The Deth Guild

Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars is working on a book that our Federal Overlords won’t like very much:

” When the Founders declared independence, they prefaced that declaration with a detailed indictment of the offenses of the King and his ministers. I will not waste time or space here by comparing the present federal government’s excesses of arbitrary power with those of King George III. Go and read the Declaration and you will marvel at how today’s advocates of central power not only track quite closely but make Lord North and Company look like kindergarten bullies in comparison.”

“The important thing to understand about today’s arbitrary power is that it, like its predecessor, is a corruption of – indeed, a subversion of – a constitution that should have restrained it. It was the failure of the English Constitution which led to our first Revolution. It will be the failure of our own Constitution which will lead to our next civil war.”
– Mike Vanderboegh

Read the entire article HERE – Read. It. All.

From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:

“Whether it is due to the recent governmental attempt to enforce assorted gun controlling measures in the aftermath of the Newtown, CT shooting, or, merely driven by the same catalyst that saw a surge in gun sales four years ago, namely the presidential election, one thing is certain: America is weaponizing itself at an unheard of pace, with both Sturm, Ruger shipments and units produced surpassing 500,000 each in one quarter for the first time in history.”
– Tyler Durden

Pretty impressive sales… but here is the killing joke:

“If we didn’t know better, we would say that either RGR has somehow become a $0.99 app for the latest and greatest cool, faddy cell phone, whatever that may be, or, alternatively, America is preparing for war.”
– Tyler Durden

Read the entire thing HERE.

This will all come to a head eventually. Many people are going to die when it does.

Per Hedge HERE

With Tim Geithner having proven repeatedly and beyond a reasonable doubt he has insurmountable intellectual challenges, many have wondered just who it is that makes the real decisions at the US Treasury? The answer is, The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, or the TBAC in short, chaired by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, which meets every quarter, and in which the richest people in America set the fate of the US for the next 3 months….

 As reported yesterday, here it is officially:

•     JPMORGAN SAYS INA DREW TO RETIRE; MATT ZAMES NAMED NEW CIO
•     JPMORGAN SAYS DANIEL TO STAY CEO OF EUROPE/MIDEAST/AFRICA
•     JPMORGAN SAYS CAVANAGH TO LEAD TEAM OVERSEEING RESPONSE TO LOSS
•     JPMORGAN CHASE SAYS ZAMES NAMED NEW CIO

Now… Matt Zames… Matt Zames… where have we heard that name before… OH YES: he just happens to be the Chairman of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, aka the TBAC, aka the Superommittee that Really Runs America. The Matt Zames who… “previously worked at hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP, may have benefited as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and JPMorgan’s takeover of Bear Stearns Cos. left companies and hedge funds with fewer trading partners in the private derivatives markets.”

A senior executive in the inner circle of JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is leaving the nation’s largest bank, the latest chapter in management turnover after the bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss.

The executive, Frank Bisignano, the co-chief operating officer, is expected to leave as early as this week, according to several people with knowledge of his decision. The trading losses at the bank have swelled to more than $6.2 billion since first disclosed almost a year ago.

With Mr. Bisignano’s departure, executives who once surrounded Mr. Dimon as he helped steer the bank through the 2008 financial crisis will be even thinner. Several other executives have already left, including Heidi Miller, James E. Staley, Bill Winters and Steve Black.

Mr. Bisignano will become chief executive of First Data Corporation, a payment processing firm, people with knowledge of the matter said. Matt Zames, who had shared the role of chief operating officer with Mr. Bisignano, is expected to take over all aspects of the job, according to people with knowledge of the decision, which they said, should make a smooth transition.

To summarize: the man who is the chief advisor to the US Treasury on its debt funding and issuance strategy was just promoted to the rank of second most important person at the biggest commercial bank in the US by assets (of which it was $2.5 trillion), and second biggest commercial bank in the world. And soon, Jamie willing, Matt is set for his final promotion, whereby he will run two very different enterprises: JPMorgan Chase and, indirectly, United States, Inc.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you take over the world.

Dan Riehl at Riehl World News Brings us this Politico Story:

“Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.”

“The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.”
– Politico

Red the entire intolerable outrage HERE.

Update I: It’s Good to be King

Thanks to Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge for this little “add-on:

“The chief of the FAA told Congress today that Washington-area airports will largely escape the effects of the air traffic controller furloughs — a blessing for lawmakers who fly out of the nation’s capitol.”

“Michael Huerta, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, told a congressional panel that the Washington region’s airports are spaced out enough and have enough spare capacity that furloughs to air traffic controllers won’t hurt as much here.”
– The Washington Times

Read the rest HERE.

They fancy themselves your masters.

“They going to exempt themselves from gravity next?”
– Zero Hedge Poster

Update II: Bill Quick: Laws Are For the Subjects, Not Their Betters

The erstwhile Bill Quick of Daily Pundit reminds us:

“Still, if they do this, they will make it perfectly clear how the Ruling Class regards itself in relation to those it purports to rule. The law is for little people. Rulers should never be inconvenienced by the law at all. Otherwise, what is the point of being a ruler?”
– Bill Quick

Click HERE for more information.

Update III: The Emperor Howls

Emperor Misha at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler points out an article we missed:

“So, both Democrats and Republicans clearly realize that Obamacare, if implemented in Congress, will kill jobs and raise health insurance costs. Is their solution to repeal Obamacare and save the rest of the country that same burden? No. Of course not. Their solution is to see how they can exempt themselves from the law. The rest of us, who have to live with it? Tough cookies, proles. Health care costs money. Deal with it.”

“I guess my only question is, why are we not not dragging members of Congress—of both parties—naked and screaming from their offices for a good tar and feathering?”
– Dale Franks

Read the entire thread HERE.

The Baldur’s Gate Custom Portraits Section has been completed, with scores of unique and theme based character icons to download. Click HERE for more details.

The Diablo Equipment Section is up, with lists of the pre-patch equipment in Diablo II and the base equipment in Diablo I, information that is hard to track down these days. Click HERE for more information.

I figure a little bit of comedy here at Deth from time to time couldn’t hurt.

A woman in Kunming, Yunnan province, is trying to sue the United States central bank after discovering that the real value of the US$250 she put in an account in 2006 had shrunk by 30 per cent.

She claims it was a result of the Federal Reserve issuing too much money.

Her attorney, her son Li Zhen , called the lawsuit “litigation for the public good” which aimed to stop the Fed from continuing its quantitative easing policy and promote people’s awareness of their rights.

He filed the lawsuit alleging “the abuse of monopoly in issuing currency” last month at the Kunming Intermediate People’s Court on behalf of his mother, Liu Hua , but the court has yet to decide whether to officially place the case on file.

Since the global financial crisis, the Fed has been pumping more money into the economy via several rounds of so-called quantitative easing to try to boost consumer spending and revive economic growth.

The judges were “greatly surprised” to see the indictment, said the 36-year-old lawyer, adding he was the first mainlander to have filed a lawsuit against a foreign country’s central bank.

Li, who works at the Yunnan Tongbang Law Firm, said he referred to Black’s Law Dictionary, the most cited legal dictionary in the US, and concluded that the Fed is a private institution instead of a government department.

According to the dictionary, US financial institutions are required to invest in the Federal Reserve System if they want to join it, which he construed as meaning the Fed is privately owned.

“Since the Fed is a private institution which enjoys a monopoly over the issuing of currency, US dollar holders can sue it for printing too much money,” he said.

Li said he requested two things from the court – that the Fed halts the abuse of its monopoly over the issuing of dollars and that it makes a “symbolic compensation” of US$1. Asked about the possibility of whether the court will accept the case, Li said it was “difficult to say”.

He added: “Since the Anti-Monopoly Law was enforced in 2008, there have been not many serious lawsuits in this regard.

“It was not until early last year that a judicial interpretation for civil anti-monopoly cases was issued … besides, this case involves very professional issues and is very complex.”

He said he was looking for more “victims” like his mother and expected to bring a class action in a US court.

Professor Wang Xiaoye , an expert on anti-monopoly law, said the depreciation of a currency was a business risk that holders had to bear.

Article can be viewed HERE

Mike Vanderboegh at the Sipsey Street Irregulars is a smuggler now – and he dares them to do something about it:

Transcript:

My name is Mike Vanderboegh and I’m a smuggler. I am from the great free state of Alabama and I am a Three Percenter.

If you need to pigeonhole my politics I consider myself a Christian libertarian. I believe in free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founder’s Republic and that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion.

I most especially believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the ultimate guarantor of liberty.

I have also been called a “seditionist” by members of the current regime. If faithfully fulfilling my oath to the Founders’ Republic and unrelenting hostility to those who would undermine and overthrow it makes me a “seditionist” then I cheerfully plead guilty.

The Three Percent movement I founded has been denounced by that paragon of moral virtue Bill Clinton and I am a perennial “honorable mention” on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of dangerous folks. I have even been the subject of an eighteen and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and the current Attorney General of the United States knows — and despises — me by name because of the Fast and Furious scandal that, with my friend David Codrea, I broke the news of on the Internet. Eric Holder would not be surprised to know that the feeling is mutual.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence calls me an “insurrectionist” because I don’t believe, as they do, in a government monopoly of violence, but rather in a literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny. Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann says, “It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable” and I suppose my remarks here today will only reinforce my enemies’ opinions of me. I think I can bear the burden.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, but also of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and that of the Branch Davidians at Waco fifty years later to the day — two examples of what happens when governments exercise a monopoly of violence.

It is proper, then, to contemplate the lessons of the date in history — April 19th — then, now and in the near future. What I say now I say with reluctance, sadness and not a little bit of dread, but say it I must.

FOR SILENCE IN THE FACE OF TYRANNY IMPLIES CONSENT — AND I DO NOT CONSENT!

Neither do I believe that you consent, for you would not be here today if you did. But what I say is not easy to say nor easy to hear and many of you will not like it.

“An unconstitutional law is void.” So says the standard legal text American Jurisprudence. That is certainly true. The tricky part is how we are to make that point when the local, state and federal executive and legislative branches as well as the courts are in the hands of the domestic enemies of the Constitution. Every one who is currently trying to take away your right to arms starts out by saying “I support the 2nd Amendment.” Let me tell you a home truth from Alabama — Barack Obama supports the 2nd Amendment about as much as Adolf Hitler appreciated Jewish culture, or Joe Stalin believed in individual liberty. Believe what politicians do, not what they say.

So what shall we do about this current spate of tyranny breaking out all over?

The facsimile of a semi-automatic pistol that some of you hold in your hands was smuggled into your state from the South. Manufactured in Georgia, trans-shipped to Alabama, it came across your state line in the trunk of a car. The fact that the authorities of your state have not yet banned “sponge guns” is immaterial. It could as easily been a whole trunk full of real pistols. Indeed, before this year no one thought that other firearms and related items would ever be banned — but they have been. No one thought that the authorities of your state would pass laws making criminals out of the previously law-abiding — but they did. If they catch you violating their unconstitutional laws, they will — when they please — send armed men to work their will upon you. And people — innocent of any crime save the one these tyrants created — will die resisting them.

Yet despite the cost, these unconstitutional laws MUST be resisted. For if not now, when? And if not us, who? This is no longer a “slippery slope” leading to firearm registration and eventual confiscation — it is a precipice that some states have already plunged over and that the federal government threatens to follow. Arrests are happening NOW. When, if not now, shall we resist? Will we allow ourselves to be shoved back once again, from the free exercise of our God-given, natural and inalienable rights to liberty? — Shoved back once more, muttering but compliant?

THAT IS HOW WE GOT TO THIS PLACE — WE NEVER SHOVED BACK WHEN WE COULD DO SO WITHOUT VIOLENCE. Where does it stop? When we are all disarmed slaves?

The Founders knew how to answer such tyranny. When Captain John Parker — one of the three percent of American colonists who actively took the field against the King during the Revolution — mustered his Minutemen on Lexington Green, it was in a demonstration of ARMED civil disobedience. He might have retreated at the British approach, but he didn’t. He might have ordered his men to lay down their arms, but he didn’t. His defiance was silent but plainly stated. A veteran of the French and Indian War, he did not want a war. He knew intimately the horrors of war. BUT HE ALSO KNEW THAT SOME THINGS ARE WORSE THAN WAR. The British could not tolerate his silent defiance — and someone fired a shot.

But even before the shot heard ’round the world, the colonists understood their weaknesses and their military needs and did something about it. They smuggled. They smuggled Dutch gunpowder and French flints. They smuggled tents and uniform cloth and artillery and ammunition. Boston was the high headquarters of anti-British smuggling and John Hancock was its prime minister. Connecticut was a small empire built on patriotic smuggling. The colonists knew what to do and they did it, regardless of the risk — regardless of all the King’s ministers and the King’s soldiery.

They defied the King. They resisted his edicts. They evaded his laws and they smuggled. Lord above, did they smuggle.

Now we find ourselves in a similar situation. The new King Barack and his minions have determined to disarm us. We must determine to resist them.

No one wants a new civil war (except, apparently, the anti-constitional tyrants who passed these laws and the media toadies who cheer them on) but one is staring us in the face. Yes, a civil war is staring us in the face. To think otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history. We must, if we wish to avoid armed conflict, get this message across to the collectivists who have declared their appetites for our liberty, our property and our lives —

WHEN DEMOCRACY TURNS TO TYRANNY, THE ARMED CITIZEN STILL GETS TO VOTE.

Just like King George, such people will not care, nor modify their behavior, by what you say, no matter how loudly or in what numbers you say it. They will only pay attention to what you DO.

So defy them. Resist their laws. Evade them. Smuggle in what they command you not to have. Only by our ACTS will they be impressed. Then, if they mean to have a civil war, they will at least have been informed of the unintended consequences of their tyrannical actions. Again I say —

Defy. Resist. Evade. Smuggle. If you wish to stay free and to pass down that freedom to your children’s children you can do no less than to become the lawbreakers that they have unconstitutionally made of you. Accept that fact. Embrace it. And resolve to be the very best, most successful lawbreakers you can be.

One last thing before I go. On Thursday I smuggled a half-dozen 30 round AR-15 standard capacity magazines into Connecticut in deliberate disobedience of the new state diktat.

So to Martin Looney, Mike Williams, Larry Cafarro and John McKinney I’d like to say this:

I JUST COMMITTED A “D” CLASS FELONY, YOU TYRANNICAL MORONS — PROVE IT — WHICH YOU CAN’T — AND CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

And I’ll tell you something else. When the new ammo restrictions go into effect the first week of July, I’ll be back — with two full crates of 7.62×39 ball ammunition and I will transfer said ammunition into the hands of a Connecticut citizen without the state’s permission or paperwork.

And after I break their unconstitutional laws again, I’ll be sitting in Frank Pepe’s Pizza down in New Haven waiting for Looney and Company to come arrest me —

ANY TIME THEY THINK THEY CAN MAKE IT STICK AND FEEL FROGGY ENOUGH TO TRY.

Thank you.
– Mike Vanderboegh

See the original HERE.

Want to know what Colonial America sounded like in 1774? See the above transcript and video.

For the first time in years, we have added a new Warcraft III map! Island to Island Combat features multiple challenge points, unique heroes, and numerous hidden rewards and secrets! Structured for FFA and intense 5:5 action, the map is waiting for you on the Custom Maps Page HERE.

Bob Owens at his blog has some comments for Stretch Pelosi and her masters, who are threatening all manner of new gun regulations in the wake of their Furor’s defeat a few days prior:

Listen up, gun-grabbers.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution merely codifies the preexisting right of rebellion that was the underlying justification for the Declaration of Independence. No Congress, Senate, or President, now or in the future, may infringe upon our rights.

Ever.

A government that infringes upon those rights, and attempts to deny citizens those arms of contemporary military utility useful for the militia, invalidates its constitutional legitimacy and creates the conditions justifying an armed rebellion against that government.

At this particular moment in history, there are an estimated 110 million gun owners, owning 300+ million firearms, and a bare minimum of 15 billion rounds of ammunition.

All law enforcement agencies in the United States, along with all military forces, total less than 4 million souls, a small fraction of which that have jobs that involve proficiency with firearms.

I would strongly advise Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama to very carefully and soberly consider the ramifications of any despotic orders they would give, or unconstitutional laws they may try to pass.

The rights of citizens are sovereign.

Tread carefully.
– Bob Owens

Read the entire article and comments HERE.

We can’t really put it much more succinctly. Any new gun regulations on a national level will be viewed by the American patriots as a declaration of civil war by the federal government – God help us all of they push that far.

If these intolerable nanny-statist shits would back off and leave everybody the fuck alone, this nation wold be in a hell of a lot less danger. But… they just can’t help themselves. They lack the self discipline leave well-enough alone, and by Christ they are going to have their Stalinist Utopia even if they have to build it from a mountain of human corpses.

Their kind always eventually gets around to the death camps. But as we said… they can’t help themselves. They are killers. Murder and slaughter is part of their nature.

Hard to believe that with all the soundbites that commodities are done, I found it odd that American silver Eagles were going for not $2, not $4, but $6 dollars over spot for physical when looking to make another purchase for myself. This essentially is a wash back to $28 resistance level when looking at the price of silver including spot. The paper market has slowly but surely split from physical and this is simply more proof of it. Found some interesting tidbits on physical demand recently….

Australia:

Gold sales from Perth Mint, which refines nearly all of the nation’s bullion, have surged after prices plunged, adding to signs that the metal’s slump to a two-year low is spurring increased demand.

“The volume of business that we’re putting through is way in excess of double what we did last week,” Treasurer Nigel Moffatt said, without giving precise figures. “There’s been people running through the gate.”

“There’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value,” Mr Moffatt said. “Gold owners are very reactive to significant market movements.”

The Perth Mint’s sales of gold coins climbed 49 per cent to 97,541 ounces in the three months ended March 31 from a year earlier

China News

Beijing gold store two hours to sell 20,000 grams of gold bullion trading volume of nearly 200 million

YCWB

People have to rush to buy gold, … gold bullion out of stock yesterday, investors yesterday to spend as much as 600 million yuan to buy 20 kilograms of gold bars

The mad pursuit gold insufficiency is not just a game for the rich. Yesterday, the Yangcheng Evening News reporter learned from the East flowers to Bay store, many growers, pork traffickers, fishmonger recently put down his job went straight to the mall to buy gold.

Japan  Reuters and The Age

Some Japanese also harbor fears that the expansionary monetary and fiscal policies dubbed “Abenomics”, coupled with a national debt more than twice as large as annual economic output, could trigger a crisis down the line.

Skeptics about the radical attempt to reflate the economy — or those simply worried that a slide in the yen that began in anticipation of Abe’s election victory last December will continue unabated — are still buying gold, dealers say.

“Investors in gold are convinced that Japan’s fiscal position will get worse,” said Wakako Harada, general manager of Japan’s top bullion house, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo.

“What I see at our counter is that more people are getting worried about Japan. That’s why we are seeing a lot of buying.”

“In contrast this time, we are seeing interest to buy on dips to take exposures to gold,”

“Investors are using this opportunity to buy gold to diversify beyond bonds, stocks and the yen currency as Japan’s fiscal situation could deteriorate.

Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal.

India 

“Gold buyers in India, the world’s biggest consumer, are flocking to stores to buy jewelry and coins, betting a selloff that plunged bullion to a two-year low may be overdone.” Wait, so instead of jumping out off high buildings, Indians are being cool, calm and collected and… buying more? Unpossible. Do they not get CNBC in Mumbai? Apparently not: “My daughter is just six months old, but I think it is never too early to buy gold,” said Sharmila Shirodkar, a 28- year-old housewife, while displaying a new pair of earrings she bought from a store in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar. “I had been asking my husband every day if prices will go down more. I couldn’t wait anymore.”

While the drop in gold prompted investors worldwide to pare holdings in exchange-traded products, surging physical demand in India may help stem the 17 percent slide in prices this year. The plunge after rallying for 12 straight years may make bullion more affordable to Indians, according to Mehul Choksi, chief executive officer of Gitanjali Gems Ltd. (GITG), the nation’s biggest retailer of jewelry and diamonds by sales.

“This is a perfect time to buy as prices will only go up from here,” said Vishal Mehta, a 33-year-old garment dealer, while ordering coins from Choksi V. Naginchand & Co. in Zaveri Bazaar. “I usually buy one gold coin a month, but this time I am buying two.”

Bank of America:

With prices now below $1,500/oz, we expect a pick-up in jewellery demand in the medium term and see considerable pain for miners should prices dip below $1,200/oz. As such, we believe the downside to gold prices may be limited to an additional $150/oz. In fact, we estimate that jewellery demand may become so pronounced by 2016 that prices could trade above $1,500/oz even if investors remain net sellers. Looking at sensitivities from a different angle, investors would need to buy merely 600t of gold to sustain prices at $2,000/oz by 2016, compared to non-commercial purchases of 1,798t in 2012.

US Mint

a record 63,500 ounces, or a whopping 2 tons, of gold were reported sold on April 17th alone, bringing the total sales for the month to a whopping 147,000 ounces or more than the previous two months combined with just half of the month gone.

There is no doubt the price can go down further but this run will hit a resistance level somewhere near the cost of mining it out of the ground.A back plunge can be healthy from time to time. Lets see if this drop makes this asset class healthier.

Hard to believe that with all the soundbites that commodities are done, I found it odd that American silver Eagles were going for not $2, not $4, but $6 dollars over spot for physical. This essentially is a wash back to 28 resistance level when looking at the price of silver including spot. The paper market has slowly but surely split from physical and this is simply more proof of it. Found some interesting tidbits on physical demand…

Australia:

Gold sales from Perth Mint, which refines nearly all of the nation’s bullion, have surged after prices plunged, adding to signs that the metal’s slump to a two-year low is spurring increased demand.

“The volume of business that we’re putting through is way in excess of double what we did last week,” Treasurer Nigel Moffatt said, without giving precise figures. “There’s been people running through the gate.”

“There’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value,” Mr Moffatt said. “Gold owners are very reactive to significant market movements.”

The Perth Mint’s sales of gold coins climbed 49 per cent to 97,541 ounces in the three months ended March 31 from a year earlier

China News

Beijing gold store two hours to sell 20,000 grams of gold bullion trading volume of nearly 200 million

YCWB

People have to rush to buy gold, … gold bullion out of stock yesterday, investors yesterday to spend as much as 600 million yuan to buy 20 kilograms of gold bars

The mad pursuit gold insufficiency is not just a game for the rich. Yesterday, the Yangcheng Evening News reporter learned from the East flowers to Bay store, many growers, pork traffickers, fishmonger recently put down his job went straight to the mall to buy gold.

Japan  Reuters and The Age

Oh, how tasty. Nothing like peeking into China’s abyss for a while to take ones mind off of U.S. city bankruptcies. Lets see how China’s positioned in all of this. FT Reports HERE

A senior Chinese auditor has warned that local government debt is “out of control” and could spark a bigger financial crisis than the US housing market crash.

Zhang Ke said his accounting firm, ShineWing, had all but stopped signing off on bond sales by local governments as a result of his concerns.

“We audited some local government bond issues and found them very dangerous, so we pulled out,” said Mr Zhang, who is also vice-chairman of China’s accounting association. “Most don’t have strong debt servicing abilities. Things could become very serious.”

“It is already out of control,” Mr Zhang said. “A crisis is possible. But since the debt is being rolled over and is long-term, the timing of its explosion is uncertain.”

Local governments are prohibited from directly raising debt, so they have used special purpose vehicles to circumvent these rules, issuing bonds under the vehicles’ names to fund infrastructure projects.

Investment companies owned by local governments sold Rmb283bn of bonds in the first quarter of 2013, more than double the total for the same period last year. Such an increase would normally be expected to boost the economy, but China’s growth unexpectedly slowed to 7.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2013.

“The only thing you can do is issue new debt to repay the old,” he said. “But there will be some day down the line when this can’t go on.”

Mr Zhang added that he grew alarmed when smaller towns and counties discovered that investment vehicle bonds were an easy way to raise financing. “This evolution was quite frightening,” he said. “China has more than 2,800 counties. If every county issued debt, it could lead to a crisis. It could be even bigger than the US housing crisis.”

But Mr Zhang puts little faith in official guarantees, …: “When the time comes, it won’t be the government that assumes responsibility. It will be the accounting firms and the banks that do.”

Another city on the verge. At least the local governments have a way to discharge debt. Public interest of course has to be routed through Wall Street. Mish Reports HERE

You know a city is in deep trouble when its mayor invites Wall Street but not the press and not private citizens to a closed meeting to discuss the future, including a sell-off of city assets.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities, did just that.

My translation: Philadelphia is bankrupt. However, that easily discernible fact will of course be denied until it officially happens.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities, will address investors at a conference financed by underwriters and closed to the public and the press.

The invitation bills tomorrow’s meeting as a chance to hear “Philadelphia leaders and investors discuss building the city’s future.”

Philadelphia is hoping to attract investors for the city, which is rated three steps above junk by Standard & Poor’s. The city and its authorities have $8.75 billion in outstanding debt as of September, according to bond documents. Philadelphia’s pension system is 47.6 percent funded this year, the documents say.

Tours of city assets are set for the second day of the conference, including the Philadelphia Gas Works, the largest municipally owned natural-gas utility in the U.S. The city plans to hire a broker to steer the sale of the system, which may fetch as much as $496 million, according to Lazard Ltd. (LAZ)

Sam Katz, chairman of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, created in a 1991 state law that oversees the city’s finances, said that with the conference being held locally, it “certainly created some concern on the part of people that it should be made public.”

He’s more troubled, however, by the fact the school district isn’t on the agenda, he said. Facing a $304 million deficit, school officials have asked the city for $60 million and the state for $120 million.

“The school district’s in a crisis,” Katz said. “They’re the same tax base.”

Philadelphia officials facing a $1.35 billion spending gap over five years voted in March to shut 9 percent of its public schools.

It does not take a genius to figure out what is going on here. Philadelphia is bankrupt. Without even seeing the details, it is safe to assume untenable union wages and pension benefits are at the heart of it all. A 47.6% funded pension is rather telling in and of itself.

Gutless Mayor Michael Nutter does not even have the decency to let the public or the press hear what is going on. Instead he invited Wall Street to a private tour of Philadelphia’s assets, hoping to sell assets and stave off the inevitable.

The Aerial Mastery Units have been added for each alignment. Alexstrasza, Nozdormu, Ysera, Malygos, and Deathwing’s stats, skills, and powers are now listed on the information pages. For more details, click HERE.

Emperor Misha at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler reminds people what happens when you compromise with evil:

OK, so they’re busy destroying, systematically, the most successful, free and prosperous nation that this planet ever knew, a nation that did quite well indeed for two centuries until they started gaining traction, but don’t let’s be beastly about it. Can’t we all just agree to disagree in a civil fashion while the planet’s last, fading hope of liberty and prosperity gets snuffed out?

No. We can’t.

Call us old fashioned, but concepts like liberty aren’t negotiable to us. Perhaps they’re even less negotiable to His Imperial Majesty because we, unlike the pampered, helpless, worthless, pussified punks of this nation actually know what it’s like to be chained even if the chains were wonderfully covered with velvet and rather like the feeling of not wearing them anymore. And we take great offense at anybody, anywhere, no matter what their intentions or rationale, trying to put us back into them. Great, violent offense.

So let’s, by all means, be beastly to the socialists. Let’s be as beastly as we possibly can. Let us put our heads together and come up with new and innovative ways in which to be beastly to them in ways that will not only hurt them, but terrify them.

Let us quit pretending that socialism is something with which one can get along, because it isn’t. It is anathema to anything an individual who values his or her personal liberty believes. The two cannot coexist.

Ever.

You cannot compromise a little bit with socialism without giving up the whole deal, any more than you can be “a little bit pregnant.” There are no “grades of liberty.” Either you have it, or you don’t. Period. End. Stop.
Emperor Misha I

Read the entire post HERE.

War’s coming. We don’t like it, but the two ideologies competing in this nation cannot peacefully co-exist much longer. The Prog-Nazis will never surrender, and they cannot abide people who think differently than them – it’s only a matter of time before they start purging or reach too far up Lady Liberty’s skirt and get purged themselves.

“That sounds extreme!” you say casual reader?

We agree – it does sound extreme. It’s also historically supported by what happened every time the Authoritarian Left seized total power in the last 150 years. They are so intolerant, and so demanding of subservience to their cause, they simply can’t help themselves – as sure as water will wet, and fire will burn, the bastards will get around to setting up death-camps eventually.

It’s their nature.

Update 4/17/13: Shit Spins the Fuck Off the Rails

The Emperor has more to say on the subject of Civil War HERE:

If what is happening leads to what increasingly looks inevitable, then that is not a reason for good cheer and “America FUCK YEAH!”, because all of us, no exceptions, will have a lot to answer for. Both to ourselves in the unlikely event that we survive and to G-d when we face Him.

I’m not trying to be a downer here, because we have to do what we have to do and slavery is not an option, it is worse than any alternative, but keep all of this in mind.

Grim resolve and determination is the order of the day if, Heaven forbid, it comes to that, we’ll do what we have to do as free human beings, but don’t delude yourselves into thinking that it will, in any way, be glorious.

Because it won’t be.

I can promise you that much.
– Emperor Misha I

Read his entire post HERE.

He’s correct, things will get as black as night before this shit-storm finishes it’s downpour.Nobodies hands will be clean, and the world as we know it will be changed – and probably for the worse. War is some bad shit. But we’d note, probably not as bad as watching our kids suffer as serfs.Looks like choice A is a big pile o’ shit, and choice B is a bigger, smellier pile of shit. Thrilling selection that.

Speaking of Excrement hitting the rotating oscillator we have THIS from Bob Owens:

California energy officials urged people in the South Bay to cut back on power use Tuesday after a PG&E substation was damaged by vandals overnight.

The California Independent System Operator issued a Flex Alert for Tuesday, asking Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley utility customers to cut down their electricity use until midnight, including by lowering lighting, turning off thermostats and powering down unnecessary appliances.

Vandals appeared to have shot up a bank of transformers at a PG&E transmission center just southeast of San Jose, a PG&E spokesman said. Crews were working to clean up an oil spill caused by bullet holes.

Oh son-of-a-bitch… it’s looking like a warning shot was just fired across the bow of the “Good Ship” U.S.S. Tyranny… and then a second volley…

The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department said there was a breach of the security fence at approximately 3:25 a.m., and five transformers at the substation were vandalized by the gunfire.

Meanwhile, AT&T has now also blamed a large telephone outage in southern Santa Clara County Tuesday morning on vandalism.

Cell phones and landlines were said to be impacted by apparent damage to a fiber optic line. That line, which runs relatively close to PG&E’s substation, was believed to have been cut.

Surely that’s enough of a warni… oh fuck….

An envelope thought to contain ricin was sent to the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Roger Wicker.

The letter to the Mississippi Republican was intercepted at an off-site mail screening facility and never reached the Hill.

Those of you understanding the games being played with our second amendment rights know full well who Senator Wicker is, and what he’s been up to…

So we ask constant readers… did we just see the second America Revolution start?

Folks… we’re begging ya… get that pantry stocked up. Thanks.

Looks like Cyprus as gone from an example to a leaping platform. No longer do they even feel bound to hide the message.

Two top advisers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called for a tax on private wealth and property in eurozone debtor states to force the rich to fund rescue costs, marking a radical new departure for EMU crisis strategy.

Professors Lars Feld and Peter Bofinger said states in trouble must pay more for their own salvation, arguing that there is enough wealth in homes and private assets across the Mediterranean to cover bail-out costs. “The rich must give up part of their wealth over the next ten years,” said Prof Bofinger.

The two economist are members of Germany’s Council of Economic Experts or “Five Wise Men”, a body that advises the Chancellor on major issues. There is no formal plan to launch a wealth tax but the council is often used to fly kites for new policies.

Looks likes the BRICS  team just got bigger. Reuters reports HERE

France intends to set up a currency swap line with China to make Paris a major offshore yuan trading hub in Europe, competing against London, the China Daily on Saturday cited Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer as saying.

“The Bank of France has been working on ways to develop a RMB liquidity safety net in the euro area with due consideration of a supporting currency swap agreement with the People’s Bank of China,” Noyer told the English-language newspaper.

The yuan’s internationalization and bilateral financial cooperation could be among the main topics during French President Francois Hollande’s visit to China in late April, the paper said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius paid a two-day visit to Beijing this week.

The planned swap line would be the latest in a string of bilateral currency agreements that China has signed in the past three years to promote use of the yuan in trade and investment.

It followed a similar step by the Bank of England to set up a reciprocal three-year yuan-sterling swap line with China.

Britain, always anxious to maintain London’s status as Europe’s biggest financial center, launched an offshore yuan currency and bond market to great fanfare last year.

Well in the words of Gomer Pyle, Suprise Suprise Suprise. Looks like congress doesn’t think transparency is as good for them as it is the rest of us. Lets see what the vipers are trying to slither out of today….

Back in 2012, amid “intense pressure from Obama” including an appeal for its passage in his 2012 State of the Union address, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act (with 96-3 theatrical votes in the Senate, and 417-2 even more theatrical votes in the House) – a bill prohibiting the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees. It is unclear why until 2012 it was perfectly legal for congress to trade on inside information, something we pointed out in May 2011 when we wrote that a “A Hedge Fund Comprised Of Junior Congressional Democrats Should Outperform The Market By 9%” as it turned out flagrant insider trading abuse occurred mostly within the democrat ranks of the House (compared to a mere 2%+ outperformance by Congressional stock trading republicans).

It turns out that any cynical skepticism regarding Congress’ ability and willingness to police itself was well founded, as last night the House eliminated a “key requirement of the insider trading law for most federal employees, passing legislation exempting these workers, including congressional staff, from a rule scheduled to take effect next week that mandated online posting of financial transactions.”

The reason why one will have to take Congress at its word that it is not breaking the law? Because apparently posting Congress’ financial dealings online would be pose a “national risk” according to the National Academy of Public Administration.

Surely this explains why the bill was rushed and voted in the matter of hours: one can’t have a debate over matters of “national security” especially if the financial well-being of Congress is at risk. As Washington Times recaps, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, introduced the bill on Thursday and had the chamber vote on it late that evening. The House took the bill up on Friday afternoon and passed it by unanimous consent, with no members objecting. Republican leaders did not give lawmakers the traditional three days to read the bill before holding a vote. One GOP aide told The Washington Times the three-day rule did not apply to Friday’s action because the bill came from the Senate, while another said the House moved quickly because of a Monday deadline for the new disclosure mandates to take effect.”

In other words, while the STOCK Act passed nearly unanimously in 2012 just to show how “honest” congress is, the follow up legislation that effectively undoes the key reporting requirement of said anti-inside trading law passed just as unanimously, allowing congress to have its shady dealings cake, and eat its non-inside trading reputation too.

That both democrats and republicans rushed to pass this provision shows just how truly engrained the unwillingness for true transparency in Congress is.

Obviously, the justification spin for eliminating the key STOCK act provision was ready and just waiting to be unleashed:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s spokesman Rory Cooper told CNN the decision to enact new legislation now was in direct response to the study.

“In December when we extended the STOCK Act deadline for public disclosure of Financial Disclosures, we required a study by the non-partisan and independent National Academy of Public Administration. This was their recommendation, and the House and Senate agreed it was the best course of action for the time being,” Cooper told CNN in a written statement.

In other words, according to the “nonpartisan and independent” NAPA, having Congressional financial documents online represents a national security risk. Because somehow terrorists will terrorize the US even more when they know on what days Nancy Pelosi bought and sold the S&P 500.

Federal employees began expressing concerns about the national security risks of posting personal financial information online soon after government agencies moved to implement the STOCK Act last year.

Online posting was supposed to begin August 31, 2012, but Congress passed extensions three separate times pushing off the compliance date.

In December, the last time the House and Senate approved another extension signed by the president, they also directed the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), a non-profit group of public management experts chartered by Congress, to study whether there were real security risks associated with putting this kind of financial information on the Internet.

…

Part of the law required that senior government officials’ financial disclosure reports — which they are already required to submit in paper — be made available online in a searchable, sortable format. The belief was that publishing them online would make it easier for reporters and the public to try to spot illicit dealings.

The online disclosure provisions had not yet taken effect, and Congress asked NAPA to review the law.

In a report release last month a five-member NAPA panel said online posting would mean more sensitive information about high-level government employees would be easily available, which would make identify theft easier.

“An open, online, searchable and exploitable database of personal financial information about senior federal employees will provide easy access to ‘high quality’ personal information on ‘high value’ targets,” NAPA officials said in their report.

The Defense Department told NAPA that online disclosure would mean hostile nations would have easy access to sensitive personal information about top national security officials.

Because “hostile nations” have nothing better to do than trade alongside Congressmen with the usual 13F, 45-day delay. In the meantime, those who truly would benefit from this transparency: the media, or least those very few in the media who have not been bought by Congress just yet, and are willing to check which members of Congress are now actively breaking the STOCK law, will have their work cut out for them.

At least someone spoke up, although their objection will be promptly ignored and forgotten.

One advocacy group pushing for greater government transparency blasted the move, saying it “guts” the law.

“Not only does the change undermine the intent of the original bill to ensure government insiders are not profiting from non-public information, it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent suggesting that any risks stem not from information being public but from public information being online,” Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation wrote in a statement.

Yet, fundamentally all last night’s accelerate revision to the STOCK act does is pray on the laziness of “terrorist” and, of course, reporters:

With this change those federal workers would still have to report any securities trades over the law’s $1,000 threshold within 45 days. While these reports would be publicly available, they would no longer be posted online in a format that anyone can search or download.

So basically “hostile nations” can still access all the data, however it will be in paper format. And this avoids national security risks just how?

Of course, if indeed this is merely a bet on the laziness of the financial media, it is probably safe one. After all it appears that said financial media would rather spend hours discussing and lamenting the sad future of the financial media, especially how slideshows of kittens are part of the great profitability strategy…

Full Hedge Article HERE

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or nation” ~ Today’s fortune cookie from lunch

Thought everyone could use a laugh first thing Saturday morning…..

The U.S. Treasury on Friday warned Japan not to actively weaken its currency as it again refrained from naming China a manipulator.

“We will continue to press Japan to adhere to the commitments agreed to in the G-7 and G-20, to remain oriented towards meeting respective domestic objectives using domestic instruments and to refrain from competitive devaluation and targeting its exchange rate for competitive purposes,” the Treasury said.

Full humor can be read HERE

Just a small reminder to folks how jobs are actually created. My parents own a grocery store and the jobs they supply constitute stocking shelves, greetings customers, carrying items, and cleaning up isles. This is not a carrier path meant to sustain a large family or pay for retirement. These are base jobs requiring base skill-sets. It is however a good job for learning job skills (especially when younger), or some additional part time work if extra cash is needed or desired.

Owning your own store and business takes a lot of work. This usually means 40-60 work weeks (especially when starting). Now in their later years, they have reduced their hours to 30-35  and enjoy a few more weekends (as they should after decades dedicated to their business). In order to do that they needed to hire more help at the store and extend hours to their employees. The new employes and extended hours were welcomed by those employed. In addition, they had a little extra and allowed a special needs kid twice a week to learn job skills cleaning and fronting shelves. Besides, everyone loved having him around. Then, along came a spider. A sharp rise in minimum wage. The intent of course here is to raise the overall take home of those on the lower scale of the labor force. The REALITY however is much different. What actually happens is that my parents can no longer afford the additional labor they hired. The margins off the cans of soup are no longer enough to sustain the extra labor cost. As a result, my parents once again start working 40 – 50 hours a week, fired one of the newer employes, and let go the special needs kid who was receiving the benefit of excess capital. Sure, the remaining employees received a higher take home pay. But, even then overtime was strictly monitored.

Hedge payed a reminder to these realities….

The Creation of Jobs

If the media tell us that “the opening of XYZ mill has created 1,000 new jobs,” we give a cheer. When the ABC company closes and 500 jobs are lost, we’re sad. The politician who can provide a subsidy to save ABC is almost assured of widespread public support for his work in preserving jobs.

But jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? What if the workers manufacture goods and services that no one wants to purchase? In the Soviet Union, which boasts of giving every worker a job, many jobs are just this unproductive. Production is everything, and jobs are nothing but a means toward that end.

Imagine the Swiss Family Robinson marooned on a deserted South Sea island. Do they need jobs? No, they need food, clothing, shelter, and protection from wild animals. Every job created is a deduction from the limited, precious labor available. Work must be rationed, not created, so that the market can create the most product possible out of the limited supply of labor, capital goods, and natural resources.

The same is true for our society. The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone.

Alternatively, imagine a world where radios, pizzas, jogging shoes, and everything else we might want continuously rained down like manna from heaven. Would we want jobs in such a utopia? No, we could devote ourselves to other tasks—studying, basking in the sun, etc.—that we would undertake for their intrinsic pleasure.

Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians.

The Destruction of Jobs

But what about unemployment? What if people want to work, but can’t get a job? In almost every case, government programs are the cause of joblessness.

Minimum Wage. The minimum wage mandates that wages be set at a government-determined level. To explain why this is harmful, we can use an analogy from biology: there are certain animals that are weak compared to others. For example, the porcupine is defenseless except for its quills, the deer vulnerable except for its speed.

In economics there are also people who are relatively weak. The disabled, the young, minorities, the untrained—all are weak economic actors. But like the weak animals in biology, they have a compensating advantage: the ability to work for lower wages. When the government takes this ability away from them by forcing up pay scales, it is as if the porcupine were shorn of its quills. The result is unemployment, which creates desperate loneliness, isolation, and dependency.

Consider a young, uneducated, unskilled person, whose productivity is $2.50 an hour in the marketplace. What if the legislature passes a law requiring that he be paid $5 per hour? The employer hiring him would lose $2.50 an hour.

Consider a man and a woman each with a productivity of $10 per hour, and suppose, because of discrimination or whatever, that the man is paid $ 10 per hour and the woman is paid $8 per hour. It is as if the woman had a little sign on her forehead saying, “Hire me and earn an extra $2 an hour.” This makes her a desirable employee even for a sexist boss. But when an equal-pay law stipulates that she must be paid the same as the man, the employer can indulge his discriminatory tendencies and not hire her at all, at no cost to himself.

Comparable Worth. What if government gets the bright idea that nurses and truck drivers ought to be paid the same wage because their occupations are of “intrinsically” equal value? It orders that nurses’ wages be raised to the same level, which creates unemployment for women.

Working Conditions. Laws which force employers to provide certain types of working conditions also create unemployment. For example, migrant fruit and vegetables pickers must have hot and cold running water and modern toilets in the temporary cabins provided for them. This is economically equivalent to wage laws because, from the point of view of the employer, working conditions are almost indistinguishable from money wages. And if the government forces him to pay more, he will have to hire fewer people.

Unions. When the government forces businesses to hire only union workers, it discriminates against non-union workers, causing them to be at a severe disadvantage or permanently unemployed. Unions exist primarily to keep out competition. They are a state-protected cartel like any other.

Employment Protection. Employment protection laws, which mandate that no one can be fired without due process, are supposed to protect employees. However, if the government tells the employer that he must keep the employee no matter what, he will tend not to hire him in the first place. This law, which appears to help workers, instead keeps them from employment. And so do employment taxes and payroll taxes, which increase costs to businesses and discourage them from hiring more workers.

Payroll Taxes. Payroll taxes like Social Security impose heavy monetary and administrative costs on businesses, drastically increasing the marginal cost of hiring new employees.

Unemployment Insurance. Government unemployment insurance and welfare cause unemployment by subsidizing idleness. When a certain behavior is subsidized—in this case not working—we get more of it.

Licensing. Regulations and licensing also cause unemployment. Most people know that doctors and lawyers must have licenses. But few know that ferret breeders, falconers, and strawberry growers must also have them. In fact, government regulates over 1,000 occupations in all 50 states. A woman in Florida who ran a soup kitchen for the poor out of her home was recently shut down as an unlicensed restaurant, and many poor people now go hungry as a result.

When the government passes a law saying certain jobs cannot be undertaken without a license, it erects a legal barrier to entry. Why should it be illegal for anyone to try their hand at haircutting? The market will supply all the information consumers need.

When the government bestows legal status on a profession and passes a law against competitors, it creates unemployment. For example, who lobbies for the laws which prevent just anyone from giving a haircut? The haircutting industry—not to protect the consumer from bad haircuts, but to protect themselves against competition.

Peddling. Laws against street peddlers prevent people from selling food and products to people who want them. In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., the most vociferous supporters of anti-peddling laws are established restaurants and department stores.

Child Labor. There are many jobs that require little training—such as mowing lawns—which are perfect for young people who want to earn some money. In addition to the earnings, working also teaches young people what a job is, how to handle money, and how to save and maybe even invest. But in most places, the government discriminates against teenagers and prevents them from participating in the free enterprise system. Kids can’t even have a street-corner lemonade stand.

The Federal Reserve. By bringing about the business cycle, Federal Reserve money creation causes unemployment. Inflation not only raises prices, it also misallocates labor. During the boom phase of the trade cycle, businesses hire new workers, many of whom are pulled from other lines of work by the higher wages. The Fed subsidy to these capital industries lasts only until the bust. Workers are then laid off and displaced.

The Free Market. The free market, of course, does not mean utopia. We live in a world of differing intelligence and skills, of changing market preferences, and of imperfect information, which can lead to temporary, market-generated unemployment, which Mises called “catallactic.” And some people choose unemployment by holding out for a higher paying job.

But as a society, we can insure that everyone who wants to work has a chance to do so by repealing minimum wage law, comparable worth rules, working condition laws, compulsory union membership, employment protection, employment taxes, payroll taxes, government unemployment insurance, welfare, regulations, licensing, anti-peddling laws, child-labor laws, and government money creation. The path to jobs that matter is the free market.

There is a very good reason we keep an eye on good Emperor Misha’s subjects – and this next post is one of them.

LC Light29ID at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler asks his readers if the traitors in the Senate preparing to auction American liberty are “really” so stupid as they appear. One of the Rotties replies:

Are they truly that stupid?

No.

They are that Goddamned EVIL and corrupt. These are the actions of wicked tyrants, who are out to enslave us and our decedents. This legislation is the final line – they cannot help themselves this close to total victory. If they get their list, then the war for liberty is lost.

Know this – tis the end-game – we’re playing for the entire enchilada this quarter. Your “representatives” have just declared Goddamned constitutional convention on their own. Do you understand the magnitude of this? These gentry-class shit-weasels are destroying the Bill of Rights in front of you, while defiantly snarling, “What are you going to do about it, you stupid troglodyte knuckle-dragging rednecks?”

This has been pre-meditated, and carefully scripted. There will be sell-outs, cave-ins, horse-trading, and all of the “great-conservative” talking heads will console people to “remain calm.” “Don’t get all uppity folks,” they will blast from their Ionic pillars – “the House of Representatives” will make it all better.”

They won’t though.

“Now don’t get in a tizzy… the Supreme court will kiss your boo-boo and make the hurt go bye-bye!”

They will refuse.

“Just simmer down till the mid-term elections!” “Or the next presidential election!”

It won’t help. The feckless Rebublocrats will find every excuse to fail, shrug their shoulders, and say “Well shucks, we did all we could… hey at least we are better than those Demoicans!”

Of course, just like with Obamacare…. the fix is IN folks. The outcome for this was determined before the fight ever started. It’s a casino – not a government. Your freedom is right this instant being swapped, for Pork projects, pet legislation, campaign cash, and oversight committee positions.

Why the fuck should they care if you and your kids are being sold into slavery – they have armed guards for them and theirs. Know you mother-fucking place serfs.

The response to this final infringement must be severe, violent, and hugely disproportionate. Why? Simple – because with this final act of rebellion against our founders, they now plant the seeds of complete tyranny – the sorts we saw rise at the beginning of the last century. They now march us towards oblivion – a darkness that will cover the entire earth.

The foundation of our nation has decayed like a rotten tooth. There no longer exists a peaceful means within our system to un-fuck that which has been forever and wholly fucked. Those with a conservative or libertarian mindset have no representation in this illegitimate system, and the democratic tyranny infesting it will never allow us to have one. Ever. This is by no means unintentional.

The only way we will have a voice is if we take it. And tyrants do not relinquish freedom lightly.

They deliberately stifle, marginalize, an destroy our world-view and representation – and make no mistake – they will get around to killing and destroying us one by one. Just as their precursors in Russia, China, Germany, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, these monsters mean to make beggars, corpses, and slaves of you and your ancestors.

Their intentions are crystal clear – they mean the destruction of our very way of life. Of our culture. And if their Utopia’s capital city has to be a throne of bones atop a mountain of skulls, they will cheer it’s construction every step of the way.

Gentlemen and ladies, it’s time to acknowledge that open warfare with our government is unavoidable if we are not to become prisoners, slaves and corpses. We need to accept, and prepare for reality. We are going to have to go to war, and do all of the horrible things that will be required of soldiers in war.

So choose your place now. Registration is the end. They will have their list, and they will run us down one at a time, and always there will be some other crime to keep us from being sympathetic. Tax evaders! Drug users! Had a “cache” of restricted ammo! Hoarders!

You want to know what Germany looked like in 1930? LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.

If we go to war once this last intolerable tyrannical infringement occurs, it’s on them. If we stand by silently and allow them to build their awful Reich, what comes after is on US, the good men and women who sat by idle and did nothing in the face of true evil. We have no excuses. WE KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. We KNOW where this leads.

If we sit back, and languish in our chains, it’s OUR fault, for we did nothing to stop them when we could act.

Live free or fucking die.
– HempRopeAndStreetlight

Read the entire post HERE.

That’s some wickedly depressing shit – and a horribly accurate assessment of how far up Fuck-Street America is. Pretty damn salient, (if frightening), points being made. After all, the damnable Senators basically have called their own private constitutional convention, (unlawfully), for the express purpose of infringing on “that which shall not be infringed.”

It’s also maddeningly clear that, just as with the Abortion that is the “Affordable Care Act,” there will be enough arms twisted and palms greased to “make it all legal.” We at times wonder if our royal-caste knows how thin the veneer really is on this whole “civil society” thing. Lots of nasty splinters lurking under that shiny finish hunting for pokey fingers…

The Rotties are spot on again… damn it all. We the freedom loving people don’t have one lick of representation anymore – we’re voiceless – our government represents itself. We are sold into servitude and back-stabbed by our “own” at every opportunity. Which really means we DON’T have our “OWN.” We toil under those who hate us, and those who hate us MORE.

From our perspective “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” is rapidly becoming the literary equivalent of an ear-worm advertising jingle….

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
– Rudyard Kipling

Damn-it.

We blame Bill Quick. He’s the one responsible for introducing us to this “mind-worm.” Reward him for his prescience by throwing some coins in his tip-jar – so the good man can afford to escape his communist Shit-pit state.

Heh. That didn’t take long. Hard assets are meaningless. Unless of course you have a chance to confiscate them…

Reuters reports HERE

Cyprus has agreed to sell excess gold reserves to raise around 400 million euros (341 million pounds) and help finance its part of its bailout, an assessment of Cypriot financing needs prepared by the European Commission showed.

Update:

The Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) said last night however that selling the island’s gold had not been on the table.

“Such an issue has not been raised, has not been discussed and is not being discussed at the moment,” CBC spokeswoman Aliki Stylianou said.

Stylianou added that sale of the gold was a matter handled exclusively by the CBC board.

A spokesperson for the Central Bank of Cyprus told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) that reports of the $523 million gold sale have not been, “raised, discussed or debated,” with the bank’s board of directors.

Nothing to see here.

Presented without comment….

You were very clear Sir. Very clear…..

Our soldiers and police are being trained and indoctrinated to do exactly that. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has a preview of what our soldiers are being trained on:

The U.S. Army listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism along with Al Qaeda and Hamas during a briefing with an Army Reserve unit based in Pennsylvania.

“We find this offensive to have Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church to be listed among known terrorist groups,” said Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization.”

The incident occurred during an Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on extremism. Topping the list is Evangelical Christianity. Other organizations listed included Catholicism, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunni Muslims, and Nation of Islam.

The military also listed “Islamophobia” as a form of religious extremism.
– Pamela Geller

Read the entire thing HERE.

The Soldiers and police won’t be told “OK boys, we’re going to disarm the law-abiding citizens in an unconstitutional manner today – go get them!”

They will sent to kill “insurrectionists,” “terrorists” and arrest “criminals endangering civilians.” Here is how it will go down, courtesy of David Hathaway. Read and understand.

What really happens is that good ol’ patriotic cops are told by their bosses to show up at the police department at o dark thirty for a briefing about the execution of a search warrant. This happens hundreds of times every day. These law enforcement agencies often have military personnel and resources dedicated to assist in their mission as well. No one ever objects. There is action afoot against n’er do wells. It is based on a hush-hush deep dark sinister undercover deal. It can’t be discussed because cooperators are “in deep” and it’s all “need to know.”

Fortunately, your buddy gets to be in on the action the day that the door kicking is done. It will be cool. It’s like black ops. It’s like a video game. It’s like a military adventure against the ferreted-out scum of society. It’s exciting and he gets to be there. He can meet his cop pals at Pizza Hut later on for lunch and brag about how he punched a guy who “had an attitude” and made him throw up and said, “How’d you like that home boy? Get used to that. You are going to get a lot more of that in the joint, if you’re lucky!” Before the raid, he is already getting a few comic one liners ready to go with the catchy punch lines to be thrown in later describing something like how a perp soiled himself when your cop buddy demonstrated his manhood by pointing an M4 at his forehead. These guys are scum and he has to get his licks in and deal firmly with them before those pansies in the courts get ahold of them and dismiss everything on some technicality.

On the day of the raid, there are lots of cops milling around until the master of ceremonies begins the sermon. The M.C. is someone who is praiseworthy due to rank; somebody like the Chief of Police. A general tirade slowly builds from the orator about what various scum infiltrators have done to our communities. Veiled references to politics are made. It is mentioned how “the current administration, I won’t name names” is mollycoddling the crooks and not keeping our children safe. Then a hush of silence comes over the room as the M.C. introduces the plain clothes detective, investigator, or case agent.

The detective, in a dramatic almost whispering voice, says that no details can be given to the mass of assembled cops. People are in deep. There are sensitive infiltrators inserted in the group that need their identities protected, “So we can’t talk in detail but, just let it be known that these people we are going after today are the worst. They walk amongst our families at the mall. They go to school with your kids. They are a thorn in our side.” He looks over at the Chief of Police and begins a reciprocated round of suggestive head nodding, like yeah boy, I hear that. The uniformed crowd stays silent in awe of the plain clothes guy who has risen in the ranks to the point where he can sleuth together paper cases, even when no crimes are apparent, and bust down doors with another piece of paper. The detective says, “Seize computers, papers, and containers. Take cell phones and address books. Take reading material like gun magazines so we can show the judge where these people’s heads are at. Separate the subjects and get down incriminating statements. If there are any minors present, we have social services on standby to take the kids.” – David Hathaway

Read the rest HERE.

We are the enemy folks. They will kill us, lock us in cages, and sleep soundly the next day, confident they fought the good battle for peace, justice, and the American way.

It looks as if the EU area isnt the only ones eying investment and savings funds over 100k….

Though Australia’s national balance sheet is comparatively quite strong, the government has been running at a net deficit for years… and they’re under intense pressure to balance the budget.

The good news is that Australia now has a goodly number of investor-friendly immigration programs designed to bring productive foreigners into the country, similar to the trend we’re seeing across Europe.

On the flip side, though, the Australian government has just announced new rules which penalize citizens who have responsibly set aside savings for their own retirement.

Any income over A$100,000 drawn from a superannuation fund (the equivalent of an IRA in the United States) will now be taxed at 15%. Previously, all such income was tax-free.

The really offensive part about this is that the government is going to tax people’s savings ‘on both ends,’ meaning that people are taxed on money they move INTO the retirement fund, and now they can be taxed again when they pull money out.

The Cyprus debacle drew a line in the sand– fleecing people with assets, or income, in excess of 100,000 dollars, euros, etc. is now acceptable. This is the definition of ‘rich’ in the sole discretion of governments.

And make no mistake– if it can happen in Australia, which still has reasonable debt levels despite years of deficit spending, it can happen in bankrupt, insolvent nations like the US.

As you may know, US tax code allows for several different types of retirement accounts… and there has been a lot of talk lately about a ‘Roth conversion’.

This is to say that a US taxpayer can convert his/her traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. And the implications are enormous.

A traditional IRA is not taxed on the way in, but it’s taxed on the way out. So if you contribute $3,000 annually to your IRA, you won’t pay income tax on that $3,000. But the accumulated retirement savings is taxed in the future when you withdraw the funds at retirement.

Conversely, contributions to a Roth IRA are taxed each year with the rest of your income. But the accumulated savings are NOT taxed when you withdraw the funds at retirement.

A few years ago, Congress inked a deal to allow US taxpayers to CONVERT their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. In doing so, Americans were allowed to pay tax on the accumulated gains in their traditional IRA up through that point, then switch to a Roth.

Congress was essentially saying, “We promise that we will only tax you now in exchange for not taxing you later.”

It certainly begs the question: How much do you trust your government?

Can we really expect the country that has racked up more debt than any other in the history of the world to keep its word? Can we really expect that 5 or 10 years from now, they won’t make another grab for cash?

If the Australian government can unilaterally change the rules and start double-taxing retirement accounts, so can the US. And the trillions of dollars in retirement savings in the Land of the Free is far too irresistible for them to ignore.

Full article HERE

Bob Owens, over at his Blog, has a reminder for the Washington Post and other Prog-Nazi mouthpieces:

The United States is not a democracy, and it never has been. We are a Republic, and we have Constitutional rights that were written to support the inalienable rights granted us by our Creator.

The oldest of humans rights is the right of self defense, and only slightly younger are the rights of self determination and the right of rebellion that Englightenment thinkers traced back to the earliest religious texts.

The Second Amendment was written to ensure that Americans could never be enslaved by their governments the way that other governments enslaved their people. It was their express desire that every law-abiding American citizen be armed “with the sword and every terrible weapon of war,” including the most advanced military rifles, pistols, bayonets, grenades and cannon of their day (and yes, they even knew of early machine guns like the Puckle gun and rapid-fire assualt rifles like the Ferguson that fired 10-times faster than the common musket).

They knew–as our current generation of legislators on both sides of the aisle are proving–that the government cannot be trusted with liberty. They always weaken it and pervert it, attempting to subvert it for their benefit. Governments that last long enough invarably stop serving the people, and attempt to force the people to serve the government. We are living in a time where the government is attempting that usurpation, and it will be our distinct privildge and honor to go to war against that tyranny and restore the liberties won for us by our forefathers, restoring this nation to First Principles without the curse of sexism and racism that haunted previous generations.

Civil war is a horrible thing, but not the most horrible of things. This time, perhaps, we will get it right.

I will not fire until fired upon, but if the enemies of Liberty mean to have battle, let it be on my watch, and let it begin here
– Bob Owens

Read the entire thing, and pay close attention to the comments HERE.

Mr. Owens is correct – although we didn’t fail to notice how quickly the Post deleted his commentary from their propaganda parade. This fabled “tolerance” shown by the leftists seems to be about as real as the current “economic recovery.” Commies to the left, fascists to the right… what could possibly go wrong?

A discussion on the same “topic” broke out over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler this weekend – things start getting REALLY interesting about HERE.

(Please note: When we use the phrase “interesting” we mean it as a synonym for “pants-shittingly-frightening.”)

Some scary words follow – beware, as that round-table goes to many dark and dreadful places. But this is the sort of resolve we see building behind the scenes, and to ignore it, (and what it leads to), would be folly.

We have to prepare and accept reality: This is the chatter going back and forth folks, and it’s not going to stop until people die – lots of them. This sort of talk was once whispered with sideways glances in taverns by the very men that founded America. But know this: Anybody thinking it’s going to be a glorious patriotic affair is delusional. As one of the commentators at the A.I.R. mentions:

“Hell’s coming to dinner. And none of us are happy to see’im.”
– HempRopeAndStreetlight

Personally, we don’t feel “hell” does the coming storm proper justice. We may need to invent a totally new word to describe the aftermath of Civil War 2.0.

So, constant readers – how are you progressing on getting some depth in your larder? Like we said a million times before – no crazy commando-shit. Just what you eat now – only more of it – and stuff to wash it down with. Once you’ve got that handled, think about some things to keep you warm when the lights and power goes down.

If the hard, dangerous men talking are to be believed… go down the power and the lights will. Plan accordingly. Prepare to be comfortable and alive. Do not prepare to be a victim. There is no downside to being a good boy or girl-scout.

Cant have something as simple as a “constitution” getting in the way of EU monetary policy. Cant have that at all…  Hedge reports

The European Commission welcomes that, following the decision of the Portuguese Constitutional Court on the 2013 state budget, the Portuguese Government has confirmed its commitment to the adjustment programme, including its fiscal targets and timeline. Any departure from the programme’s objectives, or their re-negotiation, would in fact neutralise the efforts already made and achieved by the Portuguese citizens, namely the growing investor confidence in Portugal, and prolong the difficulties from the adjustment.

The Commission therefore trusts that the Portuguese Government will swiftly identify the measures necessary to adapt the 2013 budget in a way that respects the revised fiscal target as requested by the Portuguese Government and supported by the Troika in the 7th review of the programme.

Continued and determined implementation of the programme offers the best way to restore sustainable economic growth and to improve employment opportunities in Portugal. At the same time, it is a precondition for a decision on the lengthening of the maturities of the financial assistance to Portugal, which would facilitate Portugal’s return to the financial markets and the attainment of the programme’s objectives. The Commission supports that such a decision be taken soon.

The Commission will continue to work constructively with the Portuguese authorities within the parameters agreed to alleviate the social consequences of the crisis.

The Commission reiterates that a strong consensus around the programme will contribute to its successful implementation. In this respect, it is essential that Portugal’s key political institutions are united in their support

 

Basically, get your shit in line. Your out of step little soldier. The market doesnt think this is very funny either….

I wish that was the last of the story. WSJ reports…

The Portuguese government is considering a plan to pay public workers and pensioners one month of their salary in treasury bills rather than cash after a high court ruled out wage cuts, a person familiar with the situation said Sunday.

“This is one of the ideas being considered,” the person said.

By paying one month of salary in T-bills to public workers and pensioners, the government would save an estimated €1.1 billion in expenses, narrowing the budget gap significantly.

If you wont go willingly into the ponzi then we will force you into the ponzi.

“Welcome my son. Welcome to.. the machine….”

Although I have posted several Kyle Bass promoted videos and quips in previous posts , here he is again in the media. Seems like hes getting a little more attention these days as he should…

…Critically, he fears, “the social fabric of Japan will tear,” as with one-third of the nations at retirement age, the fallout from the policies of Abe-Kuroda could cause them to “lose 30-50% of their life savings.” What is perhaps even more concerning, he adds, “you are starting to see the central banks not trust each other.”

At a certain point in time, “nationalist interest takes over the global [G7] kumbaya,”and that is occurring now.

“When your debts are 24-times your government tax revenue, you have a secular decline in population, and all of the things are finally catching up to you, what happens when you have a debt crisis?”

Central Banks believe “Devaluation is ‘supposedly’ the way to freedom”

3:00 – Japan’s tearing social fabric
4:30 – G7 Kumbaya unwind

6:00 – “There is no way out” for Japan – it’s a matter of when not if. And “if there is no way out for them, there is no way out for the rest of us – unless we change the way we operate.”

6:30 – “If there is no consequence to the US profligacy [rates not moving against them] well then they will keep spending.”  –  “Central banks are enabling the spending”

7:15 – “The Modus Operandi of the west is running deficits; and what that has meant in the past is runaway cost-push inflation – and I think that is what we are going to see”

8:00 – “Investors are too complacent” – this is the single-most riskiest time to be complacent in our generation – “investing with the typical endowment model… is not going to work”

9:00 – “The insidious nature of a runaway inflation is that it bankrupts the middle class… the poor stay poor, the middle class (with savings in the banks) get wiped out, the wealthy (with productive assets) do the best”

9:40 – … which leads to social unrest globally – and that is a problem…

Full article can be read HERE

UPDATE:

Some folks around the Asian pacific area are not happy with the BOJ either. Hedge reports….

As the SCMP reports, “Many of China’s top economists are livid at what they view as an effective currency devaluation by Japan and are calling on the People’s Bank of China to retaliate by weakening the yuan to defend itself in what they see as a new currency war.”

These economists, including Tsinghua University professor Li Daokui and ANZ Bank’s Liu Ligang, see Japan’s plan to double its monetary base within two years as “blackmail” and have criticised the Japanese central bank’s decision to open the liquidity floodgates to bump up the economy.

Liu said Japan’s unprecedented easing programme, aimed at ending more than two decades of deflation, was “a monetary blackmail” targeted at other export-driven Asian countries such as China and that the central bank should sell more yuan and buy the US dollar to push down the yuan.

He also called on authorities to guard against a fresh wave of hot money into China’s fragile financial markets, warning that Japan’s move would reignite the so-called carry trade, under which investors borrow in low-interest yen and invest in high- interest markets.

“The massive monetary stimulus by the Japanese central bank could spell doom for other nations in the region,” said Tsinghua’s Li, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China.

All spot on, and all well-known in advance, but apparently all the brilliant minds in the world forget that trade is a zero-sum game, and that Japan’s current account and trade surplus gain (if any, recall both hit record lows recently) facilitated by a plunging yen, will come at the expense of other very angry exporting nations. This also ignores what happens to Japanese import energy and food prices, already exploding as has been documented here previously. The BOJ’s hope: companies will promptly hike wages to make up for rising staples costs. We hope the central banker often confused with a Yankees pitcher is not holding his breath on that one…

As for countries hating Japan’s guts right now, China may have to wait in line: if there is one country that has to be truly livid at Japan it is South Korea, whose net exports account for nearly 60% of its GDP. So yes: the next currency war salvo will come most likely not from China, which is already caught between a rock and a hard place, but from Seoul, where the perfect storm of a totally nutjob neighbor to the north has emerged just in time for Japan to do everything in its power to crush its economy.

Update:

Ex Soros advisor is a little worried about Japan as well. Looks like Kyle isn’t the only one with this opinion…

How popular will inflation be in Japan? Assuming the BoJ is successful and inflation rates rise, one interesting dynamic will be the political support for ‘super-easy’ monetary policy. The majority of financial household assets sit in deposits, which until now have earned a positive real rate. While long-term inflation expectations move higher, the Yen and equities re-price rapidly but the negative impact on deposit returns from negative real rates will only be felt once inflation has actually started to materialise. This is clearly not an immediate concern as the government’s approval ratings remain high ahead of the Upper House elections this Summer. Still, PM Abe’s policy aim of beating deflation may become less popular at some stage because the implied distributional choices of higher inflation may become clearer for voters. For example, higher inflation would re-distribute real income from (older) savers to (younger) wage earners. But again it is worth thinking about the exact sequencing. By the time inflation in Japan becomes settled in positive territory the Fed may well be on the verge of hiking rates. In essence, any concerns about inflation in Japan and debate about a BoJ policy response will likely arrive at a stage when Fed tightening and JPY carry trades have already become the dominant theme.

In short, yes, Japanese inflation will destabilize the economy, and almost certainly lead to yet another political upheaval, but by then Japan will have served its purpose and injected some $1 trillion into the US stock market, thus supposedly allowing the US economy to become self sustaining. Or not. As to the consequences that the demographically-challenged Japanese population has to face as it suddenly finds itself holding worthless pieces of paper… who cares.

“By expanding the monetary base to 270 trillion yen, the BOJ is making a huge bet which I think it will ultimately lose,” Fujimaki said in an interview in Tokyo on April 11. “Kuroda’s QE announcement is declaring double suicide with the government. The BOJ will have to share the country’s fate and

The volatility in the JGB market as well as the fact that there is large selling represent fear among investors,” Fujimaki said. “They are early signs of a larger selloff and we should continue to monitor the moves in the long-term bonds.”

Fujimaki said he recently bought put options for Japanese government bonds of various maturities, without elaborating. He continues to hold real estate in Japan and options granting the right to sell the yen against the greenback expiring in less than five years. He also holds assets in U.S. dollars and currencies of other developed nations.

“By expanding the monetary base to 270 trillion yen, the BOJ is making a huge bet which I think it will ultimately lose,” Fujimaki said in an interview in Tokyo on April 11. “Kuroda’s QE announcement is declaring double suicide with the government. The BOJ will have to share the country’s fate and default together.”

“Shirakawa did more than enough and he had good reasons to not do any more,” said Fujimaki. “There will be tremendous side effects from monetary stimulus. QE doesn’t work and has no exit.”

“Things may look rosy for now as stocks rise, but should we see hyper-inflation, JGBs will see a huge selloff, leading to a stock market crash,” said Fujimaki, adding that he sold “almost all” of his Japanese stock holdings some time ago.

“Japan’s finance is sinking into the ocean,” Fujimaki said. “There’s no escape from a market crash in the future when you have such enormous debt.”

From the Huff’n Puff:

First you all come squealing for our right to keep guns. Now, your fucking commie-lizards are after our video games? Fuck yerself DiFi you miserable Cunt – and all the morons standing alongside your Nazi ass:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that Congress may be forced to take action to limit video game violence.

Speaking to an audience of around 500 in San Francisco, Feinstein, who led the charge in the Senate on an assault weapons ban, said the video game industry should take voluntary steps to make sure it does not glorify guns in the wake of the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. She added that if the industry does not, Congress is prepared to take action, according to the Associated Press.

Feinstein said that video games play, “a very negative role for young people, and the industry ought to take note of that.”

“If Sandy Hook doesn’t do it … then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the future,” she added.

The California Democrat is the latest to add her voice to a chorus of lawmakers, including many Republicans, who have connected violence in video games to gun violence.
– Dianne Feinstein

Click HERE for more information. Enjoy watching the Prog-Nazis twisting themselves into pretzels trying to justify not trashing the precious little first amendment while advocating for the gutting of the second. It’s goddamned hilarious – if you can call watching freedom in America die “hilarious.”

Intolerable amoral busybodies will torment a person without end – for they do so with with the approval of their own conscience, as C.S. Lewis would say. These insufferable nannies WILL NOT STOP, until the American people figure out they need to be strung up from the nearest streetlight alongside their supporters.

Hold on we have a new Sheriff in town. Helicopter Ben has some competition. This is indeed a new bar. If you are a Keynesian and you fear big Ben being dethroned, fear not.  The Bernanke is not through by any means.

There are not really many choices when your debt to GDP ratio is over 240%. Even in a homogenous society which strongly supports its own government, you can only play the game so long. Even when 90% of your country’s bonds are held by the populous, you can only push the envelope so far. Two “lost” decades will require extreme measures. Well, they are now at the edge. Meet the end or print. Japan has chosen to print….

The Bank of Japan unleashed the world’s most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.

The U.S. Federal Reserve may buy more debt under its quantitative easing, but with the Japanese economy about one-third of the size of the United States, the scope of Kuroda’s “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing” is unmatched.

“This is an unprecedented degree of monetary easing,” a smiling Kuroda told a news conference after his first policy meeting at the helm of the central bank.

The BOJ will buy 7.5 trillion yen of long-term government bonds per month, roughly 70 percent of bonds sold in markets. It combined two bond-buying schemes, its asset-buying and lending program and the “rinban” market operation, to buy longer-dated government bonds, including those with duration of 40 years.

The central bank will also increase purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETF) by 1 trillion yen per year and real-estate trust funds (REIT) by 30 billion yen per year.

“I can say that the BOJ came up with a perfect answer in response to market expectations,” said Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities.

Kuroda said the BOJ wanted to push down bond yields enough so that investors will start buying riskier assets, such as property and stocks, and to prompt households and companies to spend now rather than later on expectations of rising prices.

The central bank temporarily scrapped a self-imposed rule of capping its holdings of government bonds to the value of bank notes in circulation, despite reservations by some board members that doing so could nudge it closer to monetizing public debt — or directly underwriting government borrowing.

Kuroda brushed aside concerns that excess money printing by the BOJ will sow the seeds of a future asset price bubble, which was repeatedly mentioned by his predecessor.

“I don’t see a risk of a sudden spike in long-term interest rates or a creation of an asset price bubble,” Kuroda said.

Full Reuters article can be viewed HERE

UPDATE:

The Man Kyle Bass has a few more words on this subject…..

As the fast-money flabber-mouths stare admiringly at the rise in nominal prices of Japanese (and the rest of the world ex-China) stock prices amid soaring sales of wheelbarrows following Kuroda’s ‘shock-and-awe’ last night, it is Kyle Bass who brings these surrealists back to earth with some cold-hard-facting. Out of the gate Bass explains the massive significance of what the Japanese are embarking on, “they are essentially doubling the monetary base by the end of 2104.”

It is a “Giant Experiment,” he warns, but when you are backed into a corner and your debts are north of 20 times your government tax revenue, “you’re already insolvent.” Simply put, Bass says they have to do something and they have to something big because they are “about to implode under the weight of their debt.” For a sense of the scale of the BoJ’s ‘experimentation’, Bass sums it up perfectly (and concerningly), “the BoJ is monetizing at a rate around 75% of the Fed on an economy that is one-third the size of the US!”

What they are trying to do is devalue the currency to attempt to become more competitive while holding their rates market flat – the economic zealots running the world’s central banks believe they can live in that Nirvana – and Bass believes that is not the case, as they will lose control of rates, since leaving the zone of insolvency is impossible now. His advice, “if you’re Japanese, spend! or take it out of your country. If you’re not, borrow in JPY and invest in productive assets.” Do not be long JPY or Japanese assets as he concludes with the reality of Japan’s “hollowed out” manufacturing industry and why USDJPY is less important that KRWJPY.

Via Hedge HERE

“The Almighty says this must be a fashionable fight. It’s drawn the finest people.”

Funny… it occurred to me while reading some Thomas Paine, that he understood why all the new modern MMORPG’s fail.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
– Thomas Paine

Even though he was speaking of “liberty” and not “J-Boots” the principle remains the same – all the fun gameplay, awesome graphics, and great story really does mean jack-shit without some well placed “suck” to give the “great” some value.

The fact of the matter is, modern MMO’s give you everything. The development houses have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to completely removed all of “the suck.” They’ve caved to every whine, every demand, every preening troll and bitchy quitter, to the point that modern MMORPG’s basically hold the player’s hand like a wet-nurse shepherding a three-year old to their potty-chair.

The problem is, “the suck” is what gave value to a treasure, a character, or a conquest. They game companies have tried to banish with all of “the suck” when they should have been BALANCING “the suck” to commiserate with the rewards.

“The suck” is like a spice. Add too much, and you have the Final Fantasy MMO’s, where raid bosses can take 50+ hours and teams of hundreds to kill. Add to little of “the suck” and your players won’t appreciate anything they have – and they will leave in droves once they’ve devoured the content. Like Star Wars: The Old Republic. Or Failhammer. Or the current incarnations of WoW which are bleeding subscribers at a rate that can’t have the blizzard folks feeling very secure in their jobs…

Just as Paine said: “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

In the MMO heyday, the best equipment, the toughest monsters, and the most prized quests were difficult to obtain. Players had to work hard, and spend large amounts of time to achieve these things. Their personal arsenals, their wealth, and their victories gained value because of “the suck” involved in earning them. Nowadays however, rewards are tossed out like candy at a July 4th parade. Simply logging into some games after inactivity results in levels gained. Top flight gear is thrown to players with little effort, and challenging encounters have been castrated, in the name of appeasing a small minority that whines very, VERY loudly.

A player that truly put effort into their character, equipment, and fortune, will feel attached to it. It becomes valuable, it becomes a “possession.” They are not easily nudged away from it. That effort, “the suck,” keeps them shackled to a game, and paying those monthly fees. Bad defines good – and gives it meaning. The most recent additions to the MMORPG market have forgotten this, and without “the suck” properly balanced into gameplay, all the pretty graphics, glorious music, awesome game-play, and perfect voice-acting won’t keep the players around.

Those nights where a player smashes a keyboard against his desk until the keys come flying off are what makes killing the source of that “rage” worthwhile. Spending hours on a long and difficult quest, getting slain countless times, only to finally succeed, turns a collection of 1’s and 0’s with a cheesy thumbnail graphic into a precious treasure. Piles of Gold and Platinum in a bank-vault have value only because the player spent scores of hours repetitively crafting Bandages or Pastries to earn that money.

“The suck” needs to be a part of an MMO, or the player has zero personal investment, and zero reason to stick around.

Everyone here at Deth HQ knows the market is front running due to the promise of further liquidity from the Fed. There is no way that equity prices should be this high based on job numbers and fundamentals. However, it is nice to hear from a few experts who understand this. David Stockman shares some thoughts…

There is “not a chance,” that the Fed will be able to unwind its balance sheet in an orderly manner, “because everybody is front-running [them],” as the Fed is creating “serial bubbles,” that are increasingly hard to manage since “we’re getting in deeper and deeper every time.” David Stockman has been vociferously honest in the last few days and his Bloomberg Radio interview with Tom Keene was extremely so. While Keene tries his best to remain upbeat and his permabullish self, Stockman just keeps coming with body blow after body blow to the thesis that this ‘recovery’ is sustainable. “They are using a rosy scenario forecast for the next ten years that would make the rosy scenario of the 1981 Reagan administration look like an ugly duckling,,” he exclaims, adding that the Keynesian Krugmanites’ confidence is “disingenuous” – “the elephant in the room – the Fed,” that are for now enabling rates to stay where they are. The full transcript below provides much food for thought but he warns, if the Fed ever pulled back, even modestly, “there would be a tremendous panic sell off in the bond market because it is entirely propped up… It’s to late to go cold turkey.”

On Bill Dudley of the New York Federal Reserve Bank saying that he has confidence we can unwind all the damage we’ve done with a huge balance sheet: I don’t buy that because that huge balance sheet has gone nowhere. It has stayed right within the canyons of Wall Street. They have taken their balance sheet from $800 billion, which took 94 years to assemble, and in seven weeks they doubled it. They were printing money like $600 million an hour. It is now tripled, quadruple, up to $3.2 trillion.

And what happened? During that period, from September 2, ’08, excess reserves in the banking system went from nothing – $40 billion – to $1.7 trillion today. So the money is staying in the canyons of Wall Street. It funds the carry trade where you can buy anything that might have a return, a yield, a risk asset.

On whether the Fed is going to be able to pull money out of Wall Street in an organized manner. Not a chance because everybody in Wall Street is basically front running the Fed. What the Fed is buying, the belly of the curve, I am buying. What the Fed is buying, short term, I’m using to fund my position. So no one really owns the treasury bonds today, it is all rented on huge repo spreads. And the minute the yields start heading up a little bit and the bond prices go down, you are going to destroy the arbitrage, the fast money is going to sell, then the slower money is going to have to sell because the fast money is selling. And where is the bid? At the bottom of the market…The Fed never gets up.

On whether the Fed is trying to manage the bubble collapse. Well, we’re getting in deeper and deeper every time. And the ultimate consequence will be more of a train wreck. Today, at 1560 plus or minute, we are at the same point the S&P was in March 2000, 4,750 days ago. We have had two massive collapses in the interim – the dot.com $5 trillion evaporated, the Lehman meltdown $7 trillion evaporated. So it is serial bubble. They are bicycling the thing up and down. It happens in Wall Street.

On whether he has patience that the U.S. will grind its way out and get to a better place five or ten years from now: No, because the ten year ago forecast said that we would have a surplus in 2012, that revenue would be $3.5 trillion, and it was $2.5 trillion. What they are using today is a rosy scenario forecast for ten years that would make the rosy scenario I did in 1981 in the Reagan administration look like an ugly duckling by comparison. They are saying that we are going to create 17 million jobs in ten years compared to two million in the last ten years, that we are going to go 14 years without a recession. It has never happened in history. Most cycles last 48 months. So when you actually do a forecast based on the last ten years, just say the performance in the last ten years, the growth rate, the business investment, job creation, you have $15 trillion to $20 trillion in deficits in front of us, not $7 trillion. We are not on a glide path going downward.

On the Republican party: That is the problem. We have no conservative party left.The Republicans have simply adopted Keynesianism for the prosperous classes by using the Tax Code for this stimulus, that stimulus, to help this part of the economy or that part of the economy.

On how much fiscal drag is appropriate: I don’t think we should have any fiscal drag because the Keynesian formula is simply a program to tax the future generations so that we can live a little better today. It doesn’t matter whether we have one percent growth or negative one percent or positive two percent. We can’t belay massive burdens on future generations because someone finds it inconvenient that our economy can only grow one

On whether he agrees with Glenn Hubbard who suggested that we need to go after entitlements on a long glide path and against the wealthy first: No, because we have been kicking the can for decades and decades, according to the advice of Keynesians like Hubbard. Hubbard is a complete Keynesian. He is a brilliant guy who told Bush cut taxes in 2001, cut taxes in 2003, oh, while you are at it, go have two unfinanced wars and don’t worry about the deficit because it doesn’t matter. This is the kind of advice Republicans are getting from the likes of Professor Hubbard, and it is no wonder that we are heading towards national bankruptcy. It has got to stop.

On what would happen if we went cold turkey: It’s too late to go cold turkey. Nobody is going to do it, that is why we are drifting towards the wall. The deficit is much bigger than they are saying. As I indicated, with an honest economic forecast, just like we’ve had for ten years, you are looking at $15 trillion, $20 trillion. You are looking at a national debt $30 trillion.

 

Full article can be viewed HERE

UPDATE:

A good listen to how this may play out….

Bob Owens, over at his blog has noted that another state has fallen to tyranny:

General Gage sent a column of more than 600 Regulars and Royal Marines into the Massachusetts countryside on April 19, 1775. That attempt at gun control sparked an eight-year long war that birthed a new nation, and sent the tyrants and their followers packing back to England or Canada.One can hope that true Americans respond to this latest attempt at gun confiscation respond with morally justified force, with the tyrants attempting it shot down in their tracks or sent fleeing overseas.

“Shall not be infringed” is not a suggestion, but the codification of a God-given right that may not be removed by man without violating God’s law as well.

Anyone attempting to disarm you intends to enslave you; anyone attempting to enslave you will just as callously kill you. 262 million died at the hands of their own government in the 20th Century, in what has now been termed “democide.” The one thing they all had in common was that the governments disarmed their citizens first.

If you want peace, prepare for war.
– Bob Owens

Read the entire article HERE.

We need to once again mention the similarities between the divisions in the states and ideologies that have been simmering under the surface – seems highly reminiscent 1850’s to us. As we march inexorably towards the next Civil War, consider this another signpost along the road. To hell.

Prepare accordingly.

Many of us have been in a particularly dark mood as of late. We understand how rotten our society has become, and know from past history where that leads – poverty, famine, slavery. Death. Hell on earth. Knowing this is our future makes for some really rosy dispositions round these parts.

Apparently, Daniel Greenfield over at Sultan Knish has not been particularly cheery himself:

The right sees positive change as organic, deriving from the inevitable trajectory of a civilization, the left sees positive change as revolutionary, the result of the dispossessed fighting the possessors until the former triumph and the latter yield. This view of history is dangerously childish and violent, but it has become our version of history and it demands that we constantly sacrifice ourselves on the altar of change for the sake of emerging groups of the dispossessed.

For the right, change is life. For the left it is death. It demands the death of societies and people, of nations and beliefs, it is a beast that is constantly hungry for blood, always baying with outrage at the moon. For the right change brings continuity, for the left, utopia. It is this utopia that they worship at the altar of change. This Moloch of hope and fairy cloaked dreams scribbled on scraps of notepaper, signs and slogans which scream that if you want a better world badly enough, then sheer outraged optimism will bring it about.

The old order must die, says the left, for a better world to be born. Sooner or later we must all mount the altar of change and let our blood drip beneath the shaman’s knife, so that the green world may renew itself. Some must be euthanized, others aborted, we must pay more and give more, we must volunteer and donate our times, our lives and our minds to the new order. Our beliefs, our nations and our children, these too we must offer up to the fire.

And when all of it has been burned away, everything but our dream of a perfect world, then the gleaming new world will emerge out of the ashes, a world too wonderful for us to look at. And if that world seems like a dark age, where savages prowl the streets, knives are sharp, services are lacking and there is a man with a whip on every corner, that is because we are too reactionary, too full of the old world to see the glory of the new world for what it is. To rejoice in its bestial scream, to dance mindlessly as the ages are swept away beneath the dead moon while the ashes of burning books and paintings rain down on us and civilization is rubble under our bleeding feet.
– Daniel Greenfield

Read the entire article HERE.

Too bad we don’t “have” a “Right” in this country Mr. Greenfield. We have a two headed slithering snake, both sides of which seek to dismantle every freedom we own, every sliver of accumulated wealth we have labored for, and to lord over our every single decision. They are intolerable slave-masters who will bring us all to ruin “for our own fucking good.” And removing them is going bring as much destruction and death as tolerating their wickedness.

Yeah. Plenty of us are in a bad mood.

The Official Deth Guild Membership Roster is now online. Plenty of good memories as one reads over that list of friends. For painfully obvious, (and equally pathetic), reasons, e-mails have been excluded from this revision of the site.

For more information, click HERE.

Presented without comment from HEDGE

Today, a draft of the revised Cypriot MOU being prepared by the head of the IMF mission to the island nation, Delia Velculescu, leaked and can be found in its 24 page entirety here. However, for the benefit of our Cypriot readers, here is the important part: the listing of the anticipated austerity tsunami coming, not to mention healthcare system, “pension reform” changes and other proposals the ECB and the IMF are imposing on Cyprus as part of their generosity to keep the recently insolvent country as a well-behaving serf in the Eurozone.

Key highlights:

• Freeze public sector pensions
• Increase the statutory retirement age by 2 years for the various categories of employees
• Reduce preferential treatment of specific groups of employees, like members of the army and police force, in the occupational pension plans, in particular concerning the contribution to the lump-sum benefits;
• Reduce certain benefits and privileges for state officials and senior government officials, in particular by
  suspending the right to travel first/business class by state officials,
  senior government officials and employees with the exception of
  transatlantic travel.
• Increase excise duties on energy, i.e., on oil products, by increasing tax rate on motor fuels (petrol and gasoil) by EUR 0.07
• Increase the standard VAT rate from 17% to 18%.
• Introduce a tax of 20% on gains distributed to winners of betting by the National Lottery for winnings of EUR 5,000 or more
• Increase fees for public services by at least 17% of the current values
• Increase excise duties on tobacco products, in particular on fine-cut smoking tobacco, from EUR 60/kg to EUR 150/kg. Increase excise duties on cigarettes by EUR 0.20/per packet of 20 cigarettes.
• Introduce a permanent contribution of 3% on pensionable earnings to Widows and Orphans Fund by state officials who are entitled to a pension and gratuity. Introduce a contribution of 6.8% on pensionable earnings by officials, who are entitled to a pension and gratuity but are not covered by the government’s pension scheme or any other similar plan;
• Actuarially reducing pension entitlements from the General Social Insurance Scheme by 0.5% per month for retirements earlier than the statutory retirement age at the latest from January 2013, in line with the planned increase in the minimum age for entitlement to an unreduced pension to reach 65 (by 6 months per year), between 2013 and 2016;
• Ensure a reduction of seasonal hourly paid employees by 992 from 1806 in 2012 to 814.
• Implement a four-year plan as prepared by the Public Administration and Personnel Department aimed at the abolition of at least 1880 permanent posts over the period 2013-2016.
• Ensure additional revenues from property taxation of at least 70 million by updating the 1980 prices through application of the CPI index for the period 1980 to 2012
• Increase the statutory corporate income tax rate to 12.5%; Increase the tax rate on interest and dividend income to 30%.
• Increase the bank levy on deposits raised by banks and credit institutions in Cyprus from 0.11% to 0.15% with 25/60 of the revenue earmarked for a special account for a Financial Stability Fund
• Undertake a reform of the tax system for motor vehicles, based on environmentally-friendly principles, with a view to raising additional revenues, through the annual road tax, the registration fee and excise duties, including motor fuel duties.
• Ensure a reduction in total outlays for social transfers by at least EUR 113 million through: (a) the abolition of a number of redundant and overlapping schemes such as the mothers allowance, other family allowances and educational allowances; and (b) the abolition of supplementary allowances under public assistance, the abolition of the special grant and the streamlining of the Easter allowance for pensioners.
• Ensure a reduction of at least EUR 29 million in the total outlays of allowances for employees in the public and broader public sector by i) taxing pensionable allowances provided to senior government officials and employees (secretarial services, representation, and hospitality allowances) in the public and broader public sector  ii) reducing the allowances provided to broader public sector employees and reducing all other allowances of broader public sector employees, government officials and hourly paid employees by 15%; and iii) reducing the daily overseas subsistence allowance for business trips by 15%. Ensure a further reduction the subsistence allowance of the current allowance when lunch/dinner is offered by 50% (20% – 45% of overseas subsistence allowance instead of 40% – 90% currently paid).

And last but not least:

• Increase excise duties on beer by 25% from EUR 4.78 per hl to EUR 6.00 per hl per degree of pure alcohol of final product. Increase excise duties on ethyl alcohol from EUR 598.01 to EUR 956.82 per hl of pure alcohol.

China’s foothold and the BRICS just got a little stronger. Already strong trading partners, it didn’t surprise me that China wouldn’t mind having Australia on board. Of course its the statement by China that the dollar is no longer the only game in town which really matters.

… with the Australian reporting that the land down under is set to say goodbye to the world’s “reserve currency” in its trade dealings with the world’s biggest marginal economic power, China, and will enable the direct convertibility of the Australian dollar into Chinese yuan, without US Dollar inter-mediation, in the process “slashing costs for thousands of business” and also confirming speculation that China is fully intent on, little by little, chipping away at the dollar’s reserve currency status until one day it no longer is.

And while previously the focus was on Chinese currency swap arrangements, the uniqueness of this weekend’s news is that it promotes outright convertibility of the Yuan: something China has long said would happen but many were skeptical it ever would. That is no longer the case, and with Australia setting the precedent, expect many more Asian countries (at first) to follow in Australia’s footsteps, because while the developed world is far more engaged in diluting its currency as a means to spur “growth”, Asian and developing world nations are still engage in real, actual trade, where China is rapidly and aggressively becoming the world’s hub.

Former ambassador to China Geoff Raby, now a Beijing-based business figure, told The Weekend Australian: “The value of such a deal would be substantial for exporters to China, especially those that import a lot from China like mining companies, as it would remove business constraints including exchange-rate risks and transaction costs.“

Actual statement…………The days of the dollar are limited.

Full Hedge article HERE

Although not really new news, it would be wrong of us to not mention the formal declaration of bankruptcy by the city of Stockton….

A judge accepted the California city of Stockton’s bankruptcy application on Monday, making it the most populous city in the nation to enter bankruptcy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said the bankruptcy declaration was needed to allow the city to continue to provide basic services.

“It’s apparent to me the city would not be able to perform its obligations to its citizens on fundamental public safety as well as other basic government services without the ability to have the muscle of the contract-impairing power of federal bankruptcy law,” Klein said.

The city of nearly 300,000 people has become emblematic of government excess and the financial calamity that resulted when the nation’s housing bubble burst.

Its salaries, benefits and borrowing were based on anticipated long-term developer fees and increasing property tax revenue. But those were lost in a flurry of foreclosures beginning in the mid-2000s and a 70 percent decline in the city’s tax base

The city’s creditors wanted to keep Stockton out of bankruptcy — a status that will likely allow the city to avoid repaying its debts in full.

They argued the city had not cut spending enough or sought a tax increase that would have allowed it to avoid bankruptcy.

By 2009 Stockton had accumulated nearly $1 billion in debt on civic improvements, money owed to pay pension contributions, and the most generous health care benefit in the state — coverage for life for all retirees plus a dependent, no matter how long they had worked for the city.

 

Full article can be read HERE

The Custom Warcraft III Maps have all been updated – with the addition of twenty new magical items, ten new pets, over thirty new spells, and SIXTEEN new hero classes – mighty summoners, stealthy assassins, and shape-shifting Dragon-aspects – as well as a Gilneas Paladin. Yes. You read that correctly.

Upgrades:
– New tavern mercenary: The Gilneas Paladin.
– New Challenges: Deathwing is not happy. Ever.
– New hidden quests, and reined triggers.
– Deth Guild Art and Model Resources now avaiable for download HERE.
– Mal’Ganis, Deathwing, Sylvanas Windrunner, Teron Gorefiend, Malygos, Akama, Malfurion Stormrage, Ysera, Garona Halforcen, Meryl Felstorm, Nozdormu, Mathias Shaw, Summoner Kamsis, Alexstrasza, and Naisha join the roster with new custom skill-sets, equipment, and familiars.

For more information, click HERE.

The older posts from 2012 are available in the News Archives Section. Here you can read old updates and articles from years long past - which is rather interesting for seeing the evolution of people's thoughts and opinions over time.

‣ Click HERE to read more.