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Pridger's Web Host BLOG NOV.
2008 JUL-DEC.
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Sunday, 28 December, 2008 THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW The difference between the 1929 stock market crash and depression that followed, and the present stock market crash and what is following, and likely to develop, are critically significant. The world and the United States have changed almost beyond recognition during the last 79 years. Almost every national advantage that the United States enjoyed in 1929 has been swept away. We do still have the advantage of the world's most powerful naval and military forces, and the world's greatest armory of weapons of mass destruction, but that is essentially the only advantage our nation currently enjoys. While this military power might be considered a great asset, Pridger isn't particularly comforted. In 1929 our nation was still an up and coming industrial powerhouse. We were the world's greatest industrial power. Our balance of payments were in good shape. We were the world's largest creditor nation. Since the earliest years of the Republic our nation had enjoyed a favorable balance of trade. And perhaps most importantly, over a third of the population was rural – largely comprised of productive, relatively self-reliant, family farmers. Our farmers grew all the food we needed and much more, and our industry produced everything else we needed. We were about 95% self-reliant in raw materials and 100% self reliant in food and manufactured goods. In fact one of the initial problems we supposedly faced during the beginning of the Great Depression was "over production" in agriculture and excess industrial capacity. The government had to destroy large quantities of food to in a misbegotten attempt to raise farm prices. But, of course, the problem wasn't overproduction, but a great lack of liquidity as the stock market crash and banking failures had the money supply. People were hungry in the cities as the government carried out destruction of farm surpluses. Large sectors of the population could not buy food because they lacked money, and our money system could not be expanded to alleviate the problem because the Federal Reserve didn't think it would be sound economic policy. So farmers couldn't sell their production, and factories couldn't produce because of a great dearth of purchasing power economy wide. In 1929 the capacity was there, but the money needed to pay the farmers and oil the machinery of industry and commerce was not. Even Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to "prime the (economic) pump" with abundant public works programs fell way short of what was needed. Faulty monetary policy held the nation in an iron grip that prevented the swift recovery that would have otherwise have been possible. Everything is different now. Agriculture is still our biggest industry, but farm policies over the years have encouraged corporate scale factory farms, concentrated agricultural production in the hands of less than 2% of the population upon which the other 98% of the population depends. While production is still very high, those farms are by no means either self-sufficient nor even sustainable. Foreign oil and foreign built agricultural machinery do most of the work. We no longer have the large national food production insurance policy that only a large agrarian sector of independent, diversified, family farmers could provide. In spite of our huge agricultural capacity and production, a huge percentage of our agricultural commodities are produced for export, while we are on the verge of becoming a net food importer. This is a particularly shocking and dangerous development. As for our industrial productive capacity, most of it has been exported to Mexico, China, and elsewhere. It isn't here any more. And since it isn't here, we really don't have it to depend on. We're dependent on others elsewhere for just about everything we need to live the latter day "American life style." We're no longer the agriculturally and industrially independent nation that we were in 1929 – not even close. Our trusty leaders have very short-sightedly, over a period of decades, internationalized our economy for us. International trade is no longer the icing on the cake that it once was and still should be. It's practically the whole cake! We don't trade as we once did as a supplement to national economic activity. We now literally depend on international trade for survival. And much worse – we don't trade nearly as much as we simply buy. And worse yet – we have come to the point where we buy on credit! This is not sound economics – it's shear madness! Common sense tells us that it would be a lot easier to manage a national economy than an international economy. National economies are the home economy. You might say it's easier to keep one's own house in order than to have everybody in the neighborhood trying to coordinate a keeping each others' houses in order. We live in our own houses, take pride in our own houses, and thus should take care of our own houses ourselves. But on the national level, we no longer do that. Our house is open to the messes made by both ourselves and others, and their houses are being messed up by us as well as them. We have forgotten what sound economics are all about. After 1929, and throughout the Great Depression, we struggled to get our economy running again. We had something to work with then, and eventually succeeded. Today our economy is so hollowed out and weak, and so mixed up with the rest of the world, that putting Humpty Dumpty back together again hasn't even occurred to the national leadership yet. The national leadership didn't really get us out of the Great Depression, because they had continued to operate under a fatally flawed monetary system. It was war that got us out of the depression. The Great Depression was caused by a contracting money supply though we had plenty of industrial capacity. Today the situation is reversed. We've got money spewing forth like Old Faithful, but (with all our factories in Mexico, China, and elsewhere) we don't have the domestic industrial capacity to put it to proper use. Today we labor under the same fatally flawed monetary system, but under totally different circumstances. Money – debt money – is being created by the trillions to "prime the pump." But it won't work because the pump itself is broken. The pump would be industrial capacity. With industrial capacity, people could be put back to work. But our industrial capacity is still contracting. That's gone. So the money is being pumped into the equally broken financial system. We're pumping money to the money lords in hopes that trickle down might work as it was supposed to. But it won't work. During the Great Depression, money couldn't be inflated without decoupling it from gold, which the president and Congress were afraid to do. So the country suffered from a crippling deflationary situation. Today gold is no longer a restraint, so money is being inflated to beat the band. But that money isn't "national currency" free for the printing, as it could be. As the money is inflated, so is the national debt! This is the Ponzi scheme to end all Ponzi schemes. We're fighting fire with gasoline! Economic Armageddon is the only result that can come of it. And, in the end, massive war may once again become the only possible "remedy." John Q. Pridger Saturday, 20 December, 2008 OBAMA'S DIFFICULT ROW TO HOE The great outcry against Obama's inaugural invitation to Pastor Rick Warren shows just how impossibly divided we have become as a nation, and how far we have come from our religious roots. The very idea that homosexuals, as a distinct class with political clout, now have a voice that must be heard – and fully expect to be catered to by a president elect is simply mind numbing. How can our nation be reconciled while it is still in the process of dividing and splintering itself into factions and demanding pressure groups? Will celebrating diversity bring us together or will it finally splinter us beyond reconciliation? Our country has ceased to exist as we once knew it – or thought we knew it. Pressure groups have ruled rather than the majority. The majority has been disenfranchised by having its traditional beliefs and traditions – even its religion and history – made politically incorrect. Who has been doing this? A combination of ideological subversives and ostensibly legitimate pressure groups, including civil rights organizations. The pressure groups represent the oppressed, and the majority represents the oppressors. We have been told that the majority is oppression personified so long that may believe it. Since everybody, including the majority, hates oppression and the oppressive, the majority has lost it's authority and political traction. Democracy and majority rule have deteriorated into de facto political travesties. Both philosophers and realists had predicted as much. Today, the only places majority rule reigns supreme are in the fields of consumption – and for years the real vote has only been counted at the Walmart checkout register. And the vote has told our rulers that the majority has been pleased with what they have provided. Cheap imports. Thus free trade and globalism are good. We "progressed" under false democracy until finally a relatively poor person could purchase a Mc Mansion at an inflated price with no money down and mortgage payments that just satisfy interest requirements. Alas! Oppression of another sort has reared its ugly head. Reality. Consumption not only has limits, but hidden costs as well. This forced realization is being brought home with a vengeance. We will probably soon learn of the real cost of those cheap imports still abundantly available on Walmart shelves. And the news will not be good. Change is threatening to totally rearrange the deck – again. Not the changes Barack Obama has promised, but the changes that will come as the result of the financial and economic meltdowns presently in progress. Even that seemingly invulnerable giant Walmart will not be immune from the changes we have in store. Things may get pretty bad, and this will result in a change in the way votes are counted, and which votes are counted. This is a time when minority pressure groups would be best advised to keep a very low profile, because when the majority begins to feel the sort of desperation and distress that the peoples of Third World countries have known, it will be looking for scapegoats. And the scapegoats are going to be easy to find, and those associated with them will pay the price whether guilty of anything or not. That has always been the sad story of fallen civilizations. The dispossessed majority will become a very large, and dangerous – a pressure group in its own right. Change of one kind or another is coming. AMERICA, AS A FALLEN NATION? To leap to another level, and illustrate how things are changing, it has come to Pridger's attention that some of our foreign benefactors are becoming so alarmed at our national misfortune that a Marshall Plan is being proposed to rescue the United States. The Marshall Plan, of course, was the plan by which the United States, as the grand victor of World War Two, spent $13 billion or so to help rebuild war ravaged Europe, including what had become West Germany, our former enemy. We extended assistance to Japan too, awarding it with ever-greater access to our own consumer markets. Toyota has surpassed all of our Big Three in the domestic automobile market. Japan captured almost our entire electronics market. And now we have made the laborers of China our primary producer for our massive consumer market. In short, we quit creating most of our own national wealth and delegated it to others elsewhere. But our astute leaders forgot that if a nation does not create its own wealth, the only way to get the wealth (money) required to satisfy the consumptive lifestyle, to which it had become accustomed, is to borrow it. Borrowed wealth is not wealth owned, but wealth owed – indebtedness. Akio Mikuni, president of the Japanese credit ratings agency Mikuni & Co., suggests that Japan, which is second only to China as a U.S. creditor, should take the drastic measure of forgiving that debt. The following is from http://www.bloomberg.com. Japan Should Scrap U.S. Debt...By Stanley White and Shigeki Nozawa We hear a lot about upside down or "underwater" mortgages these days. But housing mortgages aren't the only things that are upside down. Thanks to our very own Washington brain trust our nation is hanging by its heels. So, here we are, the world's only super power, the great winner of World War II – and supposedly the world's richest nation – in need of charity from one of the nations we defeated only sixty years ago. This is more than just a little ironic. But it does go to show that things have changed. Things are somewhat upside down to say the least. And things are going to change much more as the next president takes office and attempts to work his expected miracles. If he successfully enlists the financial support of Japan and China to help rebuild our infrastructure, he may pull us through. But, after it's all said and done, who will own this country? We forgave a lot of debts after World War II. What would happen if the present owners of all the bad mortgages which have been marketed around the world turned up to take possession of the subject real estate? What if Japanese Chinese came to take possession of all they have claim to in this country? Not only would it serve us right, but their presence would give new life to a nation fallen on hard times. You could be sure that business and manufacturing would boom again. But this would no longer be the nation it once started out to be. Nor would it be the nation that liberal utopians have envisioned and promoted for the last century. There would be an entirely different pecking order. And the same ones would be at the bottom. John Q. Pridger PROVOCATEURS GALORE In addition to the trials and troubles to which we are subjected to by the "ordinary" manifestations of global economic meltdown – things we see and hear everyday in the mass media news casts – there seems to be something else going on. There may be something big and sinister underway, or maybe it's all Internet bunk. But there are clearly people out there doing their damnedest to provoke some sort of Armageddon scenario. And it is impossible to tell where it is really coming from. Things are bad enough, and they are likely to get worse before they get better. We don't really need any more mass chaos than is already in the pipeline due to the "natural course" of unfolding events. But there are those who are blithely promoting that very thing. If you are not already following the "developments" and "threats" being aired by the "far out" ends of Internet media, Pridger advises just watching network TV. No good can come from attempts to make an already bleak outlook any worse than it needs to be. And no good will come of kind of mass hysteria certain Internet "news sources" seem to be attempting to promote. But! Pridger advises taking sensible steps to protect yourself from possible hard times ahead. "Be Prepared" is the old Boy Scout motto, and this is a time when you want to be prepared for some of the unthinkables. Keep enough food and cash in your home to weather such things as periods when it may become difficult to do ordinary grocery shopping, cash a check, or withdraw money from banks or ATMs. There may come a time when "business as usual" will be interrupted. We hope things will smooth out and remain more or less "normal" – and that the doom-sayers will turn out to be wrong. But there are no guarantees. Beyond doubt, we're entering a new era of our history. John Q. Pridger Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 BIG CONTROVERSY – NO CAKE FOR LITTLE ADOLF HITLER! The parents of three year old Adolf Hitler Campbell ran into a little bigotry when they ordered a birthday cake for their son. The local ShopRite supermarket (in Greenwich, N.J.), refused to put "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler" on the cake. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/16/national/main4672328.shtml That just goes to show how 75 years of bad press and an historical event like the Holocaust can poison a simple and perfectly good name. Adolf Hitler is perhaps the only patently poison name we have. Chances are, had the poor kid been named Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, the ShopRite crew would have laughed it off and put the name on a cake without thinking twice. Maybe not. Some people are incredibly bigoted. Only a few years ago there might have been some who would have balked at a name such as Barack Hussein Obama. It sounds awfully Islamic and terrorist. But we've somehow learned that not all men named Hussein are devil's incarnate. We've become very tolerant. Tolerant enough to elect Barack Obama president of the United States. But we've still got an irrational hang-up with regard to the names Adolf and Hitler. It's about time we realize that while Adolf Hitler, the dictator on Nazi Germany, may have been a bad guy, other Adolf Hitlers aren't necessarily cast in the same mold. Names are just names after all. It's time to get over irrationally bigoted attitudes. The Campbells' other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, but they will not be likely to run into the sort of problems Adolf has had. A lot of people are leaving comments critical of the parents who would give a child such a name as Adolf Hitler. They fear the name will make the child stand out, and suffer discrimination at the hands of bigoted children. Maybe so. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler Campbell has just as much right to grow up to be president as anybody else. In fact, with a name such as that, he might have a better chance than most. In the end, WalMart made the boy a cake. WalMart may not necessarily have a heart, but it knows one man's money is just as good as the next. Will the offending WalMart suffer a boycott? Pridger wouldn't be surprised. We'll have to wait and see. John Q. Pridger Sunday, 14 December, 2008 SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LIVING THE DREAM Bernard Madoff has been living the new American dream for over 30 years, and may now spend the rest of his life in prison. He took full advantage of his opportunities and has been an icon in the world of hedge fund investments, with his Madoff Investment Securities – a $17 billion hedge fund company – apparently milking his investors for as much as $50 billion over the years. He admitted "It's all just one big lie." He's been operating a Ponzi scheme. Madoff was paying great returns to his investors, using new investment money to pay the dividends to previous investors. All went well until too many investors decided to withdraw their principle. It simply wasn't there. Madoff would have continued being filthy rich if he had run and honest table, but rather that multiple millions of dollars, he wanted multiple billions. Apparently he had an expensive appetite. He's only one guy – taking just a little bit more than his share of the pie! We hope there aren't too many more of them out there soon to be discovered. But there are probably a few more like him. We don't need people like that. But then, our government – our so-called representatives – have allowed our economy to operate as a multi-tiered Ponzi scheme for generations. The Federal Reserve System has been operating since 1914. In the early 1970s its Ponzi scheme character went onto steroids (with the ready and willing assistance of a spendthrift Congress), and this has been obvious to all who cared to look ever since. We should have known that a debt money system is impossible to sustain. But it did give people like Bernard Madoff great opportunities until the game played itself out. When our debt-based money became the global reserve currency, it went on to infect the world. There was no longer any effective way to control our national money supply, nor our own debt. The system has come to the inevitable impasse, and now we've got to deal with it. Two hundred and six years ago, Thomas Jefferson warned us.
Eighty five years ago our so-called representatives did exactly what Jefferson warned against, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Who is Thomas Jefferson to our latter day government brain trust? Just another dead white man. The Washington economic brain trust has told us that "Times have changed. Things are different now." The wisdom of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other founding fathers, simply don't apply any more. What did they know of modern finance and geopolitical circumstances? We might more appropriately ask, "What do our present leaders know of modern finance geopolitical circumstances? What do they know of economic basics and essentials? What do they know of anything concerning political economy? What do the know of history? What do they know of anything at all? Apparently nothing. All they had was some sort of a vision for a New World Order which, of course, wasn't even their idea. Jefferson had also often warned of the dangers of a large standing army. Now we see what he was talking about. The business of a large standing army is war, and the war machine is going to find employment whether war is called for or not. If opportunities for war are not readily forthcoming, the war has to be provoked in some manner. It's difficult to fathom how any supposedly democratically elected government could possibly get so many things as consistently wrong for so long as ours has. Every warning, and all of the advise, of our wisest founders has been ignored – and every single thing they warned of and advised against has come to pass. So it isn't so surprising that one man has been able to make off with $50 billion dollars. He merely took advantage of the opportunities left open to him. He took his lead from the government which has very effectively set the example. Now the government is rescuing other crooks with trillions of dollars – in order to keep the national Ponzi scheme functioning. They are using money that will have to be repaid back by future taxpayers. If they can't repay it, more America's assets must be forfeited. The nation is already effectively mortgaged to the foreign competition. John Q. Pridger WE STILL DO SOME THINGS RIGHT In spite of our government's de facto ongoing sabotage of Americans and the American economy, there's still a lot of things here that work pretty well. But the current economic crisis is threatening to bring more and more of our "functioning" industries down. Few of us have had to go hungry yet, but there's no guarantee that this won't change before the dust finally settles and leaves us to try to pick up the pieces. Almost everybody, and all major functioning industries, long ago fell into the debt financing trap. Easy money through cheap credit was the bait. The ultimate trap is slavery, or some facsimile thereof. It is going to become much more difficult for functioning industries to continue to operate on the basis of borrowing today against tomorrow's projected profits. It's time to go back to the old way, of operating on profits and expanding, if expansion is desired, on savings. John Q. Pridger Saturday, 13 December, 2008 MAKING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM The impossible dream is one destined to end in a nightmare. An abundance of money – circulating currency – is necessary for a prosperous economy and society. Anybody would realize this. But what would happen if all the money in circulation had to be paid back to somebody, plus interest? Exactly what is happening today – an eventual economic melt down. The impossible dream has resulted in a nightmare. Now the economy needs to be bailed out of a gigantic, nightmarish, mess. How is it being bailed out? By printing trillions of additional dollars – all of which will have to be paid back with interest! Can anybody, or any thing, borrow itself out of debt? Certainly not. But our trusty leaders are making the desperate attempt. With the Bureau of Engraving printing presses working overtime to print trillions of new Federal Reserve Notes with which to bail out the economy, one cannot help but wonder why they aren't printing United States Notes instead? It would make sense to do so, because they would circulated and buy things, just like Federal Reserve Notes, but would not have to be paid back. Greenbacks are made to circulate, rather than circulate and bite. United States Notes are "real" greenbacks – our own money. Federal Reserve Notes are banker money that masquerade as greenbacks. Both are "legal tender." Both are fiat currencies. Both are essentially created out of thin air. Both are worth nothing more than what they will buy in the marketplace. And both are bottomed on the "full faith and credit of the nation." But one is "ours" and one is "theirs." One would be free for our use, and the other must be paid back with interest. "Theirs" refers to the banking money monopoly – the Federal Reserve System, which is a private cartel, empowered by an act of Congress in 1913.
As can be seen in the above Treasury description of the greenback, U.S. Notes are still an official part of our currency. But the Treasury quit issuing them, and none have been circulated since January 21, 1971. Since that time we've been using Federal Reserve bank notes as our sole circulating currency. Because of this, we have an impossibly large, exponentially growing, and literally un-payable, national debt. Because of this, we have come to an impossible economic impasse. That's were we are today in our present economic situation. And we are trying to bail ourselves out through the largest debt expansion in the history of modern economics. In effect, we're trying to put a fire out with a mixture of pure gasoline and oxygen! Why not use water? They tell us that printing "government money" would be inflationary. But it would be much better to inflate the money supply with greenbacks than with the double or triple whammy of Federal Reserve Notes. Inflation of the Fed money supply is also inflation of the national debt! We get the devalued inflation dollars, but also shoulder the obligation to pay them all back with interest! How crazy can you get? But this is the system
Congress, in all its wisdom, adopted for us. They have bought the line that Federal Reserved
notes serve the function of United States Notes, forgetting that they also do
much more. It has taken 85 years for the full message to come through. But it
seems nobody is paying attention to the root of the problem. They are rescuing
crooks and fools rather than the people and the nation.
John Q. Pridger Thursday, 11 December, 2008 THE DEBT ECONOMY IS AN IMPOSSIBLE ECONOMY TO FIX A debt based monetary system is ultimately an impossible system to sustain. And an economy based on such a system is always doomed to collapse. Bubbles are the natural formations of a debt based economy. It can only thrive on bubbles, for the whole thing is ultimately nothing but an array of bubbles. This sort of a system can only come into being when people have been deluded and have taken leave of their senses. The principles of sound economics have been known since the first human communities were established. But shysters, being smart people, always manage to take advantage of the weak. At the core of our national economic malady is the system behind the system. This, of course, is nothing less than the Federal Reserve System. If you would learn what it is, you'd find out what our problem is. The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin is a wonderful introduction. If you can't get your hands on the book, listen to the audio/video Pat Buchanan has posted for us. It's over an hour long, but well worth taking the time to listen to if you'd like to understand the roots and machinery of our systemic problem: http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/12/video-the-creature-from-jekyll-island/ You can't really fix a debt economy with more debt. There is only one thing to do, correct the system. Pay and forgive debts, and get onto a pay as you go basis. John Q. Pridger HYPING "DEVALUATION" AS AN ECONOMIC FIX? A Forbes article by Frank Beck entitled "Dollar Devaluation To Fix The Great Recession" demonstrate just how out of whack economic thinking has become, but during "normal" times as well as our present extraordinary times. He says:
Pridger couldn't think of anything sillier than intentionally "devaluing" the dollar in order to fix the current recession or help borrowers. To "help submerged borrowers" is to sabotage frugal workers and savers who had enough sense to stay away from crippling debt. Devaluation is already the story of the dollar. Our dollar had been on devaluation autopilot since we left the gold standard. That's what we call inflation! We already have a two cent dollar in terms of the buying power of dollars at the turn of the twentieth century. Mr. Beck suggests it would help to have a penny dollar – that maybe we could pull ourselves out of our economic woes if only the dollar was worth about half as much as it is today! He "reminds" us that Franklin D. Roosevelt devalued the dollar 41%, in terms of gold, in 1933-1934, and thereby brought us out of the depression. The main thing that he leaves out is that the Great Depression got worse and lingered on until we started mobilizing for war in 1939. But there was no inflation, in spite of the devaluation. There was deflation, because the economy had already totally collapsed and money disappeared from circulation. This in spite of the New Deal and various recovery and jobs programs. Even devalued gold based dollars were too dear. Today inflation, which is nothing more than automatic devaluation due to pumping up the money supply, is the big problem – in spite of the fact trillions of dollars have simply disappeared into dollar heaven in the stock market collapse and toxic bond markets. The very idea of devaluing the dollar more than it is being devalued is ludicrous. Devalue it against what? For what reason? Well, Mr. Beck says it will boost equities in all assets, especially real estate, helping homeowners and other borrowers. Their upside down mortgages will be miraculously righted! It will cheapen everybody's debts, so they can be paid back in cheaper dollars. This is the same sort of smoke that's been dogging us since financial capital took over the economy – and which has literally "ruined" the economy. Borrow cheap dollars! Pay the loan back in cheaper dollars! The smart thing to do! Debt – the more the better – was supposed to be the smart thing! Saving is dumb. And look where it has go us. Gone are the days when businesses and the economy could stand on their own bottoms without the crutch of massive debt. And now the crutch has collapsed. Of course, all prices on everything go up when currency is devalued. But Mr. Beck assumes that all wages and other incomes will automatically, or magically, go up so that everybody will have the same incomes relative to prices. How can he make that assumption? Jobs are disappearing, and wages are not being pressured upward. Most Americans are already having to learn to do with considerably less. One big example: If the Big Three automakers are to survive, the American industrial wage – the once wide-spread, and always ascending, union scale (which was for decades the tide that raised all boats) – is going to have to go down by about 50%! It has to come down because of the new playing field created by "free trade," lost domestic markets, globalism, and the New World DisOrder that our trusty leaders and economic advisors have been creating. Pridger, having been retired on a fixed income for four years, has already seen about a 30% loss of purchasing power. A further 50% devaluation of the dollar will have him looking for a new career in a depressed, increasingly jobless, economy full of newly unemployed competitors. And Pridger isn't alone. Half the formerly well paid work force is retired on the same sort of fixed income. This is a big chunk of the economic problem facing us squarely in the face. The New New Deal that Barack Obama is going to have to come up with is going to have to include a jobs program not only for displaced workers and the potentially active, but for the old and feeble as well. All industries are downsizing, not hiring. And they aren't giving out many raises to the employees lucky enough to still have jobs. Even CEOs of large corporations are going to have to take some hits, and be forced to get by on fewer millions. A devaluation of the dollar is already here. The idea of "devaluing" it more, in one big luscious chunk, isn't going to do anything but further impoverish everybody trying to hold on to their shrinking savings, investments, and incomes. $1.50 gas after $4.00 gas actually helps both working and poor people. Making it $4.00 again, by devaluing the dollar, won't help us a bit. Intentional devaluation is a fix we don't need! John Q. Pridger Sunday, 7 December, 2008 PEARL HARBOR DAY – A DAY THAT LIVES IN INFAMY This is the anniversary of perhaps the most significant day in American history. As the signal event that officially took America into World War II, it actually signaled the end of the world as we had known it – and arguably the beginning of the end of our constitutional republic. It was the end of an era and the dawn of a new one. Yet, the second Great War rescued the nation from the decade of the Great Depression – something that is once again threatening. The day that lives in infamy signaled the end of National Socialism's great successes in Germany, the Japanese Empire, and all the great European Colonial Empires, even as the "West," epitomized by the United States, came to the apex of global power. Two superpowers were born of the ravages of World War II – the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has subsequently collapsed, and it now it appears the United States is in a state of economic collapse after having "gained the world." Ironically, the 11th of September, 2001, will also live on as a day of infamy – one with as much fallout as that earlier day when great powers were in play. Today, great forces are in play though only one of them is a great empirical military power. Empires are again collapsing. Desperation will ensue and great powers may clash again in order to bring a period of stability. December 7th is also a particularly significant personal anniversary for Pridger. It was on or about December 7th, 1941 that he was conceived. This is Pridger's "Conception Day" – a holiday on Paradise Ridge. Pridger was conceived in infamy and destined to witness the most critical period of American history. John Q. Pridger SOMETHING FISHY? There's something mighty fishy going on when the smartest financial brains in the world lead us down a primrose path to our present economic impasse. Back in the 90s, the first time Pridger ever heard of derivatives, and tried to get a grasp on what they were, he apparently saw things more clearly than the financial experts. Time has proven that Pridger was right and the smart ones were either really stupid, or just downright criminally shortsighted. Pridger saw derivatives as "the AIDS of the financial world" – and that simplistic description has turned out right on the money. Just another ragged feather in Pridger's tattered cap. John Q. Pridger MONETIZING BAD DEBT It was bad enough to monetize debt – as if debt was a viable substitute for gold – but securitizing bad debt made the straw that broke the camel's back. In the end, securitizing bad debt (now called toxic securities), was the same as monetizing them. The printing presses of the Federal Reserve are even now making it so. SO BAD IT'S GOOD Gas prices are down, and that's good. Food and other commodity prices are down too. And that's good. Even the price of gold and silver are down. That would be a good thing too, except for one thing. In spite of the relatively flat or low price, stocks of gold and silver are being stressed beyond steepening demand. This seems a very strange phenomena, and it sends the wrong message, or at least a very confusing message. One message is that this must be the right time to buy gold or silver. But though the prices are cheap, supplies are short, and getting shorter fast. If you try to buy, you may be told, "Sorry, temporarily out of stock." If there really is a free market out there, one would think this would have already have caused a sharp spike in the spot market price of of gold, but it hasn't. Yet. Something is rotten in Denmark, you can bet on that! Stand by for surprises. CONFUSION OF OPPOSITES? Well, what's it going to be, inflation or deflation? That is the question. Can it be both? The money supply is being inflated at breakneck speed. But false market values are evaporating at a rate that is exceeding the rate of inflation of the currency. So what will it be in the end? Or, just how will it end? That's the sixty-four trillion dollar question. The truth of the matter is that the national and global financial situation we're in today has no exact parallel in history. We're in the Wonderful New World. Things are different now. Unfortunately, lacking the will to correct our course, the "final solution" may be just what that term implies. Some facsimile of Armageddon, such as another "total" global war. We could get rid of a lot of potential terrorists that way. A 50% percent reduction of the global population would work wonders on the threat of global warming. A nuclear winter may actually halt it in its tracks. Actually, it's too late to correct our course. We've already hit the iceberg. We'll either get into the life boats (though they be far too few), founder in icy water, or go down with the ship. Or they'll find some way to patch the hole in the ship, and forge on toward another iceberg. All of this would be hilariously funny, but it's going to cause all of us so much distress, we'll scarcely be able to laugh. John Q. Pridger AMERICA IN RECEIVERSHIP? Next year, or maybe the next, may be the year when government revenues fail to rise, and federal tax receipts from all sources fail to be capable of servicing the national debt. That will be the year we find out that GDP, and being the richest nation on earth, don't mean beans! Agreements will have to be made among our creditors on just how the United States ought to be carved up and divided. Can the rest of the world do that to the world's only superpower? Well, maybe it depends on who the Commander-In-Chief is. A world war might save the day, if not the nation and the world. All the rules will have to be thrown out the window, and a new dispensation declared. Maybe Barack will do it for us, and declare an Obamination! Or maybe there is a better, more peaceable, way – a new American Declaration of Independence. Maybe Obama could engineer this alternative, and a peaceful Obamanation declared to save the world. Stay tuned. John Q. Pridger Saturday, 6 December, 2008 TEMPEST IN A TEA POT? The "qualification controversy" with regards to president elect Obama's birth is interesting. One wonders what the public reaction would be if, several months or years into the Obama administration, it came to light that our president had actually been born in Kenya? Maybe it's time Congress more specifically defines the meaning of a "natural born citizen." It's clear that John McCain is a natural born citizen, because he was born to two American citizens in a U.S. Military hospital on a U.S. Military base, in the Panama Canal Zone, which at that time was U.S. Soil "in perpetuity." Barack Obama is alleged and certified to have been born on U.S. soil in Hawaii. However there is still some doubt about this in some minds – and with what appears good reason. The story going around, of course, is that Barack's teenage American mother and Kenyan father were in Kenya just prior to the impending birth. The birth was so near when the young mother attempted to return to Hawaii that she wasn't allowed to fly. The child was then born in Kenya and the mother and baby flew to Honolulu as soon as they were able thereafter. Witnesses in Kenya reportedly attest to the alleged fact that he was born in Kenya. His paternal relatives, and the Luo tribe, certainly claim and embrace him with enthusiasm, wherever he was born. While the story is vigorously denied by Obama, his supporters, and his grandparents, there appears to be no solid documentary evidence to back up their claims – or any claims. This is rather peculiar, to say the least, when it comes to a man who has been elected to the office of the U.S. presidency. But there are plenty of hair splitting technicalities that can be brought to bear upon such a case (without even getting into the other complications of Indonesian residence, possibly adoption, Moslem training, and naturalization, etc.). The truth appears that the only hard evidence that Barack was born Hawaii is a computer printed Hawaiian "birth certificate" of relatively recent vintage. No contemporary documentation from 1961 seems to be available. The appearance is that something is being carefully hidden. If the media had raised doubts about Barack's birth place, it would have been very difficult for Obama to have run for the presidency, much less to have won the election. The wonder is that such a potentially embarrassing circumstance could have been overlooked, or covered up, in the first place. Obama ran, was nominated, and has been elected despite all. He's going to become the president whether he was technically, constitutionally, qualified or not – whether he was born in Kenya or Honolulu, Hawaii. Pridger will not be surprised if we eventually learn that Obama was born in Kenya. If such a circumstance comes to light, it will likely be well after he has been installed in office. The nation will be embarrassed to learn it has unwittingly elected its first foreign born – possibly unconstitutional – president. That certainly won't be the first unconstitutional thing that has transpired in the last two centuries of American government. The Hawaiian birth certificate that has been made public is almost undoubtedly genuine. But...! That "birth" certificate is not a birth certificate issued in 1961. It's obviously a certificate produced relatively recently, during the computer age. And it does not have all the details of an actual traditional birth certificate as we know them. In effect, it is merely a certification by the State of Hawaii. However, in 1961 it was probably possible to register a child born in a foreign country to an American parent and have it recorded as if the birth had been in the United States. In that case, an official U.S. "record of birth" would be put on the record and a certificate issued. But, as in the case of the birth certificate we've all seen, this would not be true evidence as to where the birth actually took place. This was explained to Pridger when he recorded the births of his own foreign-born children a few years after their birth. Soon after their birth Pridger had been careful to have their birth recorded by the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and the embassy issued "certificates" of birth of an "American born abroad." The local county recorder told Pridger that "formerly" such births could have been registered and recorded as if the births had actually taken place locally, but that option was no longer available circa 1977. At that time, the Embassy-issued birth records could only be recorded in the same manner other documents are recorded. The place of birth remained Saigon. The children, however, were American citizens – but perhaps not "natural born citizens" – by virtue of Pridger's own citizenship.
So, it appears possible that Obama's birth might have taken place in Kenya and then recorded as a birth that took place in Hawaii. The fact that apparently nobody has been able to produce a hospital record of Obama's birth from any Honolulu hospital lends credence to this scenario. If Barack was born in a private residence (very unusual in 1961), there would have been a record of such birth when it was registered. Apparently no birth doctor or midwife has come forward either. And certainly there would have been a full-fledged birth certificate with all pertinent information issued. The troubling thing, if this is the case, would be that the absolute truth has not been forthcoming for some strange reason. It has apparently been resolutely hidden in order to insure that Barack could be elected the first black president. What should we make of such a situation? Who anointed Barack Obama to become president? And what is the true significance of his election? Christ, anti-Christ, or pretender – or perhaps the hapless tool of mysterious forces hidden from our view? Provocative questions. Could it perhaps have been Ye Olde British Round Table Group that anointed him? If Obama was born in Kenya, he may technically still be a British subject. (Kenya wasn't granted independence until 12 December 1963.) Wouldn't that be a hoot? John Q. Pridger Friday, 5 December, 2008 SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL REVISITED
Few bothered to listen in 1973 when E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful was published. There is little wonder, since not even the OPEC oil embargo and monetary crises were heeded for what they inevitably foreshadowed. In fact our leaders in Washington already had a new vision to "solve problems by using the same kind of thinking they had used when we created the problems." The way to solve problems was to compound them in such way to obscure reality – to make a bigger problem in the future would appear to be the solution of the present. That's how the best and the brightest steered our nation to the current economic catastrophe – truth and common sense be damned! The train of state was obviously barreling down the wrong track, and the solution was to pile on more steam.
See: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/index.html By 1973 we were off of the gold monetary standard and on the brink of a totally new day in finance and public spending. We were facing a sea change in fiscal thinking. President Nixon, after slamming the gold window, said, "We are all Keynesians now." Deficit spending economics, balloon markets, and a Ponzi monetary system combined to deliver up what Pridger's old Pappy called the Wonderful New World. Voodoo Economics became the science of inversed monetary, investment, and fiscal logic. We went from being a surplus trading nation to a deficit trade position. Soon we went from being the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor nation. Debt came to be viewed as wealth. Business boomed as never before, and vast fortunes were made, debt being the engine of innovation. Congress became more and more adept at raising the debt ceiling. We'd soon own and rule the world, because we owed it so much that the creditor became the slave of the debtor. Things, to say the least, were turned upside down. Only one major thing was overlooked. The system was inherently unstable and non-sustainable. So much for the visionaries who were lighting our path and ignoring the enlightened economic philosophy of men like E. F. Schumacher. As an old TV personality once quipped, "Wherever you go – there you are!" John Q. Pridger About and by E. F. Schumacher: http://www.schumacher.org.uk/about_efschumacher.htm... http://www.schumacher.org.uk...efschumacher_caring-for-real_17-9-77.pdf Wednesday, 3 December, 2008 SECRETARY OF COMMERCE Bill Richards, as the Secretary of Commerce designate, is already repeating some of the same old flawed free trade/fair trade rhetoric, "American businesses have to be helped to export more." That's a repeat of the same mistakes we were supposed to have already made, but didn't because our markets had been given away to exporting countries who can under-bid American labor by large margins. What Bill Richards should be saying is that "American businesses should be made to produce here rather than elsewhere" and produce for our own market as it once did. No nation can become great by being an exporting nation. An export economy is a impoverished economy, unless it is exporting an abundant natural resource, as in the case of several oil exporting nations. But while those nations may have become rich and prosperous, they have not become either great nor anything like self-reliant. Without their oil reserves, they would quickly return to less than what they were before they struck oil. Less, because before the big oil export bonanza they could at least stand on their own bottoms. Because the Arab nations were so dry and generally useless, they had always been great traders out of necessity. America didn't become a great and prosperous nation because it could export cotton and tobacco to England. In fact it took slave labor in order to grow and export those commodities at a profit. American farmers not in the plantation league prospered because they grew food and tobacco crops for the American market. They sold their produce at American prices. And American prices rose because America also became a great manufacturing nation, producing American products for the American market. Trade was profitable, of course, and the United States was always a robust trading nation. But the American government knew that it had to protect the American market from imports of agricultural and manufactured products that might be more cheaply purchased from abroad, because they were produced by nearly slave labor – whether serfs or displaced serfs put to work in factories. We exported only our excess production, once our own domestic needs were satisfied. And we imported only those things that could not be easily grown or manufactured here by American labor. For the first 75 years our major exports remained cotton and tobacco, and we continued to use slave labor to produce it. Once we shed our dependence on the "peculiar institution" the United States learned to live exclusively on the fruits of it's own labor and resources. The rest is history. Unfortunately, we've lost our way again, depending on the cheap labor of others elsewhere to produce the things we need. It's foolish to think we can regain our national prosperity and prestige by producing for those same "others elsewhere." We've got to produce for ourselves! John Q. Pridger THE ILLUMINATI Somebody made a good point:
Pridger has little doubt there IS an operational Illuminati. It doesn't answer to that name, of course. Nor does it answer to anybody – much less any democratic processes. Pridger won't get into it here, but be known that it does not have a national brand stamped on it – and after the world has sorted out its current economic malaise, it will still be in charge. It's work is being done. It looks like our political leaders have merely embarked on a random Ponzi scheme ending up with a game of "Pickup Sticks." But if Pridger's hunch is correct, our present economic collapse was part of a larger game that is very much under control. As in all other things, there is good illuminism and bad illuminism. There are good smart guys and bad ones. One analogy that Pridger has made was that the American Revolution was conducted by the good ones, and the French Revolution was conducted by the bad ones. But, of course, being an American, Pridger is a little biased. But the fact that the French Revolution resulted in a bloodbath and a lot of "off with their heads!" justice, gives the American Revolution a better score from a Christian perspective. This would indicate that there was at that time a radical split in the movement which emanated from the European Enlightenment. The American branch of the Illuminati got it right, and the French Illuminati got it wrong. It was the difference between what might be referred to Christian and non-Christian illuminism. Today Christianity and religion are irrelevant to the Illuminati. The good guys are out of power, and have been for a century or more. "They" do, however, uses scripture and religion as tools to divide and confuse the faithful – and to thus attain their own ends. Those ends aren't so difficult to understand, however. They consist of self-preservation and continued influence over global affairs, with the goal of ultimate power and control over the affairs of men. In all probability their influence has put Barack Obama at the helm of the American ship of state. And it has happened that way for a reason – a reason which has not yet been precisely revealed. John Q. Pridger MORE AMEROS Hal Turner has brought more "news" of Amero. This time the paper version. The Russian newspaper, Provda, has noticed too: http://english.pravda.ru/world/...amero-0.
Wonder whose printing them? The U.S. Treasury? Unlikely, though it might have outsourced the job. They're possibly being printed in China for export to the future North American Union. Just a speculative guess, of course. Perhaps they will first appear in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, as change at Walmart check out counters. John Q. Pridger Tuesday, 2 December, 2008 WHAT IS WRONG WITH HAL TURNER? It's pretty difficult to swallow or understand Hal Turner these days. http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/ It appears that he is determined to be banned from every avenue of internet mass communication. Perhaps Pridger is missing something. On the face of it, besides being an unabashed white supremacist, Hal seems to be openly advocating not only revolution, but the individual and personal targeting everybody in government and finance for some sort of special "attention." Of course, Pridger had never heard of Hal Turner until somebody sent the link to his You Tube "AMEROS" video about three weeks ago. This led Pridger to the whatdoesitmean.com web site. It seems Hal gets some of his tips from that or similar web sites. (See Pridger's posts on "WhatDoesItMean" and Hal Turner). In Pridger's quick Google Search on Hal Turner, he found that Hal is suspected by some to be an "FBI agent provocateur." (See: http://nationalexpositor.com/News/914.html) That seems to be a logical conclusion with the degree of inflammatory rhetoric he has continued to put forth on his blog, more or less calling for an open rebellion against the government – yet seems immune to "apparent attempts" to silence him. Not only is Hal not silenced, he even gets occasional major media exposure. He isn't soundly condemned on such occasions, but given his say as the interviewer rolls his eyes with good natured incredulity and light-hearted disapproval. Somebody like David Duke would never enjoy such special treatment. It would appear there's definitely something fishy here. If Turner didn't enjoy some sort of "special protection," he would have been taken out in a fiery storm, or put away on some trumped up charge, a long time before now. Whether this is true or not, it's interesting to read his posts. Turner definitely has guts – and plenty of gall. John Q. Pridger
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