Study these 3 photos closely, then read the message at the bottom.

It will explain lots and lots of things… if you didn’t already know.

.

This is India. It’s where you call when you have a technical problem with your computer.

I would marry this boat

The dog has been following this amazing racing yacht for quite a while now and am just in such awe of the boat, captain and crew it’s not funny.

Leopard 3 is the latest in Mike Slade’s Leopard series of super-maxi racing yachts beginning all the back with Leopard of London, through Leopard 2 and onto the mighty Leopard 3, which since launch has just won everything (right up until this last Rolex Sydney Hobart where she was finally narrowly beaten) and broken every record on the way.

This isnt just a world-beating racing yacht though, it’s also a stunning luxury James Bond style apartment on water, and you can even charter it out on the Solent, the Med or the Caribbean, depending on their location (and your budget)

& its only 1ok a day too, what you waiting for?

iPad - even (funda) mentalist Apple gimps think it's shit

Again, PAY ATTENTION AMERICA !!

..IT IS TIME TO WAKE THE FUCK UP!!  NOW !!

This dog only wishes he could pen rants like THIS ONE, from James Quinn at theburningplatform.com – laying it out there in plainest terms.

Go over there are read this article, and DO IT NOW.

Ordinary Americans are being bent over their office desks and roughly buggered by your war-mongering, profiteering “leaders”.

If you are not in the elite you are taking it up the ass, all day every day, until you die a broken buggered thing. There is no inbetween.

They keep your feeble minds occupied by a combination of materialistic gratification and endless mindless nonsense and propaganda streamed live into your living rooms, whilst they bend over the entire society (barring anyone in their exclusive elite clubs) and work themselves into a right old sweat buggering you all.   – Are you getting this yet?

The dog’s favourite bits of James’ article are quoted below, but if you want the full picture on your daily buggery you need to read the full thing. Anyone not doing so, well just bend over some more and someone will be along with the KY shortly..

What most people do not understand is the relationship between the Federal Reserve and war.

The Federal Reserve is responsible for every economic difficulty that afflicts our nation. Without a Federal Reserve creating fiat paper currency out of thin air, an empire could not wage continuous war.

There is no clearer proof than evaluating major U.S. military conflicts prior to 1913 versus after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Between 1791 and 1913 (122 years) the U.S. engaged in only four major conflicts:

·         War of 1812

·         Mexican-American War

·         Civil War

·         Spanish-American War

Only the War Between the States can be considered significant and it was fought solely on U.S. soil.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by bankers in collusion with politicians in Washington DC. This private central bank, run by a cartel of major banks, has encouraged politicians to wage war.

Continuous conflict enriches bankers, as all the money used to wage war is borrowed from them. This may explain why between 1913 and 2010 (97 years) the U.S. has engaged in eleven significant foreign conflicts:

·         World War I

·         World War II

·         Korean War

·         Vietnam War

·         Grenada Invasion

·         Panama Invasion

·         Gulf War

·         Somalia

·         Kosovo War

·         Afghan War

·         Iraq War

Above and beyond these actual conflicts, we engaged in a 46 year Cold War with the Soviet Union that involved funding opponents to communism, coups, and assassination of foreign leaders. This Cold War was used as an excuse to station troops in over a 100 foreign countries, creation of the military industrial complex and creation of a secret spy agency, the CIA. Conveniently, when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new amorphous war was created by politicians and their bankers. The nebulous War on Terror has been exploited to create the Department of Homeland Security and passage of the Orwellian Patriot Act, which allows the government to violate Americans’ right to privacy in the name of National Security. The War on Terror is used as the reason for invading foreign countries and using predator drones to blow up whoever our leaders feel is a threat.

The cost for the War on Terror thus far has been $2.3 TRILLION. There are trillions more to be wasted because you can never win a war on terror.

Who benefits from a never ending war on terror? Every dime of the $2.3 trillion has been borrowed. The beneficiaries of debt are bankers, as they reap billions in profits and pay themselves millions in bonuses. The money that is loaned to the government is then paid to the companies that constitute the military industrial complex.

These companies then buy the support of Congress for their new and improved killing machines. This encompasses the circle of death in Washington DC.

Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says Congress has the power to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin and to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water. The corrupt politicians who have controlled the country for the last century have abrogated their power to coin money to a secretive private bank run by crooked bankers. Since 1941 Congress has failed in their Constitutional duty to be the branch of government that commits citizens of the U.S. to war. They have allowed the executive branch to decide when Americans will die and for what causes.

The Bush Doctrine, created by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, is policy of preventative war, which holds that the United States should topple foreign regimes that represent a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat is not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Should the American people follow the doctrine of men who never served a day in the U.S. military and have no difficulty in wiping their blood stained hands all over the U.S. Constitution or a wise Founding Father who risked his life to create that Constitution?

Ronald Reagan increased military spending dramatically in the 1980s in an effort to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Total spending on defense in the decade reached $3.8 trillion. The collapse of the only country in the world that threatened the U.S. militarily left a vacuum in the 1990s.

This peace dividend resulted in military spending decreasing to $3.3 trillion in the 1990s. Defense companies did not fare well in this decade as plants were closed and employees laid off. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a windfall for the military industrial complex, the neo-conservative Constitution burners, and privileged bankers.

With no country on earth capable of competing with our immense military machine, the government used fear, loathing and false patriotism to ramp up military spending to $5.3 trillion during the just completed decade.

Ask yourself who benefited from these expenditures. Are you safer? Are you better off financially today?

Oil prices rose from $20 a barrel to $145 a barrel. The U.S. National debt rose from $5.7 trillion to $12.3 trillion.

The financial system collapsed due to the actions of the Federal Reserve, greedy criminal bankers, and self serving corrupt politicians. And still the wars go on.

War is a Racket

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope.

It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”  – General Smedley Butler

War most certainly feeds the rich, while it buries the poor. The people pulling the strings in Washington DC are all rich.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Hank Pauson, Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama, and Tim Geithner are all multi-millionaires. It matters not which party controls the levers of power. The racket is perpetual. The most liberal President since FDR is submitting the largest Defense spending budget in U.S. history, exceeding $700 billion for 2010. The cumulative National Debt of the U.S. from 1791 until 1977 (186 years) totaled $699 billion. We now spend more than that every year on war.

There are no rich dying in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. There are no wealthy Wall Street bankers’ sons or daughters dying in the Middle East.

Isn’t it fresh that there are 237 millionaires out of 535 members of Congress and only 10 members of Congress with a son or daughter putting their lives on the line in Iraq or Afghanistan? The facts are that the lower middle class and poor die in a foreign desert like dogs for no good reason. The rich and powerful line their pockets while selling soldiers in a human grocery store.

The hypnotized masses are manipulated by government propaganda, ideologue think tanks, and corporate mainstream media. Even the financial crisis benefits the military industrial complex. Before the crisis, military recruiters had tremendous difficulty in convincing enough young people to become cannon fodder for the War on Terror.

When 22% of the population is unemployed, there is no such problem. Nationwide, the Air Force reached its highest number of enlistments since 2004, and the Marines Corps was able to do enough recruiting in 2009 to go from 175,000 in its ranks to 202,000. The Army has exceeded its goal of 80,000 enlistments from 2006 to 2008, and it took in more than 70,000 soldiers, with a goal of 65,000 in 2009. The grocery store shelves have been restocked.

I find it revealing that three men who occupied the top military position of the nation, led men into battle, and understood the responsibility in committing American citizens to battle were the most reflective and cautious in using the military power of the U.S. in foreign entanglements.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.” Ulysses S. Grant

“Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.” Omar N. Bradley

The United States has spent $12.5 trillion on the Military over the last three decades. The U.S. National Debt totals $12.3 trillion. Essentially every dime spent on the military in the last three decades has been borrowed.

We police the world using a credit card with an unlimited line of credit. The issuer of the credit card is the Federal Reserve Bank.

The systematic destruction the U.S. dollar over the last 97 years has allowed politicians to steal from the middle class and enrich the corporate fascists that control the country. Dr. Edwin Vieira describes the truth of our dilemma:

“Private financial special-interest groups buy politicians; in public office these politicians empower the special-interest groups by statute to manipulate the monetary and banking systems; to the extent that these manipulations succeed, the profits are largely privatized; and to the extent that the manipulations fail, the losses are almost entirely socialized.

In either case, the general public is held hostage to the racket, and foots the gargantuan bill for its operation. And the guilty parties escape scot free to steal again, and again, and again.”

We are left a hollowed out economy with a middle class that hasn’t seen their real wages increase in 30 years. Our manufacturing base has been gutted.

The only thing this country has produced in the last ten years is killing machines. Is society more likely to advance by producing a computer or a humvee?

Is our civilization better off with a plant producing tanks or hybrid cars? Defense spending means the government is pulling away resources from free market uses and instead using them to buy weapons and to pay for soldiers and Blackwater mercenaries.

In realistic economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing expansion and costing jobs. Based on the chart below, we’ve made our selection.

It is a choice that will surely lead to an economic collapse as the cumulative weight of debt will capsize our ship of state.

– Read the full article

Are you listening America? – you’re not are you?

Ok no worries, right just bend over, it’s that time again..

Awesome straight-talking article by Mac Slavo reproduced in full.  ..Non-indented text, pictures and some emphasis is ours..

While most Americans understand that falling wages, job losses and contracting consumer credit leads to less spending, it seems that many economists just can’t figure out what happened to retail sales in December.

Some earlier reports and estimates this month suggested that December retail sales might have made a recovery over November, and, admittedly, we were surprised and in somewhat of a state of disbelief. However, on the same day we pointed out that December tax sales receipt were down, indicating that sales overall would be down.

Today we get the “official” numbers from the Commerce Department and they confirm the position we have held since the summer of 2009, that retail sales would be lackluster and below expectations.

“The Commerce Department said Thursday that retail sales declined 0.3 percent in December compared with November, much weaker than the 0.5 percent rise that economists had been expecting. Excluding autos, sales dropped by 0.2 percent, also weaker than the 0.3 percent rise analyst had forecast.

For the year, sales fell 6.2 percent, the biggest decline on government records that go back to 1992. The only other year that annual sales fell was in 2008, when they slipped by 0.5 percent.”

We assume anybody with the ability to perform basic mathematics and deductive reasoning probably came to the same conclusion we did months before the holiday season got into full swing. Of course, there are always exceptions, and as usual, it was the economists who didn’t see the depression coming in the first place, that expected sales numbers to outperform. Once again, they were wrong:

“…many economists, puzzled by the retail sales decline that follows reports from retailers of brighter holidays, cautioned that the December figures don’t necessarily signal a big consumer pullback and could be a blip.“

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: When an economist says something, especially if they are employed by the federal government, believe exactly the opposite.

Dog ..See  “Economics - it’s all Lies ! ”

In this case, that means that the December figures DO signal a big consumer pullback. This was the holiday shopping season, you know, the one they tout as the most important time of the year for retailers, where a majority of retailers earn 25% or more of their yearly sales and make or break their yearly numbers. This was the time of the year when consumers were supposed to be spending, because by all indications, the economy was recovering. If it is not a consumer pullback, what is it?

A blip?

Just like the blip we saw the previous month? Or how about the blip in unemployment month over month for all of 2008 and 2009? There’s also that foreclosure blip, you know, where around 2.8 million people lost or were threatened with losing their home in 2009.

Here are some more blips to look for in coming months:

• Retailers will report lower retail sales numbers. In many cases this will lead to retail bankruptcies, probably for some major retailers as well as a host of smaller retail operations.

• Bankrupt retailers will pull of out their commercial real estate locations in droves, setting of the commercial real estate collapse. In fact, the CRE bubble is and has been collapsing, but most mainstream news outlets and economists refuse to discuss it. (See Detroit and Scottsdale as just a couple examples)

• The second wave of mortgage meltdowns will commence starting around April of this year and continue into 2011..

Dog - Derivatives in particular Credit Default Swaps on all of the above will cause further financial collapses and bring on “Meltdown 2.0 – The Finale”

• Credit card defaults will continue to mount as a broke consumer will need to begin choosing between paying essential bills like food, electric and gas instead of paying off debts incurred years ago during the credit bubble.

• Employment, though it may see a slight recovery due to Census hiring (BLIP!), will continue its downward spiral in 2010

But, these are just minor blips on a radar screen. Pay them no mind, because we all know that when you have a bunch of blips going off on a radar screen, the best thing to do is to assume it means nothing.

Author: Mac Slavo
Date: January 15th, 2010
Visit the Author’s Website: http://www.SHTFplan.com/

All the way back in Oct 2008 the Dog was chuckling at the absurdity of the US Debt Counter running out of Zeros, meaning that $ 10 Trillion (!!) was no longer enough..

In case anyone is under any misunderstandings as to the sheer, almost unimaginable size of a trillion Dollars, here’s a trillion dollar pile of $100 bills to enlighten you..

See the little man at the top left there?

And TEN OF THESE warehouse fulls of money borrowed wasn’t enough, in fact just over a year later it’s now officially $12 Trillion..

However as we all know, the official figures are always wrong, optimistic in the extreme, and hiding the real truth, and hence pain..

The Real Figure is in fact…

…and counting.  ..go here to see it running live, it will prob have done a few hundred billion dollars more by then

…who but a complete moron, can’t see that this can only end in tears?

The age of the Goldbug fast approaches

Well, well, what a surprise, Facebook, (or Fuckbook, Shagbook, Stalkbook, knob-book etc etc) as the Dog’s heard various dudes calling it over the years, is facilitating, if not actually responsible for lots of divorces..

...No.. what  ..really ?

“The social networking site was mentioned in one in five of all divorce petitions filed through an internet service.

Divorce-Online’s managing director Mark Keenan said he was ‘really surprised’ to find 989 clients making reference to Facebook in a study of 5,436 cases.

The most common reason seemed to be people having “inappropriate sexual chats” with people they were not supposed to,’ he added.

…Well yea, that, and slipping round shagging them while the wife’s out I suppose?

Let it never be said that the American people aren’t resourceful or lack the capability to work their way through their problems, some have already worked the American Dream v2.0 out quite nicely..

From here.

Do not underestimate how much American spending / economic data  is being supported by the defaulters… walk away from your largest debt and your monthly spending can immediately shooting up.

Even in some pieces in early 2008 we were writing about how for the first time in US history people were sacrificing their houses rather than their credit cards – a complete sea change to previous periods when the house payment was the one thing people would continue paying no matter what.  But when you put almost nothing down into your house (encouraged by policies in the middle part of the decade) – you change people’s behavior.

This is yet another form of “stimulus” – and one not only did we predict would happen in large amounts due to so many being underwater, but I expect to accelerate into 2010.  Strategic default is the official name.

Via WSJ:

Schoolteacher Shana Richey misses the playroom she decorated with Glamour Girl decals for her daughters. Fireman Jay Fernandez misses the custom putting green he installed in his backyard.  But ever since they quit paying their mortgages and walked away from their homes, they’ve discovered that giving up on the American dream has its benefits.  Both now live on the 3100 block of Club Rancho Drive in Palmdale, where a terrible housing market lets them rent luxurious homes — one with a pool for the kids, the other with a golf-course view — for a fraction of their former monthly payments.

“It’s just a better life. It really is,” says Ms. Richey. Before defaulting on her mortgage, she owed about $230,000 more than the home was worth.

People’s increasing willingness to abandon their own piece of America illustrates a paradoxical change wrought by the housing bust: Even as it tarnishes the near-sacred image of home ownership, it might be clearing the way for an economic recovery.

Thanks to a rare confluence of factors — mortgages that far exceed home values and bargain-basement rents — a growing number of families are concluding that the new American dream home is a rental.

Some are leaving behind their homes and mortgages right away, while others are simply halting payments until the bank kicks them out. That’s freeing up cash to use in other ways.  Ms. Richey’s family of five used some of the money to buy season tickets to Disneyland, and plans to take a Carnival cruise to Mexico in March. Mr. Fernandez takes his girlfriend out to dinner more frequently. “We’re saving lots of money,” Ms. Richey says.

The U.S home-ownership rate has charted its biggest decline in more than two decades, falling to 67.6% as of September from a peak of 69.2% in 2004. (the long term range was 65% – and it held steady for decades – until the comibination of “easy money” policies by Alan Greenspan and the “ownership society” ethos of the politicians – owning at any cost is more important than being able to actually make payments on what you owe over the long run.  And even with all these foreclosures and walk aways, we are STILL over the long term average) And more renters are on the way: Credit firm Experian and consulting firm Oliver Wyman forecast that “strategic defaults” by homeowners who can afford to pay are likely to exceed one million in 2009, more than four times 2007’s level.

Sounds wonderful so far… more trips to Disneyland, more cruises, more dinners out.  We all win here, right?

Stiffing the bank is bad for peoples’ credit, and bad for banks. Swelling defaults could also mean more losses for taxpayers through bank bailouts.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities expect 21 million U.S. households to end up owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth by the end of 2010. If one in five of those households defaults, the losses to banks and investors could exceed $400 billion.
As a proportion of the economy, that’s roughly equivalent to the losses suffered in the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

What’s $400 billion among friends?  That’s just the Citigroup (C) bailout ($300B) plus an extra $100 billion on top.  Money is free in this country and grows on trees.  Don’t forget there is another round of fun to happen when all those who are taking FHA loans out now, for 0% down (with use of first time tax ‘credit’ as the downpayment) “strategic” default in 2-4 years.

And we’ll be told we need to do all the same bailouts, handouts over again because it’s important to support the economy via stealing from future generations so more cruises, dinners out, and trips to Disneyland can happen today.

Now as we mentioned last week, American’s wealth has jumped 5% – part of it through the stock market going up but another part is that debt is falling.  [Dec 10, 2009: Americans Net Worth Increases 5% Quarter over Quarter] Why? Well strategic defaults are certainly helping.

The flip side of those losses, though, is massive debt relief that can help offset the pain of rising unemployment and put cash in consumers’ pockets.

Again, this is the ongoing “stimulus” plan that no one really recognizes.  And all it costs is more living standard loss for grandchildren and generations after that.

For the 4.8 million U.S. households that data provider LPS Applied Analytics estimates haven’t paid their mortgages in at least three months, the added cash flow could amount to about $5 billion a month — an injection that in the long term could be worth more than the tax breaks in the Obama administration’s economic-stimulus package.

“It’s a stealth stimulus,” says Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics, a consulting firm specializing in real estate and the California economy. “The quicker these people shed their debts, the faster the economy is going to heal and move forward again.” (wow, someone’s been reading my blog – I used the exact same words… stealth stimulus)

Back to Ms. Ritchey, our teacher, above… she of big smile in the Wall Street piece.  Like many Americans she was living the good life with nothing down, and using the house at an ATM to get the life “she deserves” with the correct ameneties.  Sacrifice for a house she could afford?  That is so Midwestern.

In 2004, she and her husband, Timothy, bought a two-story home on Caspian Drive, near Avenue O-8, with a no-down-payment loan. They took pride in the amenities they installed: a powder room with granite countertops, a backyard pool and play area, and the purple-and-turquoise fantasy playroom upstairs for their three daughters.

These are all amenties, as we add them together over millions of households that via bailouts, backstops, incentive programs, and “free money” from the Fed being borne by future generations.  This is the connection people who are loving life now are simply not connecting the dots on.

The Ritcheys, received a loan modification which cut their payment, (which the bank was paid for of course via taxpayer money), but it still wasn’t to their liking – so they walked and scoured the neighborhood for an even better house now that they could leave their old house on the roll of the taxpayer.

“The Richeys turned down the lowest payment we could offer.”

On one trip, they drove by the house at 3152 Club Rancho Drive. It was bigger than their house on Caspian, had a pool with three waterfalls, and boasted a cascading staircase that Ms. Richey says she could picture her daughters descending on prom night. The rent was $2,195 a month.

You can extrapolate from there with millions of fellow citizens following in these footsteps.

The situation presented Ms. Richey with a quandary now facing more than 10 million U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

A few people still seem to have old fashion thoughts on taking on debts… hopefully we can get rid of them for the “betterment” of our economy.

Tom Sobelman, whose family of four lives across the street from Ms. Richey, at 3127 Club Rancho Drive, sees mortgages as a moral as well as financial obligation. He’s still paying the mortgage on an investment property he owns nearby, despite the fact that the rent is about $1,000 a month short of covering his costs.

Mr. Sobelman, 37, argues that people who choose to default are unfairly benefiting at the expense of taxpayers, who have put trillions of dollars at risk to bail out struggling banks. “All these people are gaming the system, and I’m paying for it,” he says. “My kids are going to be paying it off.”

Someone who gets it.  Thank you Mr. Sobelman.

Moral or not, the individuals who want to shed their mortgage debts are quickly transforming the Palmdale real-estate market.   Adam Robbins, who runs the local Realty World franchise and manages about 80 properties, says about 90% of his prospective tenants are people in Ms. Richey’s situation. So he and other rental managers are loosening rules to accept people who have been through foreclosures.

So now that it has been status quo to “walk away”, credit scores are increasingly meaningless as well.  The new Cramerica.

Oh… as for Mrs. Richey, who is employed on the back of the taxpayer as a public employee (via home owner taxes – how ironic)… well she was also a real estate speculator with other properties.  You can guess what’s going to happen to *those* obligations.

She’s also considering walking away from the mortgages on her two rental properties.
“You take a risk for the American dream,” she says.

What was your risk again? it looks like a heads you win, tails you win proposition – if the property goes up, you use it as an ATM to fund your lifestyle – see your 2004 behavior.

If the property goes down, you still win – just walk away and the taxpayers have it covered.

Thankfully with her strategic decisions, she has money to spend on new furniture – luckily her new home already had the granite and pool so no need to spend money on those things again….

Showing a visitor the personal touches in her new home, including a $1,800 dining set she bought with some of her newly available income…

Fireman Jay Fernandez from the opening of the story?  Not to worry folks – he brings down $8000 a month and now that he has walked away, his BMW is secure.  I know some readers would not be able to sleep at night if they were not confident that his lifestyle was in good shape.

With an income of about $8,300 a month and a rent of $2,200, Mr. Fernandez says he now has the wherewithal to do things he couldn’t when he was stretching to pay the mortgage. He recently went to concerts by Rob Thomas and Mat Kearney. He also kept his black BMW 6 Series coupe, which has payments of about $700 a month.

Of course he could of given up the BMW and bought a reasonable car for cash or a low monthly payment and tried to make his mortgage but… that’s for suckers.

So as we celebrate the economic data and talk about how “resilient” the American consumer is (yet again) let us not forget how it is happening.

America is now full borne banana republic.

Or is it all downhill from here?