axiomthree’s posterous

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."

Figure 1: Total Borrowings of Depository Institutions from the Federal Reserve, 1910 - present

Sometimes, when done correctly, graphs get the message across plainly, without you needing to dive into the data. The interpretation is the message. This graph is a winner like that.

Let's just be real plain here. The US Dollar has failed, and we've just done something that we've never done before in modern economic history to prop it back up: loaning the financial entities that hold all that money supply deficit cash to keep from total bankruptcy. Deficit cash - essentially credit from future generations (and obviously without permission). We don't really know the havoc that this will result in for the future. The justification for the action, as far as I can tell, is usually "things would be really bad if we didn't." Unfortunately, those people do not realize that things will be really bad now, and even worse in the future anyway. As long as the US government spends more money than it brings in, we're borrowing money like a college kid with a brand new credit card - with no real comprehension of the financial duties or the consequences.

At this moment, we're not talking about ways to fix the problem. Instead, our politicians want to make things worse. Today, Barack Obama called for an immediate $500 energy cost rebate to taxpayers to combat the increasing energy costs in America. Where is Obama's plan to pay for the approximately $80+ billion dollars in stimulus plus overhead costs? It will likely come from taxation of corporations or the wealthy, both of which trickle down to all other consumers regardless. If it comes from corporate profits, then you and I pay for it in our retirement accounts in the form of reduced earnings per share and reduced dividends. John McCain has mentioned that he sees no problem in a 100 year or more occupation of Iraq, even though currently our "War on Terror" is paid for entirely off the annual budget in the form of emergency spending bills. Where will the money come from to feed, and house, and support our troops overseas for the next 100 years? It will most likely come in the same form as our current president, as additional Federal Debt which weakens our dollar's spending power and creates inflation as well as giving foreign nations increasing influence over our economic destiny (I want to say "Dammit, China!" here, but I know China doesn't hold as much of our national debt as people would like to believe.)

In statistical data reporting, we have this concept of a performance indicator - a simplified benchmark or ratio that consistently indicates a good or bad situation. This chart, as a performance indicator, scares the crap out of me. I'm really afraid that any savings that I do will be wiped out by a combination of cost of living inflation and financial market meltdown to the point where there's no reason to save money at all. This puts millions of people in a position to need the government even more, since they are not in a situation anymore to be prepared for their financial future - in fact people who do are actually disadvantaged. This will tax the federal government even further, which requires issuance of further debt, and so on, and so on...

Basically, learn to do something that will be useful when money is no longer of any value. Buy a gun and learn to use it, because by the time comes you really need one, they'll be the toughest thing in the world to get ahold of. And begin rejecting that American Dream now, it will be a much easier pill to swallow when the time comes...

''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.

Source: New York Times - "Fears, Again, of Oil Supplies at Risk"

I believe that bin Laden's longstanding plot against the US has never been to kill mass amounts of Americans in suicide terrorism.

However, if his plan truly was, as it has been speculated before, to:

• Incite the US to raise troop levels in the Middle East, making it easier to kill American citizens.
• Force the US to spend money on safety precautions and bureaucracy against terrorism.
• Cause instability in the oil markets, raising the price of gasoline to monstrous levels.
• Trigger American racism against Middle-Easterners, and Christian hatred against Muslim beliefs, which will help to spread anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.

...then I would say: