America's Ruling Class-And the perils of a Revolution (the FOX allstars should read this)

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

You and Codavilla are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, those of us who are huge fans of you two are a small minority. My profession of private equity transactions is revealing a disturbing pattern.

When a liquidity event delivers real money to sellers, they are voting with their feet. I have been seeing funds flows into agricultural land, metals, various hedge structures which short the dollar - you get the idea.

The faith in the government and the economy is evaporating, along with the integrity of the greenback.

The question: Where are we in the spectrum of events between a return to prosperity and collapse?

Since I am of necessity compelled to watch the macroeconomic environment for my clients, the Princeton University Press book by Reinhart and Rogoff is a seminal work at this juncture. I am afraid that an economic Reichstagfeuer is baked-in-the-cake. It appears we are at the end of the line in our national experiment with a democratic republic. One word: Balkanization.

This Reichstag fire (whether the product of deliberate malice or idiocy) will be exploited by the Obamaniacs in 2012 with the media supported argument that we can’t change horses in the middle of the stream. The electorate has been manipulated by the fourth estate (our own fifth column for the statists) to the point of a kind of National Electoral Alzheimers. The higher critical faculties are gone. Turn off your TV.

I will continue to be politically active in support of constitutionalists wherever they can be found, but am far from sanguine about the probability of success.

Short answer: Get. Out. Of. The. Cities. Now. Develop some personal and community self-sufficiency. Dump all dollar denominated assets. Get in the best physical shape you can. Forget any government pension. Keep working at a meaningful trade or profession, even if at retirement age. Pray.

Shalom

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