They'll Be Talking About The Unemployment Figures

Obama was elected. Yay! I wish him luck. I wish us all luck....except for the Fucking Republicans. May they all rot in Hell. But this post is not about them. It's about us. Us being the vast majority of U.S. Citizens who are lucky to have any kind of job. Almost a million jobs lost over the last three months which means more jobs will be lost as the impact of lost spending power hits bottom lines. It's so weird. I've spent most of the last 8 years unemployed or very underemployed. But thanks to BushCo I now have a temp job that is about to go permanent. Property Preservation. That's my new industry. There's lots of property to preserve. Shit, Goddamn, get off your ass and jam! The industry is rivaled only by the Repo industry that is also doing very well. Shit, Goddamn, get off your ass and jam! And here's me about to get a real job with benefits and everything. Why? 'Cuz I show up to work on time every day, and can write a coherent sentence. Or maybe because I do the shit job in my industry, and I do it very well. You see, I follow up after the devastation and turn off the utilities when a property has sold. Eighty percent of the job is easy and noble, but twenty percent is hard and requires the talents of an ass wipe. But I do it. For the benefits. For the income. For the sanity of a daily routine that doesn't involve 8 or more hours a day watching and waiting for operation brown fan to reach its ultimate conclusion. They say 6.7 percent unemployment. Bullshit. Maybe 11 to 15 percent unemployment is more accurate with more to come. Not because of Peak Oil. Noooo! We can't acknowledge that. If we acknowledge Peak Oil then we acknowledge that what awaits us makes the Great Depression look like a cake walk. But it's getting harder and harder to disregard Peak Oil. Yeah, the price of oil is way down. Who needs energy when people aren't working? Just think for a moment of how much our economy had to decline to destroy enough demand to justify $40.00 a barrel oil. But happy days are here again for me. I got me a real job. And I've started to drink. Heavily. Time to orphan the blog.

Or What, You'll Kill Me?

In 1994 I swallowed a piece of glass from a soda bottle. I was only 36. And having been screwed by two of the finest companies in the world, EDS and Northern Telecom, I had no insurance. The only thing I remember after agreeing to go the hospital was the doctor saying "If we don't get you on the operating table you'll be dead in an hour." I don't think I made it. Dead and in Hell. That has to be where I am. That must be the answer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, even comes close to being the way it was before I died. I've always suspected I didn't make it, but now I'm sure. I could take pretty much everything that has happened since 1994 with a grain of salt no matter how surreal or bizarre. That is until the events of the last week and a half. Now the rich are demanding a hand out from the poor. After having obtained obscene amounts of wealth by stealing from the poor, the rich, with a straight face mind you, are not asking but demanding an impossible hand out from the poor. They promise terrible things if we don't give them more money, as if terrible things are not already happening on a daily, now hourly basis. Take a moment to watch the beginning scene from HBO's "Deadwood". Fast forward to the 4:10 mark and watch from there. It's so apropos. NSFW

Nohing Under the Sun is Too Big to Fail

That's right. I'll say it right here. There is nothing under the sun that's too big to fail. Whenever I hear "Their just too big to fail" as an excuse for tossing the rule book and bailing out a big business or industry, I get really, really pissed. There's nothing under the sun, probably nothing in the Universe, that's too big to fail. I remember another old adage: "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." We are only delaying the inevitable. Oh, BTW, Oil saw it's largest one day gain since the '80s.

Are You a Conservative?

"What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?" This speaks nicely to the crux of the issue. Not the issue of Peak Oil. Peak Oil is a foregone conclusion. The issue is how we deal with Peak Oil.

Know thine enemy. Or at least know thine adversary. Republicans and NeoCons. They remind me of the seagulls in "Finding Nemo" via "The Sideshow".

And Factor X is What Threatens the United States the Most

The DOW is down almost 1000 points in three days. As always, "Oil, Smoke and Mirrors" predicted this two years ago.

Colin Campbell: "They're going to have to wipe out just mountains of capital"

Well, maybe not wipe out. Perhaps replace with taxpayer money would be better phraseology. But where will those taxpayer dollars come from? The wealth has accumulated at the top.

Chris Sanders: "And this is where Peak Oil comes in because the implication of Peak Oil is that oil prices are going to become more volatile, and that the average price of oil is going to remain structurally higher than it has been in decades. And if that happens then the economic value securing the American debt structure has got to be valued downwards by some factor...let's call it Factor X. And Factor X is the thing that threatens the United States most."

The economic value securing the American debt structure is collapsing, so the American debt structure is no longer secure.

The U.S. Government is throwing good money after bad in an attempt to keep the illusion going that an economy based purely on consumerism in light of declining energy can continue. Bush and his administration will be lucky if they aren't lynched soon.

They're going to have to wipe out just mountains of capital

From "Oil, Smoke and Mirrors":

Colin Campbell: "They're going to have to wipe out just mountains of capital."

The latest on Fannie May and Freddie Mac:

Mort Zuckerman: “We still don’t know where the bottom is”

Overwhelmed by the Options

Well, the price of oil and therefore gasoline has gone down since my last post. From $4.00 a gallon to $3.50. I'm curious to see how long it lasts. Of course the economy continues to sour, the unemployment rate went up to 6.1%, food prices continue to rise, and housing foreclosures/delinquencies continue to soar. I'm amazed the DOW is able to stay above 11000. With that kind of demand destruction I'm expecting the price of oil and gasoline to decline. But like the housing market, who among the rank and file give a shit if prices go down if you haven't got a job. I have a job thanks to the all these foreclosures, and the company I work for is hiring like gangbusters. I wonder what the Zeitgeist of the US will feel like when we've all become asset managers, debt collection specialists, or medical technicians. Debt and Death. The growth industries of the future.