Just arrived home from an overnight trip to Philadelphia, and no real contact with news or the internet (sometimes little ‘inconveniences’ can actually turn out to be favors in disguise. It’s amazing how much peace of mind one can enjoy during a time of temporary ignorance of the world’s shenanigans .... :)
I just now read the official communiqué issued at the conclusion of the G7 meeting today. I interpret their ‘will allow more flexibility' [for the US$] phrase as an agreement to allow the dollar’s exchange value to continue to decline, and at least a verbal commitment not to offset its decline with (anyone’s -- US, French, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, Italian) government intervention.
Man, are we selling our souls to the devil. So that we can continue to enjoy the good life without earning that privilege, and without concerning ourselves with the unpleasant responsibility of paying for it.
We are performing all manner of economic (although they really bear no resemblance to the laws of pure economics) gymnastics for two insidious purposes: to make it appear as though we are not (1) spending ourselves into oblivion, and (2) losing meaningful (to the survival of a free society) jobs/manufacturing hand over fist.
We are using semantics in order to cook the books regarding our employment situation (with economic magic tricks like coining new terms such as ‘exhaustees’ to describe the hundreds of thousands of people who are no longer a part of the unemployment equation because they have exhausted their unemployment compensation and are still without work. How many of us are aware that the number of ‘exhaustees’ is currently at a thirty-year high – and that, over the next six months, it is projected that two million more Americans will join those sad ranks?
These millions of people (as well as recent high school and college graduates who have yet to find work) are no longer counted among the unemployed. They have been declared statistically invisible so as to allow our leadership to perpetuate the myth of economic recovery. When I took Probability and Statistics, as I recall, the more pertinent variables one left out of the calculations, the less reliable the result. I wonder if government jobs/employment statisticians missed that particular class?
(Do you remember Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’? Every time I read a news release exalting the continuing economic recovery, that dang song begins running through my head – with slightly altered words, but an eerily similar connotation.)
We are also allowing our monetary system to disintegrate before our eyes so as to mask our obscene (im)balance of trade and national debt.
I am sure I sound like a broken record (feel free to turn me off at any time :), but I cannot comprehend how rational Americans do not realize that these acts of fiscal prestidigitation cannot continue forever.
There will come a day when foreign investors, who for the first time in our history own the bulk of our dollar reserves/treasuries, decide that they are no longer going to gamble on the paper of a nation that exhibits no fiscal restraint, and no genuine interest in retaining, let alone increasing, its industrial base.
This G7 meeting simply verified that we have our economic neck neatly placed in the guillotine chopping block and nations that don’t give a damn about our physical or economic security are the only ones who have access to the rope. That our ‘leaders’ could have allowed (even prescribed) us to find ourselves in this position is unconscionable.
I suspect that gold (copper/silver) will rally strongly this week – and, with the inevitable pullbacks, for the foreseeable future.
Investment-wise, I have never felt queasy about the nature of the stocks or tangibles that I invest in. But lately my portfolio has become so defensive that I almost feel guilty about seeking to profit (or at least retain my savings) from what I see as impending (over the next few months or years) economic and geopolitical catastrophe. In the past, I used to have my portfolio diversified among twelve or fifteen stocks. Today I have the bulk of my portfolio in physical gold and silver, gold and copper miners, a manufacturer of rapid deployment chemical/biological shelters and decontamination systems, a mine/HAZMAT/public safety equipment company, and an oil and natural gas company. Nothing else. I don’t trust anything else. Not now. And not for the foreseeable future.
Time to stop rambling (it appears that I set a record tonight) and start running .... :) <= at least give me partial upbeat credit for that, okay?
~ joanie
P.S. Your Ayn Rand quote on the ‘No to Judaization of Jerusalem’ thread is exquisite. We are indeed allowing capitalism (and the natural actions of a free market/adherence to the law of supply and demand/fiscal responsibility that it requires to flourish) to perish by silent default.
For the United States, Snow gave credit to a new round of tax cuts that President Bush pushed through Congress last summer, which Snow said had helped put the United States "on a path to sustained economic growth."
You don't seem to believe Bush or Snow. I don't either. Bush has also pledged to cut the deficit in half over the next 5 years, and then writes a budget that increases this year's deficit to 520 billion. He thinks we're all imbeciles. He's mostly right.