Truckers Protest, the Resistance Begins

Until the beginning of this month, Americans seemed to have nothing to say about their ongoing economic ruin except, “Hit me! Please, hit me again!” You can take my house, but let me mow the lawn for you one more time before you repossess. Take my job and I’ll just slink off somewhere out of sight. Oh, and take my health insurance too; I can always fall back on Advil.

Then, on April 1, in a wave of defiance, truck drivers began taking the strongest form of action they can take – inaction. Faced with $4/gallon diesel fuel, they slowed down, shut down and started honking. On the New Jersey Turnpike, a convoy of trucks stretching “as far as the eye can see,” according to a turnpike spokesman, drove at a glacial 20 mph. Outside of Chicago, they slowed and drove three abreast, blocking traffic and taking arrests. They jammed into Harrisburg PA; they slowed down the Port of Tampa where 50 rigs sat idle in protest. Near Buffalo, one driver told the press he was taking the week off “to pray for the economy.”

The truckers who organized the protests – by CB radio and internet – have a specific goal: reducing the price of diesel fuel. They are owner-operators, meaning they are also businesspeople, and they can’t break even with current fuel costs. They want the government to release its fuel reserves. They want an investigation into oil company profits and government subsidies of the oil companies. Of the drivers I talked to, all were acutely aware that the government had found, in the course of a weekend, $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns, while their own businesses are in a tailspin.

But the truckers’ protests have ramifications far beyond the owner-operators’ plight --first, because trucking is hardly a marginal business. You may imagine, here in the blogosphere, that everything important travels at the speed of pixels bouncing off of satellites, but 70 percent of the nation’s goods – from Cheerios to Chapstick --travel by truck. We were able to survive a writers’ strike, but a trucking strike would affect a lot more than your viewing options. As Donald Hayden, a Maine trucker put it to me: “If all the truckers decide to shut this country down, there’s going to be nothing they can do about it.”

More importantly, the activist truckers understand their protest to be part of a larger effort to “take back America,” as one put it to me. “We continue to maintain this is not just about us,” “JB”-- which is his CB handle and stands for the “Jake Brake” on large rigs-- told me from a rest stop in Virginia on his way to Florida. “It’s about everybody – the homeowners, the construction workers, the elderly people who can’t afford their heating bills… This is not the action of the truck drivers, but of the people.” Hayden mentions his parents, ages and 81 and 76, who’ve fought the Maine winter on a fixed income. Missouri-based driver Dan Little sees stores shutting down in his little town of Carrollton. “We’re Americans,” he tells me, “We built this country, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lie down and take this.”

At least one of the truckers’ tactics may be translatable to the foreclosure crisis. On March 29, Hayden surrendered three rigs to be repossessed by Daimler-Chrysler – only he did it publicly, with flair, right in front of the statehouse in Augusta. “Repossession is something people don’t usually see,” he says, and he wanted the state legislature to take notice. As he took the keys, the representative of Daimler-Chrysler said, according to Hayden, “I don’t see why you couldn’t make the payments.” To which Hayden responded, “See, I have to pay for fuel and food, and I’ve eaten too many meals in my life to give that up.”

Suppose homeowners were to start making their foreclosures into public events-- inviting the neighbors and the press, at least getting someone to camcord the children sitting disconsolately on the steps and the furniture spread out on the lawn. Maybe, for a nice dramatic touch, have the neighbors shower the bankers, when they arrive, with dollar bills and loose change, since those bankers never can seem to get enough.

But the larger message of the truckers’ protest is about pride or, more humbly put, self-respect, which these men channel from their roots. Dan Little tells me, “My granddad said, and he was the smartest man I ever knew, ‘If you don’t stand up for yourself ain’t nobody gonna stand up for you.’” Go to theamericandriver.com, run by JB and his brother in Texas, where you’re greeted by a giant American flag, and you’ll find – among the driving tips, weather info, and drivers’ favorite photos –the entire Constitution and Declaration of Independence. “The last time we faced something as impacting on us,” JB tells me, “There was a revolution.”

The actions of the first week in April were just the beginning. There’s talk of a protest in Indiana on the 18^th, another in New York City, and a giant convergence of trucks on DC on the 28^th. Who knows what it will all add up to? Already, according to JB, some of the big trucking companies are threatening to fire any of their employees who join the owner-operators’ protests.

But at least we have one shining example of defiance of the face of economic assault. There comes a point, sooner or later, when you stop scrambling around on all fours and, like JB and his fellow drivers all over the country, you finally stand up.

If you would like to help support the truckers in any way, go to http://www.theamericandriver.com/files/TruckersAndCitizensUnited.html

Comments

[rfranke]

Countdown to a Meltdown, July 2005
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200507/fallows

[barbsright]

rfrank, I have a subscription the The Atlantic and read that article sometime ago. I have been waiting for it to happen, and now we are there. The Atlantic published a cover article in May 2001 predicting where the USA's next war would be. They said Afganistan. In Sept. 2001, it happened. We never learn from the past, and now we cannot even learn from 'the future'. Does not say much about the value of a Yale BA, and a Havard MBA. So much for higher education!!!

[Buena]

Well, why do the truckers seem to have more cojones than professional workers, who've been getting outsourced, laid off, downsized, etc. for years?

I guess this is why you started United Professionals, Barbara -- www.unitedprofessionals.org -- so maybe we white collar (and pink collar and who-knows-what-other color) workers will have a place to organize.

Even though I live in a small town with one grocery store -- just one truckload away from no bread or milk -- I applaud the truckers for their protests. Let's all stand up together!

[Anarcissie]

Independent truckers have more cojones than professional and office workers because they are independent small businessmen and -women, whereas professionals mostly work in and for large institutions, generally corporations, and are used to taking orders and doing personally meaningless work. (See _Dilbert_) However, I think the protests are coming a bit late.

The big problem is that starting in the 1980s, the federal government began to inflate the money, not of everyone, but of the rich, through the generous granting of credit, the modern equivalent of printing money.

As long as this inflated money stayed up in the stratosphere of the stock markets, collectibles, and big real estate, the government could pretend there wasn't any inflation; the CPI explicitly excluded such items. This inflated money enabled the rich to live very well, since although it was inflated (that is, its value was small and shrinking) they had lots and lots of it due to the credit. The government and the big corporations could continue to borrow indefinitely large sums of money at very low interest rates.

However, this inflated money began to leak into the lower realm of real things, like gas at the gas station and food on the table. The money of the poor began to inflate and the CPI inevitably went up, no matter how many tricks were used to calculate it.

In an Adam-Smithian world, no one would lend money at a lower rate of interest than the rate of inflation. The credit money supply would contract and prices would level off or decline. But an Adam-Smithian world is an uncomfortable world.

Poor Bernanke, heir of Bubbles Greenspan, commissioned to carry on in the world as it is, did the prescribed thing: to reduce the inflation, he raised interest rates. But in doing so he changed the dynamics of the real estate market, setting off the current credit crisis. Bernanke then hastily dropped the interest rate to far below the rate of inflation, that is, he ordered the printing of more money and the throwing of it at banks and other interests of the important people.

Unfortunately for this happy plan, inflated money doesn't buy the same amount of real things that uninflated money does. A large component of the price of gas and diesel is not "peak oil" or the Indians suddenly starting to drive around, but the fact that the dollar is worth radically less than it was a few years ago.

There are two ways out of the present difficulty: either the inflated money of the housing and stock markets must contract and the prices of these things must go down; or the less-inflated money of the poor, the money of wages, food, gas, rent, clothes and so on must inflate. Either route will be difficult. Neither mainstream political party has come to grips with this difficulty; their main difference of opinion is not over whether money should be printed or not, but where to spread it around.

It remains to be seen whether the Chinese and other East Asians who have been funding America's most recent bender will continue to supply the necessary juice to keep the bender going. I rather doubt it, but who knows?

Sorry to be so lengthy; I guess I should start my own blog.

[Alexandra]

The truckers did this in Belgium back in 2002 (or so ?) - not only did they blockade the highways out of Brussels during rushour by driving 3-abreast but they also parked at key routes going in to the city. Brussels was a no-go zone for days on end. If your car was in you weren't getting out and vice versa... I supported them. Of course let's not even think about how much fuel has increased since then! :-(

[lc2]

Hmmm, I'll believe it when I see it. We Americans are awfully used to taking everything on the chin and with winter over, people now have a reprieve from heating bills for awhile. The timing seems off for a revolution. But maybe that's just my skewed perspective because I was able to pay my months-overdue utility bills last week.

I don't see people even cutting back on cable and cell phones yet, it's hard to imagine they'll magically develop the political consciousness to revolt and air the private shame of being not independently wealthy, publically.

[Judith Lindley]

I'm reminded of a bit of folklore about farm foreclosures and auctions during the Depression. When a farm was to be sold because its owner couldn't pay his debts, the neighbours came in their trucks, with shotguns, and kept the bidding low enough for the property to be purchased by friends. In effect, the banks holding the notes had to accept what people were able to pay.

An I-wonder: The general strike, which we don't think of as part of America's heritage, might be a recourse if the people believe that November's election has been stolen from them.

[Carol Overland]

Difference between truckers and professionals? As independent as truckers are, it has to be pretty extreme to join in protest. I've seen both worlds, and miss my aerodyne anteater with the Series 60 oh-so-terribly, but now I'm having fun as an attorney fighting hare-brained nuclear, coal and transmission projects that utilities promote. Truckers are way different than professionals because professionals just show up. No professional has to pay $2,500-3,000/month for their cubicle; keep up their license (i.e., don't get caught) despite the need to routinely violate the law just to make a living; professionals get to go home at night and truckers go off into a mobius strip while the rest of the world keeps on moving; professionals live on plastic and cash flow and truckers have to pay for their truck, fuel, insurance, lumpers, repairs NOW or it doesn't move and they're out of business.
It's clear we need to become more regionally focused, yet are professionals willing to give up strawberries in Minnesota in January? Do we need to send that package overnight? Should we get our clothing in containers from overseas or something made by our neighbors? Does meat come from CAFOs and downer cows? Are we ready to start dealing with our choices, making conscious choices, living sustainably? Are we ready to throw off the yoke/joke of consumerism and start taking on the obligations and responsibilities of being members of the human race?
When you take away a trucker's ability to keep it rolling, this country will come to a stop. When trucks stop, it'll be too late for choices. We're on the edge...

[Steve]

Find the comments great -- about showering the bankers with chump money -- just make it THIRTY dimes!

[Bobbi Dykema Katsanis]

As the daughter and sister of truckers, I am the last person to want to see these noble and hardworking folks out of a job.

However. I have also been paying attention to the facts of peak oil and global warming, and our supply system is simply not sustainable. Biofuels are only taking food out of hungry people's mouths and putting it into gastanks. We have got to start thinking locally to produce our food and everything else we need. Burning 435 calories of fuel for each 5-calorie strawberry trucked from California to New York has GOT TO STOP. Wait for strawberry season, people. Or live on a burning planet. Your choice.

[W.v.d.Kuilen-Holland]

So what $4 a gallon of gasoline, that is still less than $ 1 / ltr, in Holland it cost 1 ltr = € 1,55 , so that is € 7,00 per gallon !! Equivalent of $ 14,00 per gallon in Holland. So Who is complaining and why ?!!
Shamefull !

[WatcherJohn]

Hi,
I know a few truckers and applaud any actions they can take. I believe there is a partial solution to foreclosure on a truck. A reasonable technique that may be implemented is to protect your equity in a truck or house using a ucc-1 form and following this with a lien against the firm holding title. The ucc-1 would list your actual dollar investment in your house or truck or whatever. This is usually no longer a lien which is why you should check the lien process in your state. This action may put you in the first lien position in case you are foreclosed on or your property goes back to a dealer. This means that you would have to be paid your equity before the property could be resold by the credit company. You'd best check in your state as to what process works best - do it before foreclosure or loss of vehicle, then do your best to avoid either - but it could help you in the long run. Everything is commerce in this world, learn how to use it outside of the court or lawyer systems.

[John Igoe]

Here I am,
A small businessman just like the truckers. I own a plumbing business. I have seen steel prices go up, plastic prices go up, copper prices go up, my fuel prices go up. I drive a nice cube van, which eats the gas, health insurance can't afford anymore and on and on and on and on and on.
I feel the truckers pain and will help you guys. Lets shut this country down until costs come drastically down. We can do this for all americans. I would love to speak out with you. I have much to say to those crooks at the fed and in Washington. HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL STARVE THIS WEEK, HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL LOSE THEIR HOMES, HOW MANY BUSINESSES WILL GO BANKRUPT, HOW MANY LIVES WILL BE DESTROYED DO TO THEIR GREED. The revolution has started lets begin in solidarity to take back this country back and end this slavery and corruption. I am a good public speaker and would like to help you in your cause because you are not the only ones affected by rising prices all across the board. Lets do it and we will be heard.

Respectfully,
John G. Igoe
The Happy Plumber

[Alan Cabal]

Wait until the average American consumer finds out just how easy it is to simply walk away from credit card debt.

[R.C. Taylor]

WAKE UP America, it's not to late. Dr. RON PAUL is the answer to our collective salvation. He is Still in the race for the presidency. Vote for him in November even if you have to write him in. God Bless our Truckers and other like-minded Americans.

A Retired Trucker

[Permaculture Solutions]

The inflationary pressures on fuel and food isn't unique to the US, and the whole world should stand up in solidarity with these truckers. I live in South Africa, and food and fuel prices are going throught he roof. Our interest rates are still being hiked though, and people are generally very glum about the economic outlook. Here's to these brave individuals who are making a statement...the workers of the world are behind you!

[Truckers ROCK]

We should all DEMAND that the oil companies be NATIONALIZED.
The truckers are right, the oil cartel has caused this, and their profits are obscene. But for the oil sector, we would not be spending trillions on wars for oil for them, and guarding them, and paying all that money to support their profits. They are stealing from us, not only our national reputation, but also our entire wealth. The oil sector has purposely excluded us from alternative energy sources, by buying up all the patents on alternative energy and sitting on them. Back in 1976, it was testified by experts to Congress that the oil sector had expanded ownership of all business between the ground, to the gas tank, having bought all the pipelines, distilleries, shipping, and all distribution of petrol. At that time, they were working on expanding horizontally, ie buying up all alternative energy patents and holding them from the public.
Ever wonder why you don't have solar lights for inside the house, or solar run vehicles? It is entirely possible, to have this NOW.
But, they plan on running us out on fake energy needs, at inflated prices.
They have the monopoly on energy, and it's time to end this.
The best way would be to take over these companies, and put them out of business.
Let the citizens push these evil war mongers towards providing free energy, by taking away their source of funds, and putting them out of commission.

[Peggy Conroy]

The best thing for the environment, road repair budgets, terrorism/accidents on our highways, all types of pollution and energy savings is to take the freight off the highways and put it back on the railroads where it belongs! A 30 fold savings in energy with big trucks off the roads, along with all the other positives, is never made public due to the truckers' union and industrys' power in the media and congress. A shameful situation indeed.

[Mr Putin Oil Company Nationaliser]

Mr Putin has NATIONALISED the Oil companies who WRECKED such havoc on the Russian people who had their wealth STOLEN ...AMERICA SHOULD NATIONALISE these OIL COMPANY ROBBER BARRONS FORWITH.........

[George in Vancouver]

Regarding the complaint by W.v.d.Kuilen-Hollandthat Americans complaining about fuel prices are shameful, I recently spent six years living in Scandinavia and having also lived in California for a number of years, I consider myself to have a grasp of the economic and social systems underpinning the European and U.S systems. Basically, in most of Western Europe, the average person does reasonably well wage and benefits-wise due to active state involvement. Fuel prices may be high, but wages are high and the state takes care of most of the health care costs and the like.
In the U.S., it is all up to you. Wages and benefits for the average person is nothing like what it is in Europe, and reflecting that, the prices tend to lower for everything so that your low wage is usually workable. When global events dictate (or permit gouging) the increase of higher fuel prices at the pump, then the price of everything takes a disproportionate jump and there is not safety net. In Europe the state will step in, in the U.S. it is up to American ingenuity.
One more factor. The U.S. is a big place. A real big place. I have driven across the U.S. and my native Canada. For a European, it is impossible to imagine the vastness. For North Americans, it is impossible to imagine the closeness and confinement of the Netherlands.
Finally, we cannot make progress by declaring shame upon a group at the affect of some disparaging forces, we only make progress with compassion.
With Regards, George

[Anarcissie]

If you have more and more people using more and more stuff, and the stuff is naturally of limited availability and quantity, then the stuff is going to become harder to get, that is, require more labor, that is, become more expensive.

Ain't no revolution going to change that.

[Pissed Off]

This is all because these lying, filthy, traitorous neocons have to protect Israel and keep the war going. That's the reason gas is so high, because of the tension in the middle east. With another war threatening to erupt at any moment, of course the price is high as supply may be disrupted.

Oh, and please don't talk about the 9/11 hoax. That was done by Israel and inside neocon traitors in the US govt., predominantly dual Israeli citizens.

Google 9/11 truth. Stand up to them like Jesse Ventura!

[Born in The Bronx]

I'm an old hippie, I'm all for grass-roots protests, but I'm having trouble getting my mind around this. I don't remember truckers being known as being especially liberal or reliably Democratic.

So they piss in the pot, voting for Republicans and Libertarians, and now they're complaining the soup tastes funny?

Can I look forward to newly chastened truckers joining me at anti-war protests and on the campaign trail for Democrats?

[A. Magnus]

Republicans are angry socialists and democrats are happy socialists; both are socialists, so saying one is a true alternative to the other is not only naive, it's downright ignorant. You should be supporting the truckers for standing up for themselves whereas suburbians will only grab their ankles and brace themselves. Berating them on which socialist party they should support is just plain stupid.

[Bobby Decker]

.....I,VE SEEN THIS PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE BEFORE.... AND OLD MAN REPUBLICANS IN THE WHITE HOUSE { PROVE ME WRONG PROVE ME WRONG } I BET THE RICH BITCHES ARE ALLREADY SALAVATING OVER THE PROSPECT OF A NATIONAL TRUCKERS SRIKE NEXT YEAR SO POPS MC CAIN CAN FIRE THEM ALL AND REPLACE THEM WITH NON UNION MEXICAN TRUCKDRIVERS WHO LL WORK FOR 75% LESS !

[Anarcissie]

Born in The Bronx: '... Can I look forward to newly chastened truckers joining me at anti-war protests and on the campaign trail for Democrats?'

Lots of right-wingers and libertarians are against the present set of wars. By contrast, Democrats have by and large acted as enablers. And still are.

And what exactly are the Democrats going to do for the truckers?

[Ken Hall]

I support the owner operators 100%. I only hope it's not too late.

The multinational corporations can afford the fuel for their fleets of trucks. Hell, they can probably claim some expense back from the taxpayer for it. The owner operators have no such luxury.

This is about the corporations featherbedding their nests with corporate handouts direct from the taxpayer whilst small business fold all over the place to be bought for cents on the dollar by the same corporations. This Corporatocracy was known as something else by Bonito Mussolini. He called it Fascism.

The truckers and all other small independent business people need to take America back NOW!

[W.v.d.Kuilen- Holland]

Particularly for George , who excuses the truckers for their actions. Based on the traders/truckers internationally in Europe they donot differ so much in no's of km's / year.,compare with the Americans. What to think of roadtaxes, highway toll,mountain pass toll, tunnel toll, maintenance , tyre prices in Europe? Compare this in total and add this to the km. price ...then I bet Europe is much , much more expensive. And yr $ 4 / gallon is holy cheap !!

[suraci]

We had a similar protest here in the UK when the price of petrol was nearing 80 pence a litre. It's now at £1.10 a litre.
The truckers protest ground the UK to a standstill in about 4 days flat, but they still had overwhelming public support.
If they tried it now I think under terror legislation the government would call out the army, maybe shoot a few. Being disarmed here we can't shoot back.

[Anarcissie]

suraci: 'We had a similar protest here in the UK when the price of petrol was nearing 80 pence a litre. It's now at £1.10 a litre.
The truckers protest ground the UK to a standstill in about 4 days flat, but they still had overwhelming public support. ...'

The inescapable conclusion seems to be that the truckers' protest did not affect the price of fuel. This is pretty much what I would expect. But don't let my depressing observation slow any of you down.

I think we're in the world of _Network_ now.

[D. L.]

I agree with bobby and Born. further, though I do support the truckers' actions, I suspect that most of them are rednecks who, still supporting Bushism and the war, really really really don't get it yet, and probably never will. I really really don't want a "revolution" created by a bunch of rednecks who, despite it all, still would like to nuke the Ay-rabs and everyone else they feel like getting their Scots-Irish "revenge" against. Living in redneck country, I know of what I speak. What would Joe "Deer Hunting with Jesus" say?

[James]

What do you want?

Trucker subsidies?

Instead of asking for fiat "fake" cash,
Protest against the people who print the fake cash - the Federal Reserve.

A healthy, sound economy needs a healthy sound currency.

[bigbookoftruth]

Congratulations to the truckers. This is life under the new government... Isrealii corporate management!

[connie mack]

nice blog. good comments. for those that feel like doing a little research...i suggest

anabiotic oil

see if that doesn't start to make you think.

[James McDonough]

There is only one party, not two. It is them against us. Join the truth movement. Go to http://www.prisonplanet.tv and become a member for 15 cents a day. Spread the word of what is going on in this country to those of us that are still asleep. http://www.infowars.com is another of Alex Jones sites. If you have not heard of him go to infowars and click on listen to the broadcast. It is FREE. Open you minds to the things that are going on in this country, and help us fight the NWO.

[Roxan]

testing

[art]

Too bad that most of these good ole' boy truckers probably voted for George W. Dufus TWICE. They didn't understand that when Cheney held a secret energy conference - he was telling big oil and Kenny Boy Lay that there was going to be a war in Iraq, triggered by a phony terrorist act on our soil, and they were going to quadroople the world wide price of oil, by cutting the supply our from Iraq. Half of these ignorant truckers would probably vote for Bush again.

[Roxan]

Okay, since I have MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity), I've been reduced to being an armchair activist.

I've been constantly writing (hounding) the politicians such as Feinswine, Boxer & others to stop: Offshoring, outsourcing, all use of any visa holders and ILLEGAL ALIENS.

I've also been demanding repair of Free Trade or an end to it and the MASSIVE deficits due to it, but what do the politicians do? Ignore us and start a deal with Columbia, etc.

Does anyone know why ILLEGAL ALIENS are still allowed to pour in and our borders remain WIDE OPEN despite our "War On Terror?"

The reason would be the NAU (North American Union) the plan to merge Canada, the US & Mexico together. Larry King even interviewed Vicente Fox & Fox admitted this.

I think the reason our $ is also tanking is to implement the Amero.

The EU (European Union) exists as well as the Euro. Now the elites are implementing this was us.

The NAU is an extension of NAFTA. Between CAFTA & the FTAA, this will merge the Americas together.

With our never-ending wars with the majority of our soldiers chasing their tails in Iraq & Afghanistan, we're left essentially as sitting ducks here with unprotected borders.

[Roxan]

I have suggested many times ways to fix our budget whether it be on city, state or nation levels:
End all tax breaks to any corporations (with the above behavior).
End all free benefits for illegal aliens (to include births, WIC, etc benefits, free schooling including breakfasts/lunches, end the DREAM act, etc.
Address the MASSIVE trade deficits.
Tarriff all foreign goods coming in.
End tax breaks to ALL churches, foundations & institutions who are forcing illegal aliens on us.
End our wars (especially the 100% fraudulent "war on Terror.")

End CORPORATE PERSONHOOD LAW

[Jay]

I am sick of idiotic liars who compare our gas prices with Europe. First off Europe has a working rail system that makes daily driving a choice not a necessity.

You don't have to own a car in Europe to have a decent job or to buy necessities. Truckers are highly unionized and in Germany they are paid to take weekends off, which makes weekend travel nicer for everyone. Only a fool would compare the two.

And in response to the hippie who posted the hateful things about working class people - that's the reason your movement failed loser - your movement was elitist from start to finish.

[Greg Farnum]

Great article!

[John Taylor]

The trucker's dilemma is the tip of an iceberg called "globalization". Globalists including the major oil companies want to produce as cheaply as possible and price according to what the market will bear. Globalization is not concerned with a level playing field; that is whether one juridiction has environmental protection laws, minimum wage laws, OSHA laws etc. Corporations look at maximizing profits pure and simple. Oil corporations are just one of many corporate lobby groups with this same agenda. That is why over the next 20 years 40 million US manufacturing jobs will relocate to Asia. American truckers will be replaced with cheaper Mexican rigs and drivers. All three major candidates are sponsored by big corporations just like NASCAR or Formula racing cars. Americans are the spectators watching the cars (candidates) roar around the track trying to get to the finish line first. The winner gets the corporate sponsored champagne. In the end the winning "driver" repays the corporations for their generosity from the public purse paid for by the spectators who naively believe that they control the show. This illusion is created for the benefit of the American Public by special interest groups, secret societies and secretive government organizations, foreign government lobbyists, the Diebold Corporation (voting machines) and of course the mainstream media. WAKE UP AMERICA!

[Roxan]

Back to illegal immigration.

Did anybody know about the ad from ABSOLUT VODKA?

They had a map showing the old Mexican Territory. This is also the AZTLAN Map. This AZTLAN map consists of the states of CA, AZ, NM, TX, NV, UT & CO.

This AZTLAN is taught in Mexico as well as the LA RAZA (means the Race)/MEChA (motto-For the Race everything, for those outside the Race, nothing) chapters in U.S. schools.

Worse yet is ANAHUAC-the plan for the entire Americas to be returned to the Native Americans & to boot everyone else out (Check out the MEXICA MOVEMENT) site for this.

Anyway, the NAU will be implemented much easier because our corrupt politicians allow the behavior of illegal aliens demanding their rights and keep pandering to their wishes.

Many politicians/media members belong to the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations)-who are pushing this NAU.

Is it any accident that Hillary (NAFTA) and Obama (also a NAFTA fan) and McCain who with Kennedy in the McCain/Kennedy bill tried to cram illegal immigration down our throats twice & also fought Prop 200 in AZ?

Anyway, the price tag for providing services for illegal aliens is huge, yet our polticians won't stop that either.

REMITTANCE MONEY: This is money sent out of our country in the $billions (that should be in OUR coffers) that is relatively untaxed (including the banks & wiring services) who provide this service.

Also for addressing outsourcing, Washington Tech & Zazona are 2 great sites to help fight this.

So, I haven't been silent. I've been constantly writing and calling in. But since I've been doing that, I also found out and am astounded by the mass corruption in our government. It really seems to have turned into a Banana Republic (at least to me anyway).

[Roxan]

I'm delighted the truckers are doing something.

Now, do they know about the NAFTA Super Highway and that now, Mexican Truckers are now allowed in our country?

Also speaking of oil, There was a proposal in CA that OIL COMPANIES MUST PAY "Extraction Fees." There was also a bill to implement biofeuls (the voters shot down both proposals)

Alas, during the last CA election, the CA people grew complacent when they saw the gas price fall to about $2.60 or so a gallon. The oil companies also falsely claimed that they were responsible and that the biofeul companies would not be....so, the rest is history. The CA people believed the oil companies and rejected both bills.

[Robert Gates]

I am VERY sympathetic to the plight of the truckers. That being said let me make some observations.

All the talk and gumming about a nationwide Trucker strike (like previous so called trucker strikes) ended up with traffic delays in New Jersey and a few other areas. As a whole it had NO effect what so ever.
The independents howl and complain about losing money every time they crawl into a RIG, yet they turn around and keep driving until they are foreclosed on. One said even though he was "losing money" he still got paid, which mean't he put off paying somebody else for awhile.
You have other drivers who are actually contracted with the companies they work for so they keep driving. Companies like Swift, England, trucks that work for grocery stores, McDonalds etc etc.
Bottom line is IF EVERY trucker pulled off the road for one week in protest, that 'might' get somebody's attention. Two weeks would get peoples attention. When people can't get food at McDonals, or go to their local grocery store and buy food, it would get alot of attention. Providing the truckers how the guts and courage. Problem is with all the whining and complaining the only people that are not running rigs are those that are in foreclosure. Otherwise they keep rolling.

Kind of defeats the whole purpose.

[chris]

Leave it to Barbara Ehrenreich to tackle the same old subject about which she knows nothing: market-driven capitalist economics.

We can all sympathize with truckers who see their incomes decline as diesel prices rise. But, like Ehrenreich, they obviously have no idea how markets work. It really does boil down to a re-interpretation of that old Pogo saying: We have seen the enemy of low oil prices, and he is us.

More accurately, though, we can add a footnote to that maxim. The enemy of low oil prices is Congress, and the truckers seem to have a sense of that. They demand a release of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve, believing if the government unloads a lot of oil on the market, the market price will drop. But the oil market is global. Hence, there's no reason to believe that temporarily emptying the national storage tanks will knock down world prices for more than a day. As they say, what goes down must be refilled. The refilling will do its part to push prices up, which suggests a net gain for truckers of zero.

What can Congress do? Congress can give drillers the green light to drill for the 80 billion barrels of proved reserves in US territories now off-limits to drillers. That would knock prices down.

Truckers also have to realize that about 50% of the price at the pump is taxes. Federal, state and local. Oil companies are like cigarette companies. They are de facto tax collectors sending huge sums to every level of government in this country.

Ehrenreich has always suffered from the basic problem of trying to force her marxist square peg into the capitalist hole. She should check with truckers in Cuba and North Korea to see how well the merchandise is moving along their main roads. Of course, they don't have any merchandise to move in those workers' paradises. Not much fuel either. And apparently food supplies are tight. Actually, it's more likely that both countries are on national diets.

She further exposes her complete misunderstanding of economic issues when she claims Bear Stearns was bailed out by the Fed. Since Bear was sold to JP Morgan for $2 a share, representing a 98% reduction in Bear's market value; since more than half of Bear's 14,000 employees are losing their jobs; and since Bear itself no longer exists, it's hard to call the Fed's actions a bailout. A better term is fire-sale liquidation. If a homeowner were unable to pay his mortgage and suddenly found half his family renting a room in the basement, the other half was on the street and his former neighbors filling the rest of the house, I don't think the homeowner would feel relieved and say he had been bailed out. Kicked out. But not bailed out.

By the way, the current oil prices should call for rejoicing among many. For a long time liberals have called for higher taxers on oil to accomplish exactly what's happening now. Where's the cheering from the large crowd of people who believe the European plan of taxing oil out the wazoo is the best way? Now's the time for them to pile on and ask Washington to treat oil like it treats cigarettes. Raise the oil taxes to optimize the cash stream to Washington and every state capital.

If a gallon of gas were to cost as much as a pack of Marlboros, we'd see plenty of changes. Based on current prices for gas and cigarettes, we're half-way there.

If truckers are angry enough to stop rolling and block highways now, what would they do after a further doubling of fuel prices? But what they demand is a repeal of economic reality. The World consumes about 85 million barrels of oil a day. About 25 million barrels are consumed in the US. But China and India are catching up. What should be done?

Energy consumption is a function of population and prosperity, both of which are increasing rapidly. Earth's population is now 6.5 billion and heading for 9 billion by the middle of this century. Tata, the GM of India, is now selling a $2,500 car. It expects to sell 100 million of these vehicles to first-time buyers. In other words, it is easy to understand why the experts believe oil consumption will hit 110 million barrels a day sometime in the next 20 years.

Yet in the face of these huge global forces our domestic truckers believe that opening the spout of our insignificant national oil tank will solve the problems. Too bad it won't work. We need real supply increases, not a temporary drop in the bucket. Real supply increases are available by exploiting our own domestic reserves that are kept out of reach by Congress. To give the truckers what they want, Congress has merely to wave its magic wand and pass the legislation that opens all domestic oil reserves to drillers.

There is a second step, however. Refineries. We need more of them in this country. There are too few to produce the quantity of fuel consumed here. Thus, we buy imported crude oil and we buy imported refined products. In other words, we export oilfield jobs and export refining jobs while raising fuel prices to satisfy people with an upside-down sense of economics. Crazy.

[THE SENSEI]

Well, boys and girls, it is for sure that if all the trucks stop moving, this country will come to a dead stand still. That is a scientific fact. But I wonder, has anyone thought ahead to what happens then? This shutdown would obiviously be an attempt at a nonviolent solution to our economic crisis However, when all those people in the cities who can not produce their own food, and other life necessities, start feeling hungry and cold..... what then? Well we go to war with each other? fighting and probably killing to either keep what little we can produce or take what someone else has? All I can say here is, when the shooting starts, and I think it surely will, I hope the guns are aimed at the right people! You all know who they are. And if we have to have another Boston tea party, I will be happy to have the turckers on our side. Sadly I have been preaching, as have many, that this was coming sooner or later. But until the truckers decided to take the first action, no one really believed it. NOW THE COUNTRY IS SITTING UP, AND TAKING NOTICE. Way to go boy's.....
Maybe things will be better when we hit bottom and can start all over. If any of us survive.. wink. I for one am very tired of just hanging on by a thread. It would be something indeed if we could see 50 cent a gal. gas or less, and 25 cent sodas and penny candy again. But to take us back that far, it would have to be a real full blown depression, that would make 1929 seem like a picnic. So the question is not "can it be done?" The quesiton is, "Are we ready and willing to go the distance?" If the truckers can make it happen, I will be right behind them all the way. I to, run a small business. But lately, I have had to get outside work, just to keep it going...FOLKS, THAT IS NOT RIGHT.... I think we all know what has to happen, and there is little left to be said. Either it will be done, or it won't.....

[chris]

SENSEI, you get the Moron Of The Day Award.

Truckers bring the nation to its knees? Intending to start a depression worse than the Great Depression, which was a worldwide depression?

Your dream is laughable. But the fact that you've romanticized the notion of destroying the US economy is an unfortunate display of ignorance and callous disregard for 300 million people.

A farm crisis struck the US a couple of decades ago. Hollywood was even obsessed with it. Sam Shepard made a movie about farm foreclosures. Farmers went on national television to convince non-farming Americans that the end was near.

Yeah. That was a close call. They almost stopped planting as a plan to improve the financial picture for farmers. Yeah. Sure.

So maybe a few truckers on the verge of bankruptcy will throw in the towel and stop driving. But it would be foolish to think millions of people will stand still, doing nothing, while important goods remain undelivered.

A truckers' strike would create a boom for railroads. And you can be sure local truckers would work overtime to move everything possible. Meanwhiole, lots of truckers are merely drivers. They don't own the rigs they operate. Fleet owners will have a lot of work for them.

Moreover, you have a viewpoint about city people that must be the product of a rural life.

Oil and natural gas come to New York City by pipeline. Not by truck. Gasoline is delivered to gas stations by truck. But most of those trucks are owned by the oil companies.

A lot of goods arrive here by boat. A lot of stuff arrives by freight train, and a freight line cuts through Queens and Brooklyn. Two runs a day most days.

Though a truckers' strike might inflict some pain for a while, there is no collective bargaining agreement that stops motivated opportuntists from jumping in and replacing the strikers. Thus, striking looks like a bad idea whose time has come. The most likely losers are the truckers themselves, not the average American who gets stuck with the final bill for everything.

[Bobby]

The American public are sheep and will be lead to disaster. Anyone with eyes can see what is going on. Whatever the issue is, Americans come last, except for taxes, then we come first.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... She further exposes her complete misunderstanding of economic issues when she claims Bear Stearns was bailed out by the Fed. Since Bear was sold to JP Morgan for $2 a share, representing a 98% reduction in Bear's market value; since more than half of Bear's 14,000 employees are losing their jobs; and since Bear itself no longer exists, it's hard to call the Fed's actions a bailout. ...'

You seem to have missed part of the deal, which was the FRB _guaranteeing_ Morgan-Chase that they would not lose money on the deal. The size of the guarantee was something like 30 billion dollars; evidently Morgan-Chase believed that Bear Stearns actually might have negative value. If the FRB is called upon to make good on the guarantee, that money will be produced either from taxation or, more likely, it will just be printed, and everyone who holds cash or a fixed income will pay by having the value of their money diluted. Since the latter are poor people, you can probably guess which option is most likely to be chosen.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the financier set are being told, over and over again, that the Federal government will not let them fail no matter how recklessly and stupidly they do their business. As they get this message, we will see much worse things than the dot-com boom-bust and the subprime mortgage disaster, although probably not for very long.

[Anarcissie]

THE SENSEI: '... All I can say here is, when the shooting starts, and I think it surely will, I hope the guns are aimed at the right people! You all know who they are. ...'

Judging by some of the remarks I've read here and elsewhere, quite a few think the "right people" to be made into targets for those guns are Mexicans. They're almost perfect: they are improperly pigmented, speak a funny language, look different, are poor, hang around together, and have been slandered by White racists for generations as lazy, stupid and dishonest. Some of them even come from a foreign country! Too bad they're not Muslims, but you can't have everything.

[Robert]

Like Chris does now, I used to "believe" that if we just opened up areas of the country that are off limits to drilling out oil problems would be gone.

WRONG!!

According to industry and press accounts most, if not all the oil coming out of the Alaska Pipeline are going to Japan and Asia. So if we open up the North Slope (which I don't have a problem with) all the oil will not flow to the US, but to China, Japan etc AT current market price.

Now the oil companies are not stupid. They know if they suddenly could put 80 trillion barrels (or at least the promise of that) on the market, prices would drop.

Then Mobil doesn't make its 40 billion per quarter and pay the the Chairman his 400 million dollar bonus when he retires.

That being said, I used to know one of the VPs of a MAJOR oil company. I was talking to him one day and he told me that I needed to understand the following. First the oil companies are generally in bed with/own some kind of say 30-50 percent interest in the oil fields overseas. Say for example Saudi Exxon. Now he said that cost, cost, of oil flowing out of the ground is at, or slightly under $2.00 per barrel. Now it is pumped down pipelines etc etc. This is whats called the "aging infrastructure" which the overseas folks don't want to replace because its been paid for many years ago. Then it goes to ports and loaded onto the super tankers.

Once in awhile we hear that somebody put in some new oil terminal. Its not necessairly because they want to modernize and upgrade, its because the equipment is reaching a point where it is becoming non repairable and won't work.
So now its loaded onto a super tanker. Accordingly the oil companies own the companies (though various front and sub companies that are difficult to track back to them) that own the super tankers.

So if you are following me, they own a piece of it out of the ground, they also stick a load of cash in their pockets to run the super tankers.

Now we get to America, where the oil is off loaded on US Terminals, again either directly, or indirectly owned by the oil companies. Now the money that is paid for that service also directly or indirectly goes to the oil companies, with a few exceptions.

Then to the refineries, which for the most part are directly or indirectly owned by the oil companies. So they refine the product and stick the money in their pocket. Finally the oil/gas makes it to your local distributor. Typically the oil companies don't own those, however they do control the prices. I have done work for a oil/gas distributor and they get a phone call every AM Monday thru Friday saying this is what the price of gas is.....

This pricing is done on what they call a regional pricing model.

Now here is only ONE of the dirty secrets the VP told me that he was personally involved with. When prices are low, or prices are expecting to go up, they off load the oil BUT they don't dump it all into the refinery. They dump it back into various older wells that have been pumped dry. In essence they make their own Strategic Storage Reserve. They know where all the holes are and where they put oil, so they can turn around and pump it back out when the price increases. Thus they make even more money then they already have. This was especially true in Louisiana.

For those who bleat about how the oil companies are spending all this money on R & D, drilling and related, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure drilling costs money, but NOT the amount of money we are led to believe it costs. Also typically the drilling and R & D is covered in financial reports as an expense already, so when they announce they have made 40 billion in a quarter, that is profit.

So as he explained to me the oil companies do a tight rope act of wanting to keep prices up because they don't like low oil prices. Not good for the business so to speak.

So how do you keep prices up? You manipulate in various ways, usually behind the scenes. Now oil is on the NYMEX exchange, with so called traders making the call on up oil, or down oil. Lately its been up.

As another person in the industry suggested, it doesn't take much of an imagination to see how particular events in certain countries, causes oil to go up. Now the question becomes was it an accident, OR perhaps people were paid to arrange an accident.

Now you have so called Congressional hearings, keeping in mind that many of both parties have their hands in the oil companies money. So sure you have a public spanking about prices, and it pretty much dies off. Just like the tobacco companies. They got the public congressional spanking, said Nicotine was not addictive, and now were back to business as usual, which is selling a product that is a Nicotine delivery vehicle.

Now I am not even getting into so called Peak Oil, or the rising demand in China. Even with rising demand in China, the oil producing companies are leaving production alone, which is bumping up prices.

Bottom line we have to understand is oil is up, it will stay up and EVERYBODY involved is addicted to the cash flow. By everybody, I mean non oil companies to.

At the end of our conversation, the former VP asked me if I had seen the movie The Formula. I said I had. It was an dreary, awful movie as I recall. He asked if I remembered the end of the movie when the Oil company President (marlon Brando as I recall) was sitting out in front of his huge house in a lawn chair or something and the assistant came running in saying something like 'Sir, Sir the Arabs have raised the price of oil to ? per barrel.' He replied something like "My Boy, you don't understand, we are the Arabs..'

Cheers,

Robert

[chris]

anarcissie, the Fed LOANED money to make this deal happen. The Fed's exposure is minimal, and when the dust settles you will read, in the back pages of the NY Times business section, that the Fed booked a nice easy profit on this adventure.

A loan is not a bailout and the securities in question have value, a lot more value than they were assessed on the date of the fire-sale of Bear.

Bear is gone. Probably 7,000 people will or have lost their jobs. The company's value vanished, but JP Morgan was good enough to increase its bid to $10 a share. Compared with Bear's price of about $170 a year ago, I'd say the only term that describes Bear is "wipeout."

The top dogs of Bear saw their huge equity stakes vanish. That's not a bailout, and the Fed action won't give other Wall Streeters false security sensations about avoiding the frying pan.

At this point the only positive note about the Bear Debacle that comes to mind is the fact that no one has committed suicide over it -- yet. But given the size of stock losses among employees, it could yet happen.

[chris]

Robert, you should run over to Hollywood and tell Oliver Stone your oil company story. You two could cook up a good conspiracy story with oil as the centerpiece.

There might have been a couple of semi-facts in your wild-eyed tale. But only one or two.

If you really heard a crazy tale from an old oil company VP, at least give the name of the company. Give his name too. I have a feeling you won't. That's how it is with these stories. No credible source.

[Dick McQueen]

Very interesting piece and comments. It seems we need to learn repeatedly that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, be it Bear Stearns, truckers, or others needing the cooperative attention of someone beyond themselves. What's good to notice, is how little attention we tend to pay to those needing our assistance/attention if it doesn't directly affect us. This is pretty rudimentary and even primitive behavior. We should care about the truckers and those losing their homes, and these two groups should care about each other and about those losing their pensions and those losing their jobs and needing health insurance and on and on.

But what should be noted is that most of us are doing pretty well, at least until we get hit, probably unexpectedly by one of these calamities, at which time we shed our fierce independence and ask for help.

This brings me to an issue that ought to be foremost in our attention, at least for those of us who only have the price of gas for our autos as our main bitch (not including the truckers and others, of course for whom the price of fuel is genuinely crucial). As our leaders pander to us about how much this war is costing us and how many of our soldiers have been killed or wounded or otherwise damaged through service in this war (genuinely tragic for those relative few and their families among us) that we recognize the overwhelmingly larger horrific mess in all respects that we have brought about for Iraqis, many, probably most of whom are completely innocent. We need to accept more responsibility for this seemingly intractable situation the government we have elected or otherwise assented to has brought about than I am hearing and reading.

We have brains that allow us to perceive and use more than basic animalistic survival, self interested instincts. Now is the time to exercise them, personally, locally nationally and internationally.

[name]

The increases in fuel prices are all part of a larger plan.

Time to throw a wrench into the engine of their greed and tyranny.

Take back America.

[Ruth Gardner]

It is time to think of America and it's people.We went to war to stop the terrest but it looks to me like they are winning. We are loosing our homes and can't afford to drive to work

[Eyes Wide Open in Missouri]

Nationalization is not the answer, it is the problem. Crooked, inbred politians of the Elite are promoting nationalization (communism/socialism) under the name of New World Order. We need to go back to greenbacks and get away from the privately issued currency of the Federal Reserve which is controlling us via their dancing discount rates. National ID cards are the next big move toward socialism so that big brother can track and convict us. Good for the truckers! The rest of us need to join forces against this tyranny before the resulting and soon-to-come famine begins. Ladies and gentlemen, get off your duffs and use your heads before it is too late.

[little buttercup]

My concern, if the trucker's strike really takes off in this country, is that neoconservative elements in the culture and media will find a way to divert attention from the oil company greed that has caused the runaway gas prices, instead fixing general blame on the "uppity" TRUCKDRIVERS for the empty shelves at the grocery stores.

Thanks for the post.

[Eyes Wide Open in Missour]

The rich, Elite, bankers who own our Federal Reserve are starving us out of existence. Our rights are being stripped and we're running headlong and empathetically toward a police state and and socialism/communism/despotism .... called the New World Order which is organized by people a continent away and carried out by inbred government leaders who are related by blood, if not by membership.

Our dollar is not backed by gold in the Federal Reserve - it has been moved out of the country. Our banks are going to collapse - do not doubt this. Have you given any thought as to how you'll survive when your money is worthless and you can't get to fuel to drive to the grocery store to buy food or to the Dr. or hospital for medical care - when you can't even drive to buy seeds to grow food to feed your self or your family? How will you stay warm in the winter when you can't buy the energy for your furnace because your dollar is worthless? Do you know that without a National ID card you will not be able to fly a commercial airliner or enter a Federal building (those are the initial restrictions)

Rising food and fuel prices, unprecedented foreclosure rates, a crappy educational system, propaganda spewing from tv and radio newscasts, National ID cards carrying RFID chips, a poisoned food supply, heroin imported into the U.S. by our government inside Vietnam vet body bags, the banker-backed implosion of the WTC on 9/11, the destruction of our Constitutional protections in the name of Homeland Security, and out-of-control medical care costs for below par medical care are just the tip of the iceberg which is in short order going to be the fall what began as a democratic way of life.

"State government officials claim that implementing the Real ID Act within the federal government's established timeline is technologically impossible. Passed on May 10th of 2005, the Real ID Act creates a set of uniform standards for state-issued ID cards, and mandates the construction of a centralized national identification database that will contain the personal information of every citizen in America......Opposed by more than 600 independent organizations (including the National Governors Association) and hidden in the depths of a military spending bill in order to make passage easier, the Real ID Act has received heavy criticism from concerned citizens and state government agencies. Despite the fact that relatively sound and effective improvements to driver's license security had already been implemented as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, the federal government felt that it was necessary to go well beyond the recommendations of the 9/11 Comission Report by passing a costly and invasive law."

Take the mark and you'll be able to travel, shop, have credit, defend yourself in court, and get medical care. Otherwise, you'd better start planning your survival and banding together with friends, family and neighbors. Cash your paychecks, pull your money from the bank and pay your bills with money orders. Buy precious metals that you can use in trade after it is 'announced' that your dollar is worthless. Start growing and stocking food, medical supplies and survival gear. Purchase water decontamination systems and water storage tanks.... think like our pioneers did and you may survive. This is an impending war and it is being waged on us, the citizens of the U.S.A.

[Anarcissie]

chris: 'anarcissie, the Fed LOANED money to make this deal happen. The Fed's exposure is minimal, and when the dust settles you will read, in the back pages of the NY Times business section, that the Fed booked a nice easy profit on this adventure.

A loan is not a bailout....'

This is not what I have read in the financial press (e.g. WSJ). There may have been loans or grants of some kind, but the item I am talking about was neither, it was the assumption and transference of a large obligation to -- guess who?

As I said, though, it's not the money, it's the principle: no matter what the rich do, they'll be backed up by government money. That principle was in place by the time of the 1987 stock market crash because that's how they stopped the crash. Rich people are allowed to fail as individuals but they are not allowed to fail as a class. Money will be thrown until the problems go away.

It all sounds great, printing bundles of money and shoveling it at the rich -- who know better than they how to take care of it? -- but unfortunately it leads to very weird behavior which then results in even bigger problems, such as the present liquidity and credit crisis, and the wasting away of our manufacturing and infrastructure. If no one actually makes anything, if all the labor and technology have been shipped to overseas tyrannies, then the day will come when even the rich have to realize they aren't rich. Their money is worthless and their properties are worthless. Of course the rest of us will suffer too. And that's when we'll really need those Mexicans to act as our scapegoats. Think they'll do it for $5 per hour?

[Anarcissie]

name: '... Take back America.'

I don't think most people want to take back America. They want to whine about how their masters don't treat them right. At least, that's what most of them seem to be doing at the moment.

If they wanted to take back America they would have started doing it a long time ago. It would have been called 'socialism', but today, most people no longer know what the word means -- they think it's the state deciding everything, which in a way is what they already have, if you understand that the corporations are part of the state.

[kalpal]

At this point the stoppages and slow downs are optional. When Diesel climbs above $5.00 per gallon they will cease being optional. This country runs on fuel and electricity. When both reach a point that the average citizen will not be able to afford them, this country will look back at the 1930s as having been the good old days.

[Buena]

We can adopt the bunker mentality of the 1950's (as a child I lived in a house with a bomb shelter) and stock up on food and water all we want.

But when things get scarce, the people with the most guns will come and take what we have. My husband and I could each have a shotgun for protection, but we wouldn't last long against the hungry fellows with assault rifles.

Read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, or "The Postman" by Brin, just to name a couple in the huge genre of survivalist novels.

The only thing is, it won't be an atom bomb attack by those godless commie Russians that ruins us -- it will be our government.

If we don't change the way things are going, we'll have only ourselves to blame.

[dave mende]

If american truckers strike the gov will bring in Mexican truckers. The Mexicans will break the strike, and make a fortune in the process. Whattya gonna do about that trucker dude? I am a carpenter and they did it to me. F us all.

[jan]

In europe is the diesel just as much cheaper than gasoline as it is more expensive here in the States.

[Jacqueline Homan]

The truckers' strike is not only about unaffordable fuel. It's also about fighting a globalist agenda being pushed by the super rich ruling elite class. That agenda is the North American Union (NAU).

Ever wonder why there's never been a peep about off-shoring all our jobs to India and China while those left economically behind are jeered at and told that their poverty is all their own fault for failing to "get educations"? These elitists (multinational corporatists and their buddies the international bankers) promote the classism that too many upper-middle class Americans bought into. Isn't it strange that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are vilified for being "Communists", yet there's no problem with Communist China being given "favored nation" trading status, getting our jobs and being allowed to import everything? Think about it.

Our elected leaders certainly thought about it - while we all fought amongst ourselves, scape-goating the poor food stamp recipients, and struggled to not end up hungry and homeless in this “New Economy.”

They knew that artificially manipulated fuel prices would eventually result in something like the truckers' strike.

This is why, under the stealth of secrecy through a media blackout, they sold American toll roads in states like Indiana to super rich foreign corporations like Cintra and MacQuarie (who doubled the tolls on the Interstate they now own in Indiana). The next phase was allowing Mexican truckers on America's roads without having to meet the same laws and requirements American truckers must under the DOT.

In preparation for the potential public outrage over the unaffordable fuel and energy prices plus the planned dissolution of our borders and sovereignty, they already plan to build a "NAFTA Superhighway" - the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 10-12 lane wide toll road which will run from Mexico through the US and into Canada.
Meanwhile, they passed, under stealth, the "Real ID Act" - a micro-chipped national ID, which all states must implement by May, 2008. It was touted as a "solution" to the illegal immigrant problem, but do NOT be fooled. Americans of all 50 states already have state-issued driving and non-driving ID's registered with the 50 state drivers license compact and the National Drivers Registry. But this new micro-chipped "Real ID" will enable our government - and those pulling the puppet strings - to track us, like a GPS tracking system. Our private information will be made privy to multinational organizations and corporations.

They also contrived to merge the US, Canada, and Mexico into one country: the North American Union (NAU), even though top leaders and officials deny this is going on, even though it has been exposed by people like Aaron Russo and Alex Jones.

This is all one more step in taking away the rights and liberties of ALL Americans - middle class and poor alike.

In order to stop this NOW, we all need to put our other political differences aside to oust those who have sold American sovereignty, American jobs, and American rights down the river to the international bankers (who own our Federal Reserve, which is neither "federal" nor a "reserve") and multinational corporatists in league with them. We need to replace both Dem and Repub sell-outs with leaders who will:

1) Abolish the Federal Reserve Act and the practice of "fractional reserve banking."

2) Repeal the "Real ID Act"

3) Repeal NAFTA, GATT, and CAFTA.
4) Make use of Article 1 of the US Constitution.

Americans can make what Americans need and want - we did before, we can do it again.

If American government can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The difference is that the bond fills the coffers of private international bankers with compound interest payments (a debt for the rest of us), whereas the dollar bill does not. We do not even need it to be backed by gold. Research history on currency. In pre-Revolutionary War America and shortly after, the colonies issued and used their own money (called Colonial scrip) which was not backed by gold. And it worked because men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin knew the dangers of the practice of fractional reserve lending by the powerful international banks in Europe. Take America back, NOW, support the truckers and inform yourselves of all these issues. Visit:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52164
http://infowars.net/articles/march2008/170308Fraud.htm
http://www.bigeye.com/bankers.htm

Jacqueline S. Homan,
Author: "Classism For Dimwits"

[chris]

anarcissie,

There's been lots of Bear Stearns coverage in the Wall Street Journal, but not one word of the coverage from recognized authorities claims the Fed intervention was a "bailout."

You might have found quotes from a few people interviewed by the WSJ who used the term. But no recognized authority, pundit or analyst described it as a "bailout."

If the Fed intervention were a bailout, then few Bear Stearns employees would lose their jobs, the stock would have retained its value and the company would continue to exist as an independent entity. None of that happened.

Based on what you and others have claimed, Enron, too, was "bailed out."

Loans are to be repaid, as these loans to JP Morgan will be. As they were by Chrysler -- another non-bailout.

As for the 1987 Stock Market Crash, well, in fact, if a few SEC and Fed market rules had been relaxed for a few days after the crash, far fewer disasters would have occurred. But that's how it goes. No bailout then either.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Average was HIGHER as the END of 1987 that it was at the BEGINNING of the year. The Stock Market Crash was also a Bond Market Rally, as investors engaged in the standard Flight to Quality when stocks fell.

Thus, people who owned Treasury securities and Ginnie Mae (mortgage-backed) securities saw the values of their holdings rise like they were hot stocks.

The '87 Crash was also a heck of a day for Short-Sellers.

[chris]

Homans is at it again. More hysteria from Homans.

Those Mexican truckers? Where do they drive? I've NEVER seen a Mexican license plate on a truck in or around New York City, and I do notice license plates.

Even if Mexican truckers are driving into the US to deliver goods from south of the border, they too buy diesel from US service-stations.

Perhaps the tolls on toll roads in Indiana have risen. But there's no tolls on Rtes 70 or 80. Does Rt 90 cross Indiana? If it does, it too is toll-free.

No tolls on federal highways.

Meanwhile, if this kooky north-south 12-lane Mexico-to-Canada highway is to be built as a toll road, then it won't be a federal road and it will send tax revenue to every state through which it passes. Where's the problem. There are a lot of north-south roads in the US offering FREE alternative travel routes.

Meanwhile, federal, state and local governments are now addicted to tobacco revenue. There's also a government addiction to oil taxes. No one is required to smoke and no one is forced to operate vehicles getting poor gas mileage. But government will always extract what it can from any revenue source.

Next -- National IDs. The National ID program went into full swing in 1937 with the creation of the Social Security System. Actually, it came to life when the Individual Income Tax was imposed -- what year was that? 1913?

Hence, we are already identified to the federal government by way of our Social Security file and our IRS file. Many of us go further by obtaining passports, another handy federal ID. Lots of people have drivers' licenses, a state-issued ID. But everyone -- except illegal aliens -- is known to Social Security and/or the IRS.

Then there is Homans' Insane Claim that International Bankers OWN our Federal Reserve. Until now I did not realize she was part of the anti-Semite crowd. As she knows, International Bankers is a term for Jews. According to the nutcakes and paranoids of the world, Jews own or obtain control of everything worth owning or controlling.

Is a lesson in Federal Reserve Facts necessary? The Fed is NOT owned, though stock in it is held by its member banks. But holding the Federal Reserve stock gives no special powers to the holders.

Then there is her outrightly dumb claim that reminds people that women can't do math or understand finance.

She says:

"If American government can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The difference is that the bond fills the coffers of private international bankers with compound interest payments (a debt for the rest of us), whereas the dollar bill does not.

Jackie -- Bonds do NOT pay COMPOUND INTEREST. All bonds pay simple interest. Treasury bonds pay a fixed amount every six months. Treasury Bills are sold at a discount and redeemed at Par.

Interest might compound if the a bondholder puts the interest in an interest-bearing account that COMPOUNDS daily, weekly, monthly, annually, whatever.

But a $1,000 10-year 5% Treasury Bond makes two annual payments of $25 to its holder. That's it. No compounding.

I will not wish you luck with your plans for a revolution. Fortunately, since you are confounded by simple compound interest, it's not likely your plans will get far.

[Bill]

Dumb ass Americans don't have the guts to any thing about any thing .fat ass lazy complacent people. I no for I live here also. Retired watching the Americans fall off the globe. I bet most of us don’t even vote. Well I do.

[Anarcissie]

chris -- What's going on now with the government, the banks, the equities markets, and so on, is analogous to my telling you that if you go to Las Vegas I'll guarantee that you won't lose any money. With that understanding, your behavior there might be markedly different than it would be otherwise, wouldn't you agree?

[Jacqueline Homan]

Chris, when the government has to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, it must repay that money with INTEREST. When that interest is carried over year after year as with our national deficit, it is no longer simple interest, get it?

Now when the government has to repay the Federal Reserve those borrowed funds, it does so by raising existing taxes and enacting more taxes on the citizens, got it?

The Trans-Texas Corridor will be owned and controlled by MacQuarrie Bank and Cintra - not our federal government. Rep. Marci Kaptur of Ohio was talking about this on C-Span. What dark orafice have you stuck your head into?

That's ok...your entitled to your "house Negro" mentality since the massa has treated you well with more crumbs off the big house table than what many others got over these past 30 years or more. I'll expect you'll be crying and complaining the loudest when it is YOUR job, YOUR home, YOUR family having to go hungry, and YOU to suffer next. Gas-bag sexist jerk!

[chel]

Chris, go to any business school in the country. There are plenty of women who are plenty capable of understanding finance. Homan is just not one of them,unfortunately.

[Micki]

Barbara, This is fabulous! I hadn't heard anything about this! Thanks for reporting the news that matters, and that we wouldn't hear about otherwise!

[chris]

For the uninformed Jackie Homan et. al.:

The Fed agreed to lend $29 billion against a portfolio of mostly sub-prime securities that Bear Stearns had "marked to market". It is important to recognize that this sum does not represent the face value of these securities, which is far higher than $29 billion.

Instead, the sum represented the extremely depressed market prices brought on by the crisis. JPMorgan, which oversaw the valuation of these securities and also assumed some of the risk, claimed it was satisfied with the prices that Bear determined.

The higher $10 price that was agreed on after the original $2-a-share deal required JPMorgan to take a loan against the first $1 billion of Bear's securities, lowering the Fed's guarantee to $29 billion. Given the 120 million shares of Bear Stearns outstanding, the reduction in the Fed's contribution is approximately equal to the $8 increase in the price Bear stockholders will receive.

The $30 billion in assets will be deposited in a newly-created corporation established for the purpose of administrating and selling these securities. The Fed will earn interest on its portfolio at its ongoing discount rate (currently 2.50%, 25 basis points above the targeted Fed funds rate), and JPMorgan will receive a higher interest rate. Morgan's rate was set at the discount rate plus 450 basis points, (currently 7%) on its $1 billion loan.

All proceeds from the sale of Bear's assets will first go to repay the full $29 billion principal and interest due to the New York Fed. Only when all interest and principal is fully paid to the Fed will any proceeds go to satisfy the $1 billion in subordinated notes due to JPMorgan Chase.

Once JPMorgan's note is satisfied, any further proceeds will go entirely to the Fed.

In short, unless the default levels soar above the level now anticipated, the Fed will recover the entire proceeds of its loan.

Moreover, not only will the Fed get its money back plus interest, but it will probably earn a profit on the transaction.

[chris]

Jackie Homan blabbers:

"Chris, when the government has to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, it must repay that money with INTEREST. When that interest is carried over year after year as with our national deficit, it is no longer simple interest, get it?"

I know this math and finance stuff is difficult for you. Let's try again.

If the government issues a $1,000 10-year Treasury bond paying 5%, the holder of the bond receives two annual payments of $25 for 10 years. If the investor bought the bond at issuance and held it to maturity, he would receive total interest payments of $500 over the 10-year life of the bond.

Those payments do not change. Simple Interest. Not Compound Interest.

If the holder deposited his semi-annual interest payments in a savings account paying 5%, you could claim the interest from the Treasury bonds was earning additional interest. In other words -- a compouding of the original interest paid by the government.

But you are attempting to claim that an increase in the interest payments on our national debt is a function of compounding rather than a function of a larger national debt.

That's one of those math problems women seem to have.

Meanwhile, I gather you accept the fact that you are an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Do you think it's the Rothschilds and the Warburgs working together? Are they the "owners" of the Federal Reserve?

Or is it some other set of "international (Jewish) bankers" who "own" our Federal Reserve?

You need some basic education on these topics.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... Instead, the sum represented the extremely depressed market prices brought on by the crisis. ...'

"Extremely depressed" market prices were not brought about by the crisis. They were brought about the extreme inflation of housing prices which preceded the crisis, which was the direct result of pumping artificial credit into the economy, the modern version of printing money, a practice the FRB has been engaging in for some time now -- at least since the 1980s. The crisis became visible when the monetary fables surrounding this policy could no longer be sustained.

[chris]

Jackie Homan rambles:

"The Trans-Texas Corridor will be owned and controlled by MacQuarrie Bank and Cintra - not our federal government."

What's the problem with this plan? A private toll road? That's okay with me. Like I said, there are lots of north/south and east/west routes in the US that are FREE.

If private investors want to build roads, why stop them? Presumably they plan to build roads that offer advantages over existing by-ways. If drivers agree, they will pay the toll. If the builders are wrong, then drivers will take other routes.

What's the difference between building private toll roads as alternatives to free government roads? To me this looks like the US Post Office vs FedEx or UPS. Public School vs Private School. In other words -- competition.

You sneered:

"That's ok...your entitled to your "house Negro" mentality since the massa has treated you well with more crumbs off the big house table than what many others got over these past 30 years or more."

More crumbs off the big house table? Ah. An angry feminist. Meanwhile, that expression makes it plain that you believe all things flow from the government rather than individual efforts. Furthermore, you appear to have an astonishingly condescending attitude toward blacks. But that's consistent with your anti-Semitic belief that international (Jewish) bankers "own" the Federal Reserve.

You expect:

"I'll expect you'll be crying and complaining the loudest when it is YOUR job, YOUR home, YOUR family having to go hungry, and YOU to suffer next. Gas-bag sexist jerk!"

Don't expect much in this department. I paid cash for my house in Brooklyn. The other stuff is easy to manage.

[chris]

anarcissie, you quoted:

"...the sum represented the extremely depressed market prices brought on by the crisis."

Market Prices refers to the prices of the SECURITIES, not the underlying real estate. You can argue there's a connection, but the the vast pool of mortgages included in the current mortgage upheaval comprises many mortgages that are current. Thus, the whole pool is generating a positive return, even if it is skimpy.

The question -- the question all bill collectors face -- is the amount that can be recovered from the troubled portion of the total pool. The answer is this: a lot. Enough to pay all the debt temporarily assumed by Fed and JP Morgan, with something extra left over to be returned to the taxpayers.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... The question -- the question all bill collectors face -- is the amount that can be recovered from the troubled portion of the total pool. The answer is this: a lot. Enough to pay all the debt temporarily assumed by Fed and JP Morgan, with something extra left over to be returned to the taxpayers. ...'

I think you're misreading the problem -- or having it misread to you by the media, as ever glossing serious problems over while flying into hysteria about trivia. Paying back a debt is not a problem if you're allowed to print money. But it is a problem if you have to pay with real goods. Printing money causes inflation; inflation means each unit of money buys less goods. That is one of the reasons gas and diesel (and gold and silver and platinum and a lot of other things) are rising sharply in price -- the FRB has, in effect, been printing money. Inflating the money also means people's savings are wiped out -- yet another blow against the middle class, which had some very poor results in Germany in the 1920s and early '30s.

One of two things has to happen (or maybe a mix): there will be radical deflation of the housing, stock and collectibles markets; or, there will be radical inflation of the prices of commodities and labor. Either development will cause suffering of the kind that will cause some people to go looking for scapegoats, for example the Mexicans mentioned in some foregoing messages in the comments here, leading to the political dangers I just alluded to.

As far as I can tell, almost no part of the political establishment, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic, has begun to face this issue squarely. As usual, people will employ reason only when every other course of action has been tried and has failed.

[Brian]

Today in Barron's they talked about how the big banks and brokerages are now repackaging subprime and questionable loans into yet newer siv's(structured investment vehicles) and using them as collateral to be held by the US Treasury so they can borrow yet more "real" money to keep their businesses afloat. Sound familiar? Have they learned anything, or is it just too automatically profitable till its not? Then should the loans made to questionable borrowers freeze up(payments not be made) the treasury promises to make good on them. So in effect our treasury is trading its staid Treasury bonds and notes for questionable SIV's to bail out the big corporations so they can continue doing "their" business, which of course means creating more excuses to highly compensate their ceo's and rainmakers. Its sick. This is one reason the dollar keeps sinking, and when foriegn countrys are buying our Treasurys to the tune of 10 trillion dollars they in turn are our financiers of last resort. The US treasury is now a conduit through which corporations and foriegn governments conduct profitable private business, but it is the taxpayers who are left holding the bag with our devaluing currency even if we never make good on our national debt. And this is in mild global inflationary environment, where "real" inflation is still not a big problem for other countries. But it will be one day as people all over the globe start achieving a middle class lifestyle which will require much higher wages than developing countries are paying currently, and a much greater build out of global infrastructure that will have to be financed by taxes and fee's on everybody. Our government, the G-7, euroland, japan, is not showing any leadership in addressing it as a paralysis has seriously set in. The Bush administration is just watching, apparently not understanding the seriousness of this as we are so distracted by Iraq and the presidential pony contest. This is a serious problem in terms of accentuating what is wrong with our structural finance over the long term and actally accelerates the day of reckoning which is already knocking at our back door. The next presidents are going to face a fast oncoming train of financial problems and much of it will come back to how we handled the post tech boom bust. Greenspan will turn out to not be such a great head of the Fed as more shoes continue to drop.

[Anarcissie]

Have to correct what I said before about the financial establishment. Soros seems to have some idea of what's going on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/business/11soros.html?

[B. McDonadl]

If you would like to see a real second great American Revolution please join the efforts at the Kick Them All Out Project: http://www.KickThemAllOut.com

We have the power to FIRE CONGRESS!! We simply need the will.

Also check out the FIRE CONGRESS Meetup groups at:
http://firecongress.meetup.com/1/

[chris]

anarcissie, a little inflation is good. Too much is bad. Deflation is not good.

Why did housing prices rise a lot in the last decade? A few reasons.

1) Lenders had been accused of racial bias when it came to approving loans for blacks and hispanics. Historical credit profiling eliminated a high percentage of black and hispanic buyers from the market.

In response, alternative methods of financing arose, as they always do for people who think they're treated unfairly.

Interestingly, banks such as Carver Bank, which is a black-oriented bank, issued very few loans to black home buyers. It's also noteworthy that this bank bills itself on its website and in its literature as a bank that exists to serve black customers. It's branches are all in predominately black neighborhoods. Sounds blatantly racist to me. But...

2) Government intervention led to special deals to supply downpayment money to buyers with no savings. Thus, a buying boom began in formerly unattractive neighborhoods. But the crappy neighborhoods were crappy because they were occupied by crappy people. As owners, rather than renters, began occupying their properties neighborhoods got better. The improvements attracted people with better credit and the formerly low-priced neighborhoods saw major percentage gains in real estate prices.

The rising prices brought in more buyers and more subsidies. Along the way people began to discover their debt had outrun their cash flow and prices were no longer rising. Oh well.

3) The secondary market for mortgage securities was formed about 30 years ago. Thus, the game of Hot Potato found its way into real estate. Lenders faced less risk for mistakes as a result. If the originator of a mortgage sold the mortgage to another buyer -- another bank or a mortgage-security investment fund -- it was off the hook. Hence, the willingness to let less credit-worthy borrowers have mortgages increased.

4) The creation of mortgage banks. Create mortgage. Set it free, and bon voyage. Like investment banks and securities they issue.

5) No, there will not be a radical inflation of labor costs. Imports assure us of that. Commodity prices can drop, especially commodities that matter, like oil. That requires only the stroke of the Congressional pen. There are 80 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in US territory now off-limits to drillers. Hence, Congress is the culprit for high oil prices here. Second, we must build a few more refineries to eliminate the refining bottleneck.

At the gas pump, 55% of the cost is crude oil, 20% is refining, 5% is distribution and marketing, and 20% is exise taxes.

These numbers change a little when "sales" taxes are added. But every component of the price of fuel is affected by Congressional actions. So far, too many have been wrong.

As for lenders, as long as lenders understand the risk of excessive lending is the demise of their businesses, more conservative lending practices will return.

But that will mean fewer blacks and hispanics get mortgages. I've notice that few reporters have focused on the connection between lousy credit scores for blacks and hispanics and the predictably high default rate among them. NO politically correct I guess.

[Brian]

good analysis Chris. Would add that the compensation "system" drives a lot of the excesses, many of which evolved to outright fraud in a regulatory vacuum and a blatantly negligent government. Is that fraud too if they are accepting salaries to regulate for the public good and to ensure fair commerce? Its the compensation system, the compensation system, compensation system and career fear on the other end that drove the tech and mortgage booms. Race and socioeconomic status plays a role as vulnerabilities will always be exploited by an unbalanced compensation system. Human greed is encouraged in business. Its not social studies and a civics society. Its a society based on narcissism. Just watch the television adds and promos for new sitcoms. Its always about "me, me, me, and I". It is. Occasionally like in Southpark they might toss in a little observational moralizing at the end, or in Cobert just resort to hyperbolic satire. Cartoons or Mark Twain, those seem our only moral guides anymore when it comes to "I, I , I and me". To simply racialize that is wrong as they work that ism into all the races now, though in some cultures family is more important than the I person. American black culture has been totally co-opted by the business interests for more "me, Me, me" be a star, have the best clothes, biggest house, parties and all. The black musleum movement and its relics have pushed back on that and spoken abou the "community" interests but that has been weirdly twisted into some kind of shorthand for black communism and is losing out.
White America is simply being repeopled and declassified into a cheaper working force with less collective bargaining power. In fact they are made out to be the problem children now and the elitist argument of them simply being "bitter" is being espoused by Obama himself. Naturally Hillary jumps in and says "see I told you he was that way, but look at me, I the Yale law school grad married to the rhodes scholar ex-president am not." Its just people being played off of one another. There is a Youtube of Bill M. saying just that, that people are being confused on purpose to better serve corporate America. Actually corporations offer economies of scale, focus of resources, production of useful products in many cases and some are even reasonably run. But so many excesses occur with so many of them its the spirit of the times to cheat, to keep moving the goal posts, to keep grabbing for more, and concentrating wealth in a small circle of clutching hands. Everytime I hear about how some Americans are so charitable, I wonder well from whom did they confiscate the money from in the first place? Low wages, frozen pay scales, lost pensions, downwardation of health benifits, longer work weeks "in reality", less personal and family times to meet the employers needs for yet ever more profits. I remember when once there use to be cafeteria's in all medium size companies or governmental offices and institutions and now they are long gone replaced by fast food frachises charging even more. Isn't that a form of social reallocation of wealth at the expense of the quality of life that benifits just a few? By pitting us against one another, by race,reigion, sex, age, hobby interests, we become powerless individuals all lusting after a second bowl of porridge in a boarding house owned by others than ourselves. And being programmed with enough narcissism we will never be satisfied till winner take all and be the "star" who may then chose to implode and fade away so another millions will grasp at the bit to be the new star. Its sad, so sad, and so mean, and haven't we learned anything? Turn off the tv, pack a pickick basket and go take a two hour lunch down at the park and nap under a tree and that is what true freedom is all about. When they can't pay you for something, when you are really off their treadmill and fear machine, you know you are free.

[Ken]

Ah, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer....

Then, musical chairs like, the poor become the rich and the rich become the poor....

And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer....

The only way to stop going nowhere is to get off the treadmill.

How?

Turn off your TV's and start thinking for yourself. You'll be awed with clarity when the televised haze clears from your mind.

Feel your interconnectedness with all other human beings and know that your comfort, security, and contentment are only pipe dreams so long as they are stolen (that is, purchased by the labor of others and not your own)

Do like the truckers are doing. Demand that a democracy be a democracy where the majority of the people decide how things go rather than have all decisions made by those who have enough money to buy their way into political office.

Stop supporting the "global economy" (which is a euphemism for the process by which those who have more than they can ever possibly "use" keep getting more to satisfy some inexplicable and perverted urge) by going local and bartering whenever you can.

[Dick McQueen]

More comments are reported as being posted each day, yet none appear in print after 4/9/ 08, 9:05 AM.

[Dick McQueen]

After entering my 4/14/08 8:38 AM comment, it appears with comments from 4/12 -4/14. What gives? Is it something I'm doing?

[Dick McQueen]

Now I go off, and come back on and it's back like before.

[Anarcissie]

chris (and brian) -- You need to take a look at monetary policy. The U.S. (government + FRB, etc.) has in effect been printing money rapidly for the last 20 years. Since the money has been realized as credit rather than actual paper, at first it didn't reach the lower economic classes, so the inflation took place in stocks, real estate, collectibles, and other things the rich deal with. However, inevitably this funny money has began to leak into the lower economic realms -- the subprime mortgage fandango being one of the instances. Inflation is not some kind of complicated thing -- you coin or print or pretend there is more money, and strew it around, and lo and behold, prices go up.

I extremely doubtful that a real estate inflation rate of 20% per year, where wages are stagnant, is good for anyone except speculators. In any case it is not sustainable, as we have now observed.

[chris]

anarcissie, you wrote:

"The U.S. (government + FRB, etc.) has in effect been printing money rapidly for the last 20 years."

The economy grew rapidly over the last two decades.

You said:

"Since the money has been realized as credit rather than actual paper..."

You mean credit is phony and paper money is the real deal?

And you wrote:

"...at first it didn't reach the lower economic classes, so the inflation took place in stocks, real estate, collectibles, and other things the rich deal with."

I see. No boom in house building, no increase in commercial construction. No expansion of healthcare jobs. No increase in population driving up demand for everything.

And youi wrote:

"However, inevitably this funny money has began to leak into the lower economic realms -- the subprime mortgage fandango being one of the instances."

Are the taxes generated by this "funny-money" equally imaginary? There are at least 40 million Americans covered by Medicaid. That's a gift worth $5,000 per person per year. Tax money pays that bill and some of it comes from the extension of sub-prime loans.

Meanwhile, the only point proved by easy lending standards is that people with crappy credit scores and low incomes are -- surprise, surprise -- bad risks.

And you wrote:

"Inflation is not some kind of complicated thing -- you coin or print or pretend there is more money, and strew it around, and lo and behold, prices go up."

Oh. In other words, shortly after Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden for violating the moral turpitude clause in their lifetime agreement with their landlord, they were forced to fend for themselves.

I believe they had one dollar when they were booted and they figured it would have to last a lifetime. Then there were the kids. And the clothes and the shelter. It was tough there for a few years. Always on the brink of homelessness and destitution. But they kept at it. I think they were able grow and gather enough food to feed themselves and the kids and put a little away for the seasons when nothing would grow.

There were kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, and they all wanted their own rooms and food and clothes. Pretty soon some of them learned they were good at killing wild animals. Others had great skill at pulling fish from the rivers. And others could get plants to grow.

A few more took the parts of the wild animals that were no good to eat and turned them into clothes.

After a while, the fishermen and their families grew tired of eating nothing but fish. We want tiger meat, they said. One fisherman decided to send his son over to see one of the wild animal killers and offer him some fish for his tiger meat. The son left with fresh fish and came back with fresh meat.

They all got into the act. And then there were more and more of them, and they were living longer and longer because they had enough food and water to get through every year.

After a while there were at least a thousand of them, all doing one thing or another -- hunting, growing, fishing, building, tanning, weaving -- and swapping and bartering whatever they had, always asking for a lot in exchange for as little as possible.

But lugging all that stuff around had its drawbacks. Luckily, someone found a shiny metal that captivated everyone who saw it. People who had it were able to exchange it for anything. Soon, people were digging up the countryside looking for more of it. They dug a lot and found a little. No one was surprised that the demand for the shiny metal increased. People were willing to exchange much of what they had to get more of it.

They caught more fish and killed more animals, grew more grain and built more huts to get more metal.

At one point they marveled at what they had build, asking themselves how things had gotten into such a state. They recalled there was a time when Adam and Eve had to do no more than walk in the woods to find some berries or a stream of clear water.

But they were out hustling all the time, looking for a way to accumulate enough to remain comfortable through the winter with enough food and enough firewood and warm clothes, worrying if they'd have another mouth to feed by the following summer.

So they stockpiled more and more stuff, filling root-cellars with meat. Then someone learned that putting salt on meat kept it from rotting. Suddenly salt was something to exchange for the special metal, and people offering salt were suddenly prospering. A salt mine opened and many people worked there, earning some pay and making food last longer.

A wise man reminded everyone that Adam and Eve began with nothing and had only one dollar between them when they left the Garden. The wise man thought about that dollar and how it could have bought everything and nothing when Adam and Eve were suddenly shoved into the wilderness. The whole world was available for a dollar. But there was no one to sell it to.

After a while, however, there were many people who wanted things. Not the whole world, but they had desires, wants and needs. They realized they could get what they wanted if they planned a little and worked a little. It was also clear that the births of more people made more work, which led to the creation of more supplies of goods.

But even the wise man did not know the exact value of all the property and all the work done by all the people. But he did know there was more of it every year. He understood that things worked well enough as long as no one interfered with the work of another. Sometimes there were too many fish and other times there was too little wild animal meat. But things came back into balance soon enough.

But the whole crazy thing kept growing and growing and no one had any idea how long it would continue this way. But the smartest among them knew that everyone would get through each year as long as people kept getting at least some of what they wanted.

[Anarcissie]

chris -- I didn't want to go into the whole history of money. I don't think it's necessary. We can condense the result to: money was invented as an abstract commodity to facilitate trade and the storage of value. In the 20th century (mostly) a new form of it was invented: instead of precious metals or paper claiming to represent them, _credit_ became money. However, one law of the universe didn't go away: if you create a lot of money without creating an equivalent amount of the things it is supposed to represent (that is, without increasing real production) then you will have inflation, because anything up for sale will have more money pursuing it. This is only common sense, and I trust we don't have to argue the point. That is the explanation for the run-up in housing prices and the stock market: lots and lots of cheap money, which is easy to produce these days because the issuers don't even have to run a printing press: they just declare that it exists. In the old days they actually had to melt the coinage down and debase it to get the same effect.

For what I think it a good treatment of the present nature of money, see
http://wfhummel.cnchost.com/

What is really interesting in all this is that so many public figures are reciting the mantra that all we need is _more_ cheap money and everything will be hunky-dory. Interestingly, to go by commentaries I see here and there on the Net, many of the common folk don't buy it. They're getting wise to the con.

[eco]

Try a selective boycott.
Refuse to do business with EXXON/MOBILE today.
Do not buy their gas or diesel.
Do not use their convenience stores.
Do not deliver to them.
Do not accept employment from them.
Return their credit cards with a message that their products are to expensive.

A selective boycott can be effective if enough people participate.

When their gas evaporates in the storage tanks and the milk sours in the convenience store refrigerators THEY WILL LISTEN or their replacements will.

If the storage tanks are empty and the convenience store refrigerators are empty
THEY WILL LISTEN or their replacements will.

When or if EXXON/MOBILE is gone from the scene choose the next largest oil company and continue until the hundred million dollar executives get the idea that consumers can and will control the market place! A golden parachute is too heavy to break a fall.

[Brian]

isn't an executive getting paid over 5 million dollars a year blatant theivery to you? The money comes from somewhere, either investors(diluting stock value with options)(by using stock buy backs with shareholders money and profits it raises the value of the stock options they hold), employees, customers, speculation, etc. Some even backdated their stock option exercise dates to capture the day with the highest price. Isn't that fraud? The bush administration has done nothing on most counts though looking into the backdating process. The SEC dropped an investigation into Bear Stearns mortgage practices two years back I think. Exxon paid Raymond about 460 million dollars at retirement. I mean that is an outrageous amount of money for a manager who didn't even invent the company. And he was one of the oil executives that stonewalled a congressional inquiry into oil companys profits and executive pay to the point it looked like contempt of congress to me. Do you think you could get away with contempt of congress? Or taking millions out of a company on your way out? There is no way an executives pay should be leveraged to stock price at the rate it is given the huge power of corporate and stock leverage when millions to billions of shares are issued. What has happened to our country? And its really happened. In our time.

[Brian]

speaking of truckers, I had a trucker with rotting yellow wobbly teeth today tell me he didn't need dental work as it wouldn't help. He told me a bunch of things and I seriously wondered if this guy even deserved a pay raise. He was sure he knew that the opposite of common sense was right and he was confident in that. I will remember to give truckers plenty of room next time I pass one as I can't count on their sensibleness at all.

[chris]

Brian,

When corporations enter into contractual pay agreements with top executives there is no issue of fraud or abuse. All the terms are stated up front. No hidden numbers.

Of course people with no understanding of contracts immediately conclude that wool has been pulled over the eyes of somebody somewhere.

As for the options-backdating issue, a number of executives were prosecuted for illegally backdating option grants and some are now serving jail sentences.

[Chickensh*tEagle]

eco: "When their gas evaporates in the storage tanks and the milk sours in the convenience store refrigerators THEY WILL LISTEN or their replacements will."

Wouldn't work very well in my case. Boycotting my local convenience store would hurt the local owner and local people who work for him a lot more than it would hurt ExxonMobil.

We seldom buy gas from him, but he does sell eggs produced right here in this town, which we often walk to buy. The next nearest supplier of eggs (factory-farmed, not local) is another convenience store six miles from here. Beyond that, supermarkets at 17 miles each way.

Can you suggest anything more practical?

[Brian]

Chris, I heard a really good argument how the kind of leverage used today vastly eggagerates executive pay in ways even the originators of the pay contracts hadn't envisioned. There is a bias for geometric expansion of ceo pay in the contractual process. There are whole legions of compensation lawyers who specialize in getting their clients as much money as possible from any machination possible. This is all at variance to the average or even professional worker who gets at best an arithmetic increase for performance, not geometric. And contracts as sanctrosac as they are in our society do pull the wool over many people's eyes every day. Go ask the subprime borrowerer or try and figure your actual intererst rate on your car lease. None of the lanuage is designed to help you, only the originator of the loan, or in fact the contract. You are using a two dimensional rebuttal argument in a fast moving dynamical three dimensional world. Really. And that puts you in the service of these people who are so good at manipulating so many through the legal system, almost all of which they run in the first place. The Colonies banned the practice of law for money for the first 13 years because the British had used the courts to their advantage over the colonists time and again. Sound familiar? They were the ruling class in the prewar days. So I don't assume anything our legal system turns out as being fair and just automatically. Like say the death penalty decision while at the same time there is a movement in some states to keep expanding the death penalty for other types of crimes. Its all a slippery slope and yet its done in staid courtrooms and considered just, just because its done there I guess. Someone wrote the legal profession in the US is akin to the old communist party in the Soviet Union. There is a lot of truth to that as those members carry profound power over the rest of us and we are supposed to grant them immunity from scrutiny and disagreement. Unfortunately, the aggressive among us want power over us. Its very mammalian. The law is one way to do that and everyone bows to that like they once did to the British impearilists. I think the ceo's and their top manager fellows, their board associates, their university presidents, etc. represent another ruling party in America. Its really not the democrats and republicans as some seem to think. I don't think ceo pay is defensible at all frankly. Though I imagine if you invent something and own the patent on it you can demand your cut on each and every one of what you sell. I still don't understand the people who would defend obvious exploitive people in this American adult game of winning at all costs.

[chris]

Brian,

A defense of high CEO is irrelevant. If stockholders are getting lousy returns and it appears the problems reside at the top of the corporate pyramid, the CEO will get booted. Happens all the time.

It's worth noting that turnover among CEOs is higher than among NFL players. Stockholders have some responsibility for the activities of management. Some activist stockholder groups are putting pressure on overpaid CEOs.

Moreover, as I said, CEO contracts are not exercises in deception. Lawyers representing the corporation and the would-be CEO review and approve the contracts.

As far as the inequity goes, there's not much to be done unless you think the government should regulate paychecks.

It's disingenuous to ask if someone can calculate the interest rate on a loan. The calculation is complex and beyond the reach of anyone who does not understand some finance and have a good calculator.

It makes no difference if the loan is sub-prime or whether it's for a car lease. But anyone who can read -- really read, which is unfortunately less common than it should be -- can determine his rate.

Then there is the fact that no one is required to pay interest. It is possible for people to live within their means. Paying off the credit card in full at the end of the month, something lots of people do.

Of course it's true there are many inequities in the legal system. The state can execute a person, and a mother can hire someone to execute her unborn child. People are also empowered to file lawsuits and collect millions for injuries that never occurred or wrongs that were never committed.

[Brian]

Chris interesting reply but a Ceo's pay is totally relevant as its the distorted compenstation system that created the current financial crises from the mortgage originators on up to wall street and the big banks. The compensation systems incenticizes people to cheat, especially thoughs that have access to leverage. Secondly I cannot even calculate my leases interest rate and drove my dealer crazy trying. I should add since Bank of America took over MBNA they changed everything on the MBNA credit lines. Even the call center music has been downgraded from nice clear classical to this wafting in and out Target store muzak, and the former clear speaking intelligent friendly clerks have been replaced by people from inner city hell who you cannot even communicate with and who hate me and anything I say. Its so hostile its depressing. Ceo contracts are often deceptions as they are negotiated and voted and approved on by their appointees, freinds, and peers on the board who understand their entitlement to outsized pay at everyone else's expense. Everyone knows about this and its been well written about and reported on-endlessly. Also I can read and have the coursework to prove it yet I can understand little of many of these loan and credit card contracts. Now its true you can diagram then out in small parses and read and review to catch some sense of what they "may" be saying at times, but to simply sit and read a contract like that and get it on a "read" is virtually impossible. But I would still have to say those that defend these practices are using out-moded logic in the current age of global leverage where everything is geometrical in its dynamical interactions in "out-sized" proportions. Its taken the kind of games Enron played and stepped back from old fashioned fraud and creative accounting, into new age new-creative accounting(the whole siv repackaging scheme with collusion of the rating agencies) that pushes what use to be obvious fraud down the road a bit further a bit more remote into a bin where no-one will hold them really accountable. I notice there is a trend for the so called Sean Hannity right to use the older style of logic and it just falls flat as we really do live in a much more complex set of interactions than ever before. In one way the net has pushed the envelop of informational democracy into local hands that can still interface globally. You go from arithmetic one to one or one to group interactions, to one on many, to group on many, back to one on one interactions, as here on this blog. This parallels the multi-media platforms foray into the public mindspace where say Time Warner which owns everything from AOL to Adult Swim, film, media, and music librarys, print, radio, and television outlets, where one Ceo and his small central team can control a huge variety of demographic outreach targeting people as groups and individuals on every kind of content. So then this Ceo gets huge leverage in his pay since with deregulation, the Bush FCC, etc have broken down all the old barriers and handed them the entire public mind with a small set of now highly concentrated competitors who are all basically selling the same product. So its this ceo who is at the head of this pyramidal interface that then gets his compensation contract lawyer draft up a pay scheme that pulls up compensation from every aspect of the pyramid. Its still a pyramid scheme, except instead of it finally collapsing, they simply leave in a golden parachute with everybodies money. I don't think anyone really analyzed this when they set the package rates, and then when it became obvious how good a scheme it is, they now try and tweak it and make it palatible as new criticism is finally taking root to where even that survey of managers feel ceo pay is way overstacked. As our "government" allows for such concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of mega-corporations the compensation system for managers and ceo's is so highly focused on them accumulating untold wealth, we haven't as a society woken up and realized how their greed and shamelessness and cronyism on the boards has taken away so many of our jobs and businesses. The compensation system makes this profitable for those at the top to continue fleecing the rest of us in exchange for cheap imports and bulk shopping where local businesses simply cannot afford to compete and pay their workers. This is so stunningly obvious to anyone who just takes a look at it. You are applying 1950's b school logic in your analysis and that just defends the ongoing theft of America. This is another reason why the dollar is being inflated away. Everything is changed. And so has our accounting been changed twice in major ways pre and post enron. Nobody trusts our figures and savvy foriegners are at least as smart as some of our best people. They see what is happening here and are speculating against us continuing successfully down this distorted outsized greedy path. They doubt our ability to self-correct.