October 8, 2007
Elaine Meinel Supkis
Treasury Secretary, Goldman Sachs Paulson, celebrates weakening the dollar so we can export to countries that have stronger currencies such as..ahem...Europe and Canada. The game of weakening a currency for trade and industrial advantage goes up yet another notch. The EU is celebrating greater wealth when they travel abroad but at home, costs are rising faster than incomes due to this very same thing and of course, there is the real estate bubble that always runs alongside rising currency values. Also, IBM claims their patent on outsourcing is an oversight which they wish to eliminate, hahaha. And Japan announces they will most certainly not change anything no matter what so they continue with .5% interest rates while making their FOREX reserves grow again.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose signature appears on every new dollar bill, may find the weak currency with his name on it helps the U.S. economy more than the strong one he publicly endorses.The dollar's 8 percent slide during Paulson's 15 months in office is good news on the docks of Long Beach, California, where shipping containers are making their return trip to Asia filled with U.S.-made computer, auto and aircraft parts whose prices have become more competitive abroad. What's more, economists don't foresee the weaker currency generating higher import prices and accelerating inflation.
*snip*
Larry Cottrill, the port's director of master planning, says the number of unfilled containers leaving the port dropped 14.5 percent in August and was down 4.5 percent for first 11 months of the year ended Sept. 30. That's a turnaround from the last decade, when the fastest-growing container category was outbound empties, he says.
Since Bretton Woods II, the currency game has been 'weaken the currency at home to gain trade advantage'. There is the same yin/yang Janus face to all currencies in the world since the US gave up being the true reserve currency based on gold hoarding back in 1972. To this day, everyone still refers to the dollar as a 'reserve currency' but it hasn't been this for many years. What is the dollar used for, anyway?
I would suggest it is the basis for calculating how weak one's own currency should be in order to have unequal trade with the US. For the US is the main destination for trade compared to other countries. On the other hand, when I crunch data, I have noticed as the European Union expands its dominion, they are increasingly, as far as statistics are concerned, the main destination for world trade. The is accurately reflected in the growth of the strength of the euro. This is probably why the NAFTA union is being considered as a possible currency, the Amero. The US denies this but I suspect this is the plan.
The US, in the past, when it tries to fix trade problems, brings together all our main trade partners and demands they revalue upwards. It is quite amusing and curious to see that the two top currencies forced upwards were the monies issued by the 'losers' of WWII, Japan and Germany. The Bretton Woods fix didn't work at all since much of our inflation was internal, not external. The trigger for inflation was oil and war, in the case of the Bretton Woods II fix, the US consumption of domestic oil and gas had outstripped domestic supplies and the beginnings of the Hubbert Oil Peak showed up here with a vengence.
The US at first tried to keep the price of oil artificially low so the oil producers ceased seeking new oil wells and capped all the marginal wells which made the energy situation much worse. The Saudi oil boycott caused world energy prices to shoot up and since most countries used dollars as defacto-currency, the dollar accurately reflected the much higher price of oil. The US government nearly fell with Nixon pushed out of office supposedly due to Watergate but the real reason was economic: he tried to suppress oil inflation by fiat.
I read a lot of economic news and history. And there is this huge, gaping black hole in most economic narratives: they leave out the Nixon wage/price controls. I remember that period because my boss at that time filed for a pay raise for me but I couldn't get it because it was denied! Talk about pissing me off. The oil crisis ended when the Saudis began to sell oil again and OPEC began cheating each other on allotments and this drove the price of oil downwards. But due to the fact that the US was the final destination of most trade and finance, even a slight hike in energy costs affected inflation. So the US devalued the dollar right smack dab when the oil crisis, the oil boycott and the end of the Vietnam war and thus, the constriction of the military/industrial complex happening all at once.
This utterly derailed the US economy. We were worried about all this monetary power flowing to Arabs and the Japanese so the Federal Reserve felt that letting the dollar continue to drop in value via inflation would be a good thing. By the end of Ford's emergency Presidency, Jimmy Carter was elected. He has been revilled as the worst President ever but this is pure insanity. I admit to being biased here, my family has known Jimmy for many years and we love and admire him. The reason he was hated was very simple: he wanted us to change the way we used energy and my dad was in charge of the Presidential Committee for Alternative Energy, for example. He also worked with Paul Volker, another man I admire, to deal with the problem of inflation. The Fed has few tools but the one Paul used, ruthlessly raising interest rates until the gold bubble popped and the frantic speculatory inflation-driven bubble in other areas ceased due to savers getting a great return on their savings if they did traditional banking!
Then the Iraq/Iran war hit. During Carter's Presidency, the hostage crisis was ruthlessly pinned on him but he could do little about it. People forget it began with him being pressured to let the Shah into NYC. I remember that time. Carter felt sorry for the Shah but was warned by the CIA to not let him in since Iran was very agitated about CIA activities and they wanted things to quiet down so their agents there could get a grip on the situation. But he let the Shah in and so on went history in her usual drunken fashion. But Volker did succeed in killing inflationary expectations. Since workers could gain pricing power, they were part of the inflationary process. But with Reagan's victory...he tore down my dad's solar array on the White House, first thing....the present system we are still in, was set.
Weak unions, dropping wages for the working class, outsourcing jobs, letting in cheap goods to compete here and thus, drive down prices, etc. This 'killed' inflation without touching the inflating bubble surrounding speculators and financiers. Even with these new systems, inflation continued and people were driven to speculative ventures or questionable Savings & Loans by super-low interest rates which Reagan needed for 'prosperity'. This prosperity was based entirely on lending to increasingly poor prospects. The collapse of many of the loans issued by mostly Southern and Western banks like the one Neill Bush was part of, Silverado, caused a global recession and this was solved the usual way: the Plaza Accords. Again, Germany and Japan increased the value of their currencies.
Germany used this new found wealth which was the doubling of their banking values, to buy East Germany back from the Russians. Namely, they offered Russia enough money to lure the Soviets into retreating. I knew of the negotiations going on via my father's many German contacts. I knew something great was going to happen the morning the Berlin Wall fell. I was expecting something somewhat smaller, no one expected what happened. But I was watching the East Berlin news conference because I knew this was important. I fell out of my chair when they announced there would no longer be shootings at the wall.
Paying for East Germany consumed German finances for more than 10 years, integrating that impoverished sector of Germany is still ongoing. Japan used its bounty to make the biggest real estate bubble on earth. When one palace in Kyoto was supposed to be more valuable than all of California, everyone sane knew this bubble would pop, big time.
This long prologue is to explain my thinking about finances: after the dollar ceased being the world's fiat currency, there was a period of chaos whereby the other nations desperately tried to make the dollar the world's fiat currency while the US tried frantically to NOT make it the fiat currency. And everyone wanting to get rich had to find safe haven for any money they recieved. The Arabs didn't know about inflation in 1974. They had no system to deal with inflation, living under very depressionary 'Sharia' laws. Europe and Asia knew about inflation and especially the Germans were very keen on not allowing inflation.
The solution was to put excess finances into real estate. Even today, people think, this is a safe haven. After all, land is limited and it is physical and can't be removed (heh, right). Of course, the fact that real estate can be physically destroyed via war, hurricanes and earthquakes is overlooked, too. The explosion of a real estate bubble is destructive, too. Not only is there a huge overhang of debt that will never be recovered, the physical condition of cities will deteriorate rapidly due to abandonment of properties. We can see this now in America, yet again. During the 1970's, when the dollar lost over half its value and we had energy inflation, New York City was burning like Rome when the Vandals destroyed it. I had to worry about this all the time, the fear of being killed in a fire was very great. We even had raging riots when the electricity went out. Most of Coney Island burned to the ground during this period.
Real estate in NYC became valuable again. But back to the Japanese: their real estate collapse caused the LDP to reconsider their economic policies. Instead of inflating their Nikkei and housing, they moved in the opposite direction. They began to save money. This is where the story of 'Japanese savers' requires examination.
The US 'saves' lots of money via Social Security excess funding. SS pulls in much more than it spends even now. But none of this money, not one penny, becomes 'Sovereign wealth' and is then used to make more money. It all went into the budget of the US government where it pretty much vanished in that vast sea of red ink. The Japanese government also overspent during the real estate crash. They used up all their accumulated retirement savings which is why this is often in the news in Japan, as the baby boomers retire, they are discovering problems with their government retirement funds.
The Japanese government began to cut public spending ruthlessly and instead, park all that money NOT in paying off the government debt but in their FOREX reserves! This was a total novelty in 1994. Up until then, the IMF would egg countries into putting aside some reserves in case their currency comes under fire and goes DOWN. Up until 1994, despite the US constantly negotiating the value of the dollar DOWN, everyone was urged by the IMF to keep their currencies UP. Dutifully, all the trade partners of the US would do this. This would kill their economies and they would crash.
Over and over again, the IMF would urge larger reserves to make currencies HIGHER IN VALUE. But a funny thing happened. The Japanese found that if they used their FOREX reserves to put away dollars and then use this to bet against their OWN currency, the yen, the value of the yen would drop, the more they parked dollars in their FOREX accounts. Namely, if they wanted to manipulate the value of the yen, all they had to do was PARK DOLLARS IN THEIR FOREX RESERVES! Bingo!
Years ago, I explained to the Chinese the business of the weak dollar and trade. The US always fixes trade issues with weak dollars because we import so much oil, this is how we make oil cheaper and how we prevent underselling here in America. Other nations then are forced to undersell by cutting wages and profits. But if they undercut their currencies, they can undersell while having rising wages and profits.
Now Japan is having falling wages and soaring profits because of a peculiarity which is their own: the industrialists want cheap loans so they DON'T want high interest rates and this means NO inflation in Japan and so they must reduce working wages since they do NOT want imports from China! That would ruin their trade statistics and drive up the value of the yen! So they have this peculiar new system which is all their own: they have a gigantic FOREX reserve, a trade surplus and no inflation despite the whole world having raging raw materials inflation.
And the gigantic FOREX reserves keeps the yen weak. The Chinese could see, month after month, how the Japanese FOREX reserves grew, it is published by the IMF. In 2000, they began the same process minus the 'crush the worker's wages' element. So here we are: the US is again, trying to weaken the dollar the usual way, via the Fed dropping interest rates too low compared to inflation, Japan is clinging to super-low interest rates and super-high exports due to a weak yen and the Chinese are using rising interest rates and high export rates and high FOREX reserves! I can't express how very unstable all of this is!
Europe is reaping the benefits of being the world's currency peg. Right now, Europeans are Kings. They can travel anywhere and everything is super-cheap. I remember when this was true for Japan when they were the world's top currency. They flooded into the US and bought many things. But the downside is obvious: everyone's goods pour into the Fiat Currency King's home territories and destroys the industrial base. And on top of this, the money flood creates real estate bubbles! The recent US real estate bubble, if you look at it statistically compared to the past, was no great thing, actually. Indeed, in previous bubbles, these were based on regular loans with 20% down, etc. The bubbles would collapse due to other events, usually sudden rises in oil costs and wars.
The present bubble grew DURING a huge hike in oil costs and two wars. It was, unlike previous ones, entirely driven by low interest rates set by Greenspan and he did this to prevent a recession caused by high oil prices, etc. The present European real estate bubble is more traditional: it is due to the strong euro, not cheap lending rates. Note, also, how Japan has no real estate bubble despite over 10 years of near-zero interest rates.
So here it is: we have a variety of systems running in various top economies that are running on totally different tracks, all seeking to gain advantage in this monetary game of musical chairs. Right now, Europe is falling victim of the lure of being the top currency. They love it...but already, the destruction this is causing is becoming very obvious and some are looking with fear at Japan and wondering if they will end up like Japan. China's system seems more stable but it depends on all other systems not using the yuan as the top currency. They dread this and have accumulated the world's biggeset FOREX reserves so they can prevent the yuan from strengthening via their purchase of other currencies while betting against their own currency.
The reversal of how FOREX reserves are used is a historic change. Europe's collective reserves are huge: over $500 billion. But control of these reserves are not centralized at all so they are meaningless when it comes to bidding against the euro to keep it cheaper than the dollar. It is as if the US Federal Reserves were run by 50 states. As it is, we never ever use our own reserves to bid against the dollar, we only use interest rates to control the relative value of the dollar and this causes balloons in real estate, etc. A poor system choice, I might add.
The Europeans are following our lead in this matter or maybe we are following them. The Euro/US system is a failure because we all are playing the wrong game. We are ignoring the powerful system set up by the Japanese via MITI and the Chinese, Russians and Arabs via their new 'Sovereign Wealth Funds' used to invest in various ways INCLUDING IN CURRENCIES! Ah-ha! The global growth in FX trading is exploding and the biggest players are governments themselves. Except for the US and probably, Europe. They feel they are in sufficient control over their currencies via the older methods.
This is a delusion. The deflationary/inflationary monetary game is utterly warped by currency traders and the biggest traders are the holders of the biggest FOREX reserves and shockingly, many of these players are nations that once were in great financial trouble. Saudi Arabia nearly went bankrupt just 8 years ago and Russia did go bankrupt. Japan was floundering 14 years ago and it is now soaring away from us, Toyota is crushing the US auto industry across the planet. And China is rapidly becoming one of the richest nations on earth and is rapidly becoming the world's top manufacturing power. So the US must change the way we do business. The weakening dollar isn't doing this because we are clever. It is NOT falling very much at all against the yen or the yuan, it is falling against the EURO. And England's currency and all of the currencies of the Commonwealth. And this is very significant.
You don't have to quaff French wine in your dining room or go skiing in the Austrian Alps. At home or abroad, all Americans are feeling the same breeze from the dollar's recent sharp drop -- and some might even catch a chill from it.The Federal Reserve's decision last month to cut interest rates by a larger-than-expected half-percent point sent the already-weakening greenback to an all-time record low against a basket of six major currencies. In the third quarter, the euro appreciated more than 5% against the dollar, most of the gains coming in September alone.
England, Canada, Australia and the Eurozone are all playing the old game, not the new one. And they are happy at 'winning' what all the other trade nations consider the booby prize: a powerful currency. Japanese industrialists would slit their bellies rather than ever let the yen get strong. Already, they are so troubled by the rise in the value of the yen in the last two months, they ran off to China to make a deal.
Kuwait's decision to drop the dinar's peg to the dollar in May has helped contain inflationary pressure but more time is needed to assess the full impact, the central bank governor said in remarks published yesterday.Kuwait dropped its peg to the dollar and linked the dinar to a basket of currencies on May 19, saying the US currency's slide on global markets was fuelling inflation by making some imports more expensive.
The Gulf states, like Japan and China, want a strong dollar. The stronger, the better. Up to now, like Japan and China, they hoarded dollars in their FOREX reserves. But they can't do this alone and the US has been egging China into strengthening the yuan which China has been doing, raising it by nearly 8% this year. In order to strengthen the dollar, the Chinese have to hold other currencies so they held the euro instead. This drop in the value of the dollar forced the Arabs to switch to holding euros, too. Then the army of FX traders who have gravitated towards that gambling house, all began to bid up euros and bid down, dollars. This caused the great FOREX holders, China and Japan, to change their own currency mixes and so on this game rolls.
It is rapidly getting pretty much out of anyone's control due to the huge amount of money-bettors entering this system daily. It has pretty much replaced stock markets as a way of making easy profits or taking huge losses. The giant complex of offshore hedge funds and finanical houses have plunged into all this with a venegence which is why the world's banking system is collapsing. The endless sums of money thrown into the banking systems by the US and Europe are a danger sign. Far from fixing things, this float has made them worse. The US and Europe, instead of changing strategies or systems are trying desperately to keep this thing going further. The joys of taking money from Japan at super-low rates is continuing. The desire to make the dollar cheap continues. The refusal to regulate and control the FX markets continues. This monetarist disaster will continue to unfold until it causes a depression.
For the elements at work here are not inflationary, they are depressionary. Namely, the winner of this game is whoever can depress their currency the most. Ergo: we will have a depression just like in 1929 when the world's biggest empire played this game.
Asset diversification by the Gulf sovereign wealth funds and the possibility that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will change the pricing of oil from the dollar to another currency could mean more trouble for the dollar.The dollar has been losing its charm as a reserve currency due to its persistent weakness against a host of other international currencies.
The September non-farm payrolls report on Friday showed 110,000 jobs were created in the US last month. Although the dollar reacted positively to the news and gained initially, the rally quickly fizzled.
The above news article shows how the old thinking works. OPEC no longer using the dollar as a peg is GOOD NEWS if Paulson wants a weak dollar! He is happy as can be! This is bad news for the EURO! The US is following Japan's lead in depressing wages and dropping interest rates below inflation. But we still insist on importing way too much. Celebrating reducing the trade deficit to 'only' around half a trillion dollars is no great victory. We are still losing a huge amount of sovereign wealth each year. But our policies piss off the oil exporters. They, not us, need a strong currency and this is why they are gravitating to the euro. Which is killing European exports to Asia and the US as well as, ironically enough, to the Arab nations, a big customer base for Europe.
BOJ Seen Sticking To Forecast Of Steadily Recovering EconomyTOKYO (Nikkei)--In its semiannual report due to be released at the end of this month, the Bank of Japan is expected to maintain the view that the Japanese economy will continue to recover gradually into fiscal 2008, with consumer prices rising slowly but steadily.
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BOJ Likely To Forgo Rate Hike At Next Policy Board MeetingTOKYO (Nikkei)--The Bank of Japan is widely expected to leave key interest rates unchanged at its next policy board meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, citing as the reason the need to further monitor the impact of financial market turmoil on the country's real economy.
This should be proof that the Japanese government outrageously manipulates the value of the yen and their economy to create a 'depression'. This alarms me greatly for depressions can last much longer than inflationary cycles. Many an empire has imposed a depression upon its own economy with dire results. Some of these depressions cause such great cessations of commerce, they can cause empires to collapse. And worse, they are self-fulfilling. They will roll onwards on their own for centuries. For many centuries if no one from the outside breaks in and shatters the status quo. Note how the Japanese admit to prices rising and yet, won't change their handling of money! They know if they make the slightest alterations, the built up energy within this system will explode outwards so they are keeping it dammed up. The old tool of preventing any commerce is locked into place.
Disposable income has plummeted to its lowest level for a decade in a further sign of the turmoil in the financial markets and the credit crunch hitting British consumers.The soaring cost of utility bills plus rises in taxes and rent costs are behind the trend, according to the price comparison website uSwitch.com. An increase in the number of households living below 60 per cent of the average household income is another factor.
Net household income as a proportion of gross household income is down 5 per cent compared to 1997.
This means the proportion of money left to spend on non-essential items is lower than at any time during the past decade, uSwitch found.
Despite a rise in average household incomes since 1997, the amount of "disposable" income has dropped 2 per cent over the decade.
The pound has been very strong against the dollar and the yen as well as the yuan, etc. Brits could travel all over the earth and feel like they were once again, in the glorious empire of yore. But this was a temporary illusion. Inflation of important assets made everyone feel richer but the industrial base disintigrated even further than before. Britain's share of world manufacturing has dropped from 50% 130 years ago to a miserable rate, what, 1% today? Not even that, I think. The US share which was 50% back in 1960 is now falling rapidly, too. Paulson is celebrating the export of manufactured goods this month and he thinks this is entirely due to weakening the dollar. Britain and all of Europe is discovering that buying manufactured goods is very cheap but LIVING ARRANGEMENTS are now very expensive. Renting or buying a home is increasingly difficult and the opportunities of the young workers and graduates are decreasing and in order to drop prices of export goods, the manufacturers in Europe are dropping wages and benefits just like the US has done. This means the workers can't afford housing, etc. A vicious circle.
Disposable incomes if one remains within the EU or British Commonwealth, are in decline. But if one goes OUTSIDE, it rises. Many retirees are moving to Turkey or Northern Africa, for example, because the strong euro there makes them relatively richer. Some of my readers are in this catagory. This is a danger over time for if the economies of EU and BC collapse, the checks flowing overseas will be one of the first things to be terminated.
From Tech Trader Daily via our reader, Jim:
IBM has put into the public domain and withdrawn its application for patent number US2007/0162321 - Outsourcing of Services. This patent application covers analyzing work flows, skills, economic costs, etc. Here’s why we are withdrawing it — IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents. Even though the patent application in question was filed eight months before the policy took effect in September, 2006, had the policy been in place at the time, IBM would not have filed the application. We’re glad the community pointed this application out so IBM could take swift action.
Pure embarrassment. IBM took a black eye over this. IBM outsources like crazy. I have a friend who used to do research for them. He had to go to China to deal with manufacturing details for this is where the factories phsically reside. IBM hoped to make money off of OTHER people doing what they do and if they had this stupid patent, they could get a small fee for a situation created by our political and economic leaders. I ought to patent the concept of tariffs. Heh. Get rich in the future.
The concept that free trade makes us richer is limited to the upper most levels of an economic system. Corporate profits certainly benefit. But the woes of the regular people below are ignored. Only this can get out of hand. Europe used to undersell the US when it came to technology issues. Now, thanks to the choices and strategies of currency hoarders and traders in Asia and now, Arab lands, Europe has no ability to undersell the US in technology any more than the US can undersell Asia. All this, from manipulating the holdings of various currency within government-run FOREX reserves!
Authorities in several countries have cracked down on Nigerian e-mail scammers, resulting in the seizure of over $2.1 billion in fraudulent checks. The National Consumers League, in conjunction with the US Postal Inspection Service, announced yesterday that 77 arrests have been made in connection with the scams. Those arrested were from Nigeria, the Netherlands, and Canada, although the organizations are careful to note that swindlers could come from anywhere.
Click here to see Fake Checks.com:
And this shows that fools and their money are easily parted. I get these stupid money schemes all the time and my spam filter now eliminates about 99% of them before they litter my email accounts. But the astonishing numbers show that there are lots of fishies in the sea eager to snap at worms on hooks!
Culture of Life News Main Page
"Jimmy Carter was elected. He has been revilled as the worst President ever but this is pure insanity."
Gas lines... "stagflation"... Iran... malaise... disco... "country rock"... there's very little good to remember from the Carter Presidency.
I voted for Jimma in 1976 (the first Presidential election I was old enough to vote in), and I regard that as an enormous mistake - bad enough to make me vote Republican for the next 30 years.
He's recently lost the title of "worst ever", but he's a close runner-up.
"Paying for East Germany consumed German finances for more than 10 years, integrating that impoverished sector of Germany is still ongoing."
Which is why reunifiying The Koreas is such a great idea!
"IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents."
"Business method" patents are just awful - the patent office should never have started approving those things.
Posted by: JSmith | October 08, 2007 at 11:02 AM
He did many important things including cutting back the massive military machine. Of course, we decided this was not good and instead, have launched THE PRESENT MESS.
And this damn mess is going to utterly and totally destroy our empire. Sorry about that, hahaha.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 08, 2007 at 01:35 PM
Almost all of that he inherited from Ford & Nixon. Carter did some good things related to energy, but then the Saudis opened the spigots & Reagan was elected. When Peak Oil hits home in the next 12 months and oil prices go to $100/bbl, and then $150 and up, remember that Reagan actively undid all the good work Carter had set in place.
I was an Independent when Reagan was elected in '80. Reagan turned me into a Democrat. I haven't voted R in over 30 years, and I can't imagine that changing any time soon (though Reed & Pelosi have managed turned me back into an I).
Posted by: shargash | October 08, 2007 at 02:06 PM
Carter was the last honorable and decent president the US has had.
Posted by: Voltaire | October 08, 2007 at 03:00 PM
Hello Elaine,
Re your comments:
"The US 'saves' lots of money via Social Security excess funding. SS pulls in much more than it spends even now. But none of this money, not one penny, becomes 'Sovereign wealth' and is then used to make more money. It all went into the budget of the US government where it pretty much vanished in that vast sea of red ink."
Unfortunately, the United States, Inc. a Trust established for the benefit of the several sovereign united States of America cannot own a trust fund; the definition of the Social Security 'trust fund' according to the US Supreme Court in the case of Helvering vs. Davis (1937).
The Supremes concluded that SS taxes are like all other payroll taxes and therefore subject to disposal at the whims of Congress. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A TRUST FUND OR ACCOUNT OR ANYTHING REMOTELY RESEMBLING SAME.
In the case of Fleming vs. Nestor (1960) the Supremes noted that SS 'benefits' were not ‘contractually guaranteed’ and are in fact subject to the discretion of Congress.
‘Socialist Insecurity’ as I call it, is nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme that requires succeeding generations of sheeple to keep the delirium going.
Unfortunately, due to the scourge of Abortion and destruction of the family via the various macro-economic whips which you so eloquently describe; America is missing 1.5 generations since the 1960’s, so the SS pyramid must shortly collapse.
Naturally, this occurs exactly as the ‘Baby Boomers’ start to retire, with absolutely NO SOLUTION available to remedy the situation. Ego, we can invent yet another new paradigm of Human perspective, or simply return to the family centered Judeo/Christian culture of life enjoyed by our ancestors.
Kindest regards,
PFO
Posted by: PFO | October 08, 2007 at 03:26 PM
Somerset Maugham did his "Summing Up" only once. It would be nice to have a similar economic-politico "summing up" a few times a month.... how all the puzzle pieces seem to be laying and what it foretells on a guesstimated timeline. Utility for the commons!!
Posted by: Roberto G | October 08, 2007 at 05:55 PM
"or simply return to the family centered Judeo/Christian culture of life enjoyed by our ancestors. "
Holy Cow! No thanks!
I am all for family and clan, but no such thing existed among the Judeo/Christian cultures. They ripped that to pieces, along with just about everything else.
Bring on the new paradigm. I'll take my chances with the devil I don't know this time.
Posted by: DeVaul | October 08, 2007 at 06:02 PM
Why you shouldn't bounce spam and viruses.
http://www.dontbouncespam.org/#BVR
~The short version of this whole page for those who are too busy to read all of it: DON'T BOUNCE SPAM, THE FROM IS FORGED. You should only send non-delivery notifications to your own users, anything else that can't be rejected during the SMTP transaction and is later found to be undeliverable should be dealt with locally, don't bounce it or your server becomes part of the problem. Thank you.~
~[....]~
~The reason that spam (and viruses) shouldn't be bounced is that the From and Return Path are invariably forged.~
~[....]~
[THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART! —]
~It's possible to scan headers and body for spam and virus indicators before the final acceptance of the email, which means that they can be properly rejected. Most servers seem to accept the email BEFORE they scan it, then BOUNCE it. Exim (and probably other servers) can be configured to not acknowledge the final acceptance of the email body until the scanning is complete, allowing it to be properly REJECTED.~
~[....]~
~Bouncing is done after the receiving server accepts the email and the connection with the sender is closed. So the email has to be SENT somewhere instead of simply REJECTED. The only way to determine where to send it at this point is to look in the headers, normally the From or the Return Path. TQMCube.com and Spamcop now consider misdirected bounces as spam, and they are treated as such. At least some other anti-spam organizations feel the same way. If your server is bouncing spam you WILL eventually get listed as a spam source.~
I use Mailwasher (For Windows only, it seems), and it lets me personally read the "From" and "Subject" of incoming mail, without downloading the body of the message, and I can sort out spam myself 10,000 better than any AI "filter" (which I am sure would block tons of my wanted mail). I NEVER bounce spam, I merely delete it from my IP's server.
I have kept a main e-mail address for two years, and I get 100 wanted newsletters and professional journal articles per day. BUT I RARELY GET MORE THAN 10 ACTUAL SPAM LETTERS PER WEEK. So I must be doing something right.
Posted by: blues | October 09, 2007 at 01:49 AM
PFO said —
~Unfortunately, due to the scourge of Abortion and destruction of the family via the various macro-economic whips which you so eloquently describe; America is missing 1.5 generations since the 1960’s, so the SS pyramid must shortly collapse.~
WRONG!!! It simply is not the case that we lack enough warm bodies to support vital industry. What we have been steadily losing since the "Reagan Revolution is the vital Aggregate Productive System (ASP) that is the only thing that could ensure our survival. We now lack the productive infrastructure and shilled workers to support any real economy, most of it has been effectively been sent offshore. We now have lawyers, accountants, burger flippers, and druggies. That is what will destroy us.
Plus, an army of unthinking personal counselors, police, lawyers, legislators, and mass media producers has methodically disintegrated community and family relationships, so we are not even communicating on any community level now.
Thus we are screwed.
Posted by: blues | October 09, 2007 at 02:43 AM
Aggregate Productive System = (APS), not ("ASP"). This is a HUGE issue for me! I will talk more about our dwindling AS APS!
Posted by: blues | October 09, 2007 at 02:48 AM
The fine things in life created by the judeo/christian culture, like stoning, crusades, jesuits, inquisiton, witchburning, papal bulls, zionism, fascism, communism, colonialism, apartheid, neocons, not to mention all the 'just wars'. All the while mummy is at home baking cookies with the starched apron on. HOW LOVELY!
Posted by: Neuro Artist | October 09, 2007 at 05:19 AM
Yes indeed, we might very well miss out on all the "finer" things in life without the former system. It's tough. :)
However, I am willing to risk it.
Posted by: DeVaul | October 09, 2007 at 10:58 AM
PFO's "Judeo/Christian culture of life enjoyed by our ancestors" was very light on the Judeo content, at least in the USA, right through the 1960s. I suggest he view the 1947 film "Gentleman's Agreement," starring Gregory Peck, for a good look at how even cosmopolitan New York City had more than mixed feelings about the Jews' role in our culture -- as evidenced by their place in society.
As for the "missing 1.5 generations" due to abortion, hasn't substantial immigration since 1965 (the last major immigration reform) more than made up for any decline in the birthrate? The nation's population has more than doubled since I was born 60 years ago. Something tells me there's no shortage of younger workers available to contribute to Old Age pensions.
Posted by: mark1147 | October 09, 2007 at 09:18 PM
100% correct, Mark.
WHen worry about the baby boom retirees is voiced, I get very angry. The US has always used immigration for this purpose. Or my ancestors would have shut the gates back in 1800. And the natives, before 1492.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 09, 2007 at 10:23 PM