: What the f— is wrong with you? Can't you see
it's just another vicious ploy? All candidates at this level are
essentially the same, interchangeable, all abhorrent simply by default
because when you reach that stage of the game there is simply no way to
avoid deep corruption and rampant lies. They tell me that even just to
write a column like this is akin to merely washing the windows in your
little pod in "The Matrix." Sure, the world may seem shinier, but you're
still just buying into the same old revolting corporate/military machine.

After all, once the vipers of big money and big oil and military spending
and corporate cronyism get their fangs sunk in, it's pretty much "game
over" for any candidate's remaining integrity. Has Mr. Perfect Obama
spoken out against the insidious Patriot Act or taken on the absurd farm
subsidies or talked up issues of global warming? No he has not. As nice
and smart as he may be, strip away all the fawning and the oratory tricks
and give him a year in office and boom, just another corrupted,
compromised former visionary. Right?

Whatever. I'm not buying it. At least, not yet. For the moment, I trust the
collective intuition. I trust the shockingly widespread sense, not merely
of hope and change, but of collective wisdom swimming though the air
like an electrical surge between every smart, creative person on the planet
right now, a bolt of energy that says: Hey, we're still together. We still got
it. Smart, intuitive people are still a force. There is life in the revolution yet.

And Obama? He gets it, too. Hell, he may have kindled it anew, all by
himself. Either way, it's back. And it's powerful. And that, to me, is the
most hopeful thing of all.

- Mark Moford

Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on
SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. To get on
the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing.

Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which
includes another small photo of Mark potentially sufficient for you to
recognize him in the street and give him gifts. He also has a raw Facebook
page, but has little idea why.

Morals lose out when revenue looms (part 1)

I'd wondered for a while what it was going to take to get most drugs legalized in the US. NPR today mentioned that 70 years ago, the legal prohibition on alcohol was lifted, and really for two reasons; create jobs and raise money from taxes. This was one of many government efforts that helped lift the nation out of the last Depression.

A side benefit was the loss of funding and power for a generation of gamblers and reduced costs for chasing and imprisoning bootleggers and moonshiners. Later in the same show, they mentioned that Texas and other states are looking at releasing prisoners early as a means of reducing costs. Texas voters declined to fund 8 new prisons, so early release is getting a long hard look.

The current $9,000,000,000,000.00 federal budget deficit is going to be a bear to pay off. But as we've learned with the near ubiquitous state lotteries, scratch cards and casinos and the enormous tax revenues they bring in, we can look the other way in the case of vice if government takes it over and taxes the hell out of it.

What would happen if we legalized and taxed marijuana, cocaine and heroin? Tomorrow, we'll take a back of the envelope look.

Hoist with his own petar

Housing Crisis Hits Its Own
Mortgage Bankers Group Faced With Tougher Terms

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 6, 2008
A year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington. Interest rates were low, the group's revenues were steady and the prospects for quickly renting out part of the structure were strong.

But since then, the association has fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by some of its members proved dicey. Borrowers discovered the loans were more costly than they had anticipated. Foreclosures soared, and cheap, inexpensive credit dried up, slowing the economy.

The result: The trade group is about to find it harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage.

Scheduled to close on the building in the coming weeks, the association will have to pay millions of dollars more than it would have a year ago when it contracted to buy the 160,000-square-foot structure -- millions of dollars it is now less able to afford.

The group's leaders defend the transaction as prudent and, in the long run, wise. "Anytime is the best time to buy," said Kieran P. Quinn, [ Assclown. -ed.] chairman of the association. "Over a 10-year horizon, [the purchase] looks great."

But the short run looks a little bumpy. "The association's timing is not good, to say the least," said John E. "Chip" Akridge, a local developer. "I'm sure a year ago they would have rethought their decision if they knew what was going to happen."

[snip]

Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahhahahahahahha!!!!!!

A little bumpy in the short time? "In the long term, we're all dead." John Maynard Keynes

A real mind-blower, but when?

I've been pissed off imagining how most of Wall Street has gotten enough money (not US dollars! Ha!) into the Caymans or Costa Rica or Switzerland, and how when Joe Sixpack gets a foreclosure up the ass or finds his CD is worthless or that he can't get his money out of the bank, he's hosed, but the big boys just trot off to their ill-gotten gains (see "Privatized profits, socialized losses").

But here's an interesting thought. The wing tip crew in New York and elsewhere has been pretty much able to bluster their way through whatever investor or depositor losses have occurred with mostly shrugs and no comments.

***WARNING- GRAPHIC CONTENT FOLLOWS!***

How much profit from illegal drug dealing is out there in the financial universe? I've seen estimates from $300 to $600 billion. What happens when these depositers come to collect. You and I get told in a bank run, "Tough noogies. File with the FDIC." What about the current day Pablo Escabars? If you were owed your life savings of $20 billion by a New York banker and you were a 45 year old 20 year veteran of the Drug Wars, what wouldn't you do to get your money back?

Seriously, think about it. If Citibank has deposits worth $20 billion for Joe Entrepreneur Druglord and they won't fork it over, do you think he'll file a claim with the FDIC? These are people with massive resources and few scruples due to the US's absurd War on Drugs. (Nice unintended consequences, you tight-assed bluenoses.) If I had that much money, power and incentive, and was already being hunted down by the full might of the United States of America, here's what I'd do:

* Kidnap the children and grandchildren of every Board of Directors member and senior manager
* Treat them extremely poorly (use your imagination)
* Wait a week
* Have the Chairman's grandchild call grandpa and demand that he give these people their $20 billion, or they'll cut off her other arm, leg and ear

The entire financial system would be in flames in hours. Complete panic would set in at the highest levels and nothing but nothing would function as it should. Every nickel of cash would be sucked out of the system by insiders who could pull it off and the vast majority of people in the US (at least) would be totally incapable of handling the aftermath.

I don't fault the drug dealers. They just used the free market opportunities made available to them. They'd be broke next week if we legalized drugs. The fault is with the people who caused the financial bubble and subsequent collapse through deregulation, pronounced "Greed", and the continued criminalization of recreational activities. What a bunch of assclowns. Sorry about your grandkid, Chairman, but you basically set the scene.

Have a nice day.

I swear I hadn't seen this

Usually I'm proud that the MSM tends to pick up on things I rant about either months or often years later. As a very smart man once told me, "Journalists are historians, but they don't know it."

This morning I post on the catastrophe of using food for energy, and it's related perils, and this afternoon I see this cover on Time Magazine. Damn. They totally missed out on the billions starving, civil unrest angle, but they are after all historians not prognosticators.

Here it comes

Among other reasons, the moron in chief's clever call to use corn for ethanol to replace oil instead of eating said corn has lead to public unrest in Mexico as the price of staples like tortillas have doubled. Similar forces have lead to the doubling of the price of rice since last year in much of the world. As a result, food riots have broken out in Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Bolivia, Indonesia, Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Cameroon, Uzbekistan and Yemen. The Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Thailand have halted exports of rice, which leads to a self fulfilling prophecy of rising prices.

Think for a minute how many poor there are in the world. Now think how much of their income goes for food. 50%? What happens when they need to double expenditures on food? You can't spend over 100% of your income, unless you're a Westerner with credit cards (and that runs into trouble eventually).

I've said it before, but this is going to get ugly.

"A hungry mob is an angry mob." - Bob Marley

I can't rant...

...because I'm here. Nothing to do but suck it up and enjoy. Family, wife, dogs, beach, weather. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.