Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling!

As of November 7th, the total U.S. public debt outstanding reached an astonishing $13.7 trillion. This means that although Congress just raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion back in February, the new Congress will face another debt ceiling vote almost immediately next year.  Otherwise, the Treasury will not be able to continue issuing debt to fund government operations.

Congress usually raises the debt ceiling with little fanfare in the dark of night. The newly elected representatives will have a chance to show what they are made of when the time comes to vote on raising it again.

Quantitative Easing Explained

(Thanks to Gary North for the link)

News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11

[H]ow quickly we forget the past. Our memories are short, and growing shorter, it seems, all the time. Our collective consciousness seems to reinvent itself daily, cobbled from a media blitz of short-order blurbs and 30-second segments. There will be a heavy price to pay, potentially, for having developed such a shallow and fragile mind-set.

With respect to airport security, it is remarkable how we have come to place Sept. 11, 2001, as the fulcrum upon which we balance almost all of our decisions. As if deadly terrorism didn't exist prior to that day, when really we've been dealing with the same old threats for decades. What have we learned? What have we done?

The government has used the horrific events of 9-11-2001 as an excuse to throttle freedom at home and inflict wars abroad.

Dr. Bernanke Gets a Phone Call

Zhou Xiaochuan is the Governor of the People’s Bank of China. Imagine that the following phone call were to take place.

Zhou: Hello. Dr. Bernanke?

Bernanke: Yes.

Zhou: I wanted to let you know about the decision that our board has taken, after consulting with the Premier and the Politburo’s Standing Committee. We hope you are sitting down.

Bernanke: I get it. A little Oriental humor.

Zhou: You could say that. 

Dr. Ben's decision to weaken the dollar is sure to have gotten the attention of China.

Boiling Frogs

So! What does this all mean?

It means that Americans are the frog in the metaphor. Between 60% and 80% of them—to be precise—are slowly being boiled alive. The bottom 60% to 80%, to be even more precise.

Because of QE2 in all its iterations—its rumor back in the spring, its announcement last week, its forthcoming implementation—prices for food, housing, clothing and transportation are rising, and will continue to rise as Bernanke’s policy works its magic on commodity prices, and eventually reaches the supermarkets.

The financial sectors might be pleased that their assets are being bouyed by this flood of money coming from the Eccles Building—but the rest of the population will be drowning.

The water in the kettle is boiling on the stove. What's cooking?

Plumbers Crack

Poor Ben Bernanke. There was a strange glow on his face as it appeared in Monday’s Financial Times…like a bearded St. Joan of Arc; his hands were clasped together as if in prayer, and his eyes seemed to reach up to the gods, if not beyond.


He made his reputation as a master plumber in Princeton, New Jersey, interpreting drippy money supply faucets and deconstructing clogged fiscal drains. And now, he has become the hope of all mankind. Or at least that part of mankind that hopes to get something for nothing.

How came this to be? The answer is simple. The plumbers who came before him botched the job. Applying their wrenches to the recession of ’01, they let too much liquidity into the system. Everything bubbled up. The subprime basement overflowed in ’07…Ben Bernanke has been on the job ever since.

The Fed is allowed to tinker with and manipulate the economy with no supervision or restraint by anyone to the detriment of us all. Has it finally gone too far - way too far? Bill Bonner thinks so.

Virginia's Black Confederates

Denying the role, and thereby cheapening the memory, of the Confederacy's slaves and freemen who fought in a failed war of independence is part of the agenda to cover up Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional acts to prevent Southern secession. Did states have a right to secede? At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison rejected a proposal that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. He said, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

The Rebellion of 1861 was suppressed, the independence of the individual states was denied and the Constitutional right to secession was overturned by force. The Union was "preserved" but States' Rights were lost and have not been recovered. The Tenth Amendment was the first, but not the last, casualty of the Bill of Rights.

Don't let this happen to you

The government has this guy right where it wants him and right where it wants the rest of us; i.e., begging the government to solve our problems. Don't let this happen to you.