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Friday, 28 April, 2006

SECURITY IS COMING TO THE WATERFRONT

In case you were worried about security around our nation's sea ports and on our ships, the U.S. Coast Guard is issuing a guideline statement on Merchant Mariner Document and STCW certificate photos. (These are the identification papers required by American seamen.)
     For one thing, ID photos taken with full beards will no longer be acceptable – unless, of course, the seaman happens to be able to prove he's a practicing Sikh or fundamentalist Moslem.
     Ditto for full headgear, such as cowboy hats and turbans. Nor will sunglasses, wigs, and (presumably), false faces, be allowed without documentation supporting the need for such things.
    "An applicant submitting a photograph with headgear, wig, sunglasses, or full beard should provide supporting evidence documenting the need for it." (STCW stands for "Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers," and is a United Nations, International Maritime Organization requirement).
    Pridger hopes the fact that only Sikhs and fundamentalist Moslems will be able to hide their features behind beards and turbans will make everybody feel a great deal safer.

PORT SECURITY II

The Department of Homeland Security is also working diligently to implement a secure national transportation worker credential. TWICs, to be more specific – which is a "biometric-based" Transportation Worker Identification Credential. In the mean time, they are actually beginning to make at least name-based background checks on port workers...

"The preliminary name checks will be completed this summer
and will initially be required for longshoremen and
maritime employees of facility owners and operators.
Ultimately all individuals will require a TWIC in order to
be eligible for unescorted access to secure areas.

"Basic identifying info will be collected by the USCG during
the name-based checks that will allow the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) to vet workers against
terrorist watch lists through the Terrorist Screening
Center. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will
ensure workers are legally eligible to work in the US.
Though biometric information will not be collected during
the initial name checks, it will be a key piece of identity
verification for the TWIC. The initial name check will not
include the full criminal record check that will be a part
of the TWIC program. (from the MM&P Wheelhouse Weekly)

Pridger is beginning to get a little TWICed of over all of this, himself. More from the Wheelhouse Weekly...

US PORT SECURITY REGULATIONS NOW ON FAST TRACK

According to media reports, the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) is planning to issue new regulations to
improve cargo and port security beyond what Congress might
require through legislation. Published reports say that DHS
wants foreign ports to do a better job of screening cargo
before it is loaded on ships bound for the US. DHS is
reportedly investigating whether new mechanical or
electronic seals can be used to secure containers.

DHS is also studying private-sector initiatives like the
one used to improve cargo screening at the Port of Hong
Kong. Through this initiative, a radiation detector, a
gamma ray X-ray and an optical character recognition system
screens every container. Data about each container,
including the images of what is inside, is stored in an
electronic database for inspectors to review. With some
limitations, that system demonstrates that a lot of cargo
can be moved through an advanced screening system
effectively.

Do you still feel safer now – especially since the Department of Homeland Security feels it has the authority to "go beyond what Congress might require through legislation"?

THE DUBAI PORT WORLD DEAL DIDN'T GO AWAY AT ALL

The alleged great port security victory that resulted from public outrage was largely smoke – just as in the case of China moving into the port of Long Beach a few short years ago. The only thing that happened was a change of spots. The worrisome Arab face has been exchanged for a reassuring American mask. With a little corporate hocus pocus, and flag repainting – called "restructuring" – whamo! – the United Arab Emirates' state-owned Dubai Port World is still taking over the same number of U.S. port operations as previously announced – but as the proud, not so secret, owner of a brand new "American" front company. This is the way of business under the New World Order. The bulk of the profits from managing the ports will still go to the UAE. Have security concerns been adequately addressed. Of course! (What makes you ask?)

An old, tried and true, Dubai Ports World hand is handling the "restructured American division of DP World." The man in charge, David Sanborn, previously served DP World as director of operations in Europe and Latin America.

As a particularly loyal American, Mr. Sanborn apparently left his DP World job to become the head the U.S. Maritime Administration. Embarrassingly, the political brouhaha that resulted from the intended DP World takeover of U.S. port operations derailed that promotion and his new job prospects. So, David Sanborn is back with his old employer, giving birth to a brand spanking new false flag company, which is supposed to smooth public feathers and satisfy our security concerns.

Obviously, President Bush thought the man from DP World was the man to head the United States Maritime Administration. And the United Arab Emirates probably thought it was a pretty wonderful choice too. When their man failed to land the top U.S. Maritime slot, they must have been a little disappointed, but they were nonetheless pleased to have him back. He's obviously a man with important connections, and the right man to set up, and possibly head, their new American operations.

BUT, NEVER MIND, THE PUBLIC HAD COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT ANYWAY

At a recent Washington D.C. conference on maritime security, the CEO of American flag Horizon Lines containership company, noting the recent public outcry over DP World, and the (supposed) ultimate failure of the acquisition of U.S. port operations, said: “This was a perfect example of the politicians and the people completely missing the point. The problem was never about what the threat is onshore - after the cargo arrives - it is offshore, where all security checks must be in place. And that's where the government has to focus its efforts."

What the man is saying is that letting our ports effectively by owned by foreigners (whether Arabs, Bengalis, Chinese, or al Qaeda), is no problem – at least not a real security problem. Containers must be checked "over there" (in those scores, perhaps hundreds, of foreign ports), before they are loaded on U.S., bound ships. Apparently all the billions we are preparing to spend on "American" port security, is basically a useless waste of the taxpayers' increasingly threatened credit line.

Of course, we really haven't got the slightest authority to "insure security" in all those foreign ports, because those ports "over there" don't belong to us. And most containers are loaded almost anywhere in the country other than the ports in the first place. But they can theoretically be "scanned" and ex-rayed before being loaded on ships, albeit at great cost. So the place where we really need to have tight port security is not in the United States at all, which is the destination, but in all those other ports in the world that ship goods to the U.S.

Imagine the implications of this! U.S. Security depends on "us" being able to check all cargo originating in foreign countries before it is loaded on foreign ships. Of course, we can't really do that, so they'll manage to solve the problem by hiring private foreign contractors to handle the job – at our expense, of course. Doesn't that make you feel a lot safer?  

The One World Corporate Cabal wrecking our nation and the world couldn't care less about the the American people. Their national headquarters is wherever their money happens to be the safest. President Bush and his cohorts may love their country, but really don't care who owns it. As long as those who matter gain satisfactory profits, and a sufficient amount of money shows up on Wall Street, they're happy. No need to worry about Main Street – Wal-Mart, incorporated, has supplanted it and the people are obviously happy with their cake and circuses.

“The critical point for control in the supply chain is at
the point of embarkation -- before the journey across the
sea even begins. And that,” ...is solely dependent on the
quality of the data and security checks.
You wouldn't fly an airline whose security check on baggage
and passengers was on arrival; you should be concerned
about cargo before it ever leaves the dock overseas.”

The three information layers, ...are:
-- The physical security layer involves radiation checking
devices, customs searches, container seal integrity and
even surveillance cameras and equipment at warehouses and
terminal gates.
-- The operation tracking data layer, using carriers,
terminals, inland transportation, container yards and every
other operational checkpoint.
-- The documentation data layer includes Custom's 24-hour
manifest data requirement, the original procurement
information, carrier booking data, point of origin, cargo
description and the consignee. Especially important in this
layer is the need for foreign exporters to the US to have
cargo entry data submitted prior to container departure.
Today, this data is often filed after the container arrives
at final destination." (MM&P Wheelhouse Weekly)

Think of the ultimate gargantuan costs of forcing and enforcing port security world-wide! Then reflect on the "real" purpose of all of this – continued profits for the traders (not to mention the traitors). The "traders" are the multi-national corporations that provide us with "cheap imports" – so other corporations will never again be obliged to pay American workers to produce the things American consumers have become to dependent upon (at least not at what was once considered a decent American industrial wage). All with a thickening, but seriously flawed, veneer of national security to give us a warm and cozy feeling in our increasing material dependencies and strategic vulnerabilities. 

Of course, America is not the only country with security concerns. Other nations will undoubtedly expect reciprocal security arrangements. By extension, all nations will require that all containers loaded in U.S. ports for foreign destinations be subjected to the very same levels of security that we require of them at their end.

Fortunately, our exports are not nearly as numerous as our imports – a circumstance that was traditionally recognized a bad deal. But it will still be a pretty costly matter. Containers are loaded in all fifty states and thousands of places within them.

The real combined international economic and security problem vis-à-vis our ports, of course, is that there is entirely too much totally unnecessary international trade going on – and it is intended to continue to expand into an increasingly insecure and unforeseeable future.

The primary solution to this, naturally, is as simple as doing what we always used to do – produce most of what we need ourselves right here in the good old U.S.A. – paying American workers wages that will enable them to pay American prices. And, of course, encouraging China and other significant producing nations to produce for their own growing consumer markets rather than for the American market.

There would still be plenty of international trading go around. There always was. At no time in our post Revolutionary history did we ever experience significant trade withdrawal pains – but today trade is being carried on to suicidal extremes. Trade for the sake of trade, and multinational corporate profits.

Of course, the "simple solution," is now all but impossible. The world is totally geared up and retooled for ever-increasing trade-mania, and irrevocably committed to the worship on the altar of the International forces of Mammon. The system is on auto-pilot and unstoppable without a wake-up call so serious that it can't be ignored. It will take a major catastrophic event (worse than 9/11), or a major trade-disruptive war, to reinitiate both economic and security sanity. And it is highly questionable whether the right dots would be connected even then.

Our leaders seem to be working us in the direction of bigger wars, and the circumstances required for a major awakening. But it sure would be nice if we and our children could be spared unnecessary future pain and suffering. This desire to be spared is not strictly a selfish wish. It would also mean much less future suffering, pain, death and destruction elsewhere too.

Thurdsay, April 27, 2006

RELIGION – CHRISTIANITY TAKING MORE BROADSIDES

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there aren't people out there trying to get you. The AARP has been trying to get Pridger for a number of years now. They started more than a decade before he was old enough to retire, and just won't take "no" for an answer. Not that Pridger has anything against the AARP (or retired people in general – especially since Pridger has made the grade himself) – but Pridger isn't much of a joiner of esoteric or fraternal organizations. If the Good Lord wanted Pridger to become a member of the AARP, it would have been revealed in the scriptures, or come down to Pridger in some other impressive way. "Benefits of membership" aren't for Pridger. 

Some say this attitude is like cutting one's nose off to spite his face. It only costs $12.50 a year for benefits (which is apparently the right to buy things you don't need or want cheaper than non-members). That's only $11.50 more than Pridger has to pay annually for his Second Amendment rights. Of course, some people might need those benefits. Besides, Pridger already belongs to the human race and that circumstance has literally dogged him, and kept him busy, all his life – and it has cost him plenty, in spite of the free initial membership. (Free to Pridger, but not free to anybody else involved). Still, Pridger wouldn't trade that membership for a ticket to any other species. No sir! No dog, monkey, or horse-hood for him! 

Fortunately, the deadline for AARP membership seems to be the fifth of June, so maybe Pridger's qualifications will expire, and they'll quit pestering him.

If you are wondering what this has to do with religion, Pridger is merely writing this post like Congress writes most legislation. The title often fails to reflect actual content. Our leaders apparently vote on major spending, crime, and defense appropriations bills based on the title and a very short, carefully worded, synopsis or abstract. The fastest speed readers in Congress are incapable of reading the fine print that sometimes number in the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages for each and every major bill. Yet they regularly sign on or off on to such legislation as if they actually know what they are doing.

The "Good Lord" and "scriptures" were alluded to, however, and now we'll visit the subject of religion – which is really getting interesting again. Between The Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas, and various other sundry previously "lost scriptures," the Christian world is being rocked and rolled by a new onslaught of somewhat disquieting "revelations" – some of them apparently downright troubling in nature.

Pridger hasn't read any of them yet, with the exception of the so-called Gospel of Thomas, which didn't impress him very much. The Da Vinci Code, Pridger understands, is a work of fiction, though it is nonetheless stirring some interest and controversy in theological circles.

As Christian as he tries to be, and theologian that he is, Pridger is by no means a Bible scholar. In fact, insofar as he has read the Bible, he takes about a third of the scriptures with a grain of salt and another third with a pinch of snuff. Perhaps the remaining third deserve a little more study. This, in Pridger most humble opinion, of course. The scriptures he hasn't read hardly effect him at all – as far as he knows.

This doesn't give Pridger too much of an inferiority complex, though maybe it should. After all, while the Bible has historically been the most widely owned books in this country, it is also reputed to be one of the least read. Pridger has probably read about as much of the Bible as most practicing, literate, Christians – and he has found some of it is pretty interesting.

Biblical prophecy is particularly interesting in light of ongoing world events, and the fact that some of our political and religious leaders (goaded on by the spokesmen for God's chosen people), seem to be eager advocates and facilitators of religious warfare, Armageddon, and the hoped for Rapture.

The Gospel of Judas seems to be stirring what would seem more than its share of interest in the media. It seems Judas is almost on the verge of being canonized as a saint (at least by the media), and Biblical history rewritten in light of the new find.

Of course, anti-Christian scholars are the ones most excited and delighted at the prospects of the find (and thus the glowing media coverage). Even some Christian Biblical scholars seem to be eager to reconsider Judas' heretofore negative reputation. Perhaps the very root of "Christian anti-Semitism" has been discovered (and was, of course, a willful and malicious act of omission by the early Churchmen). They hope the problem might now be set right in its true historical contexts – and we can all live happily ever after.

Pridger sees the predominant media spin on Judas, and the over-eager scholarly theological debate behind it, merely as a part of an ongoing anti-Christian campaign in scholarly circles. This has been going on for a long time. Whenever something comes up that tends to embarrass Christians or the Church, you can be sure that there will be a surprising amount of media coverage. The same is true for historic political icons, of course (as long as they are dead white men).

While Christian Biblical scholars might be excused for being taken aback, perplexed, and sorely troubled by the idea that possibly "genuine scripture" might prove Judas a selfless hero, rather than the betrayer of Jesus, the glee of most non-religious (or anti-Christian), scholars is hardly surprising. One would tend to wonder, however, that such scholars would place a great deal of "faith" in the truth and veracity of a newly found scripture when they tend to hold the rest in disdainful contempt.

Who's to say that the so-called Gospel of Judas isn't just a case of false witness committed to writing by the followers of, or the apologists for, Judas? False witness was probably as common in biblical times as it is today.

Naturally, the early Church compilers and editors of the scriptures carefully picked and chose what was and was not included in what has become the Bible. It couldn't have been a particularly easy undertaking. Being human, and maybe even a little self-serving (Devine inspiration notwithstanding), they controlled the message they wanted the Bible to convey. Still, it is likely that they did the best they could to deliver the "truth as they thought they knew it." After all, compiling "God's Word" for the benefit of all of posterity was considered a pretty important task, and they undoubtedly took it rather seriously.

The amazing continuing importance of the Bible is self-evident in the very fact that we are still having rather serious debates about it, even in high non-religious and anti-Christian scholastic circles (not to mention Pridger's Blog), in this age of almost universal hedonism and miraculous scientific discovery and achievement.

Not that Pridger can shine the light the truth on these matters. Unlike the scholars who make such things their daily bread, all he can do is speculate. But in his speculation rises a strong suspicion that there are those in positions of scholastic power who would be very pleased to see the Christian scriptures conform to their own world view – or at least throw some nagging doubts, and perhaps redoubled disarray, into the world of Christian believers.

At best, Pridger, himself, is a Christian heathen. As contradictory as this may sound, he still believes in the Christian faith insofar as "what has come down to us" as the core message of Jesus' teachings – and he cleaves to the "Christian identity" out of respect and admiration for the civilizations and cultures (as significantly flawed though they have been), from which he descended, and from which this nation initially developed.

Unfortunately, many (if not most), secular or "progressive" Gentiles – upon feeling that they have gained a little knowledge and enlightenment (which usually compels them to become agnostics or atheists), become active "anti-Christians." They even tend to joint the major opposition and ally themselves with Jewish thinkers – who, themselves, almost never become "anti-Jewish," no matter how enlightened or secularly oriented they may be.

Of course, it's natural enough for Moslems, Jews, and some other faiths to be anti-Christian. Moslems remember Christianity in the context of the Crusades, which certainly did not show them a very Christian face. And today, they view American Christians as allies of Zionism in the oppression of Palestinian Moslems. The Jews know Christians mainly in the context of centuries of official state and Church anti-Semitism, culminating with the Holocaust. To many of them the face of Christianity is the face of Hitler. Many other faiths came to know Christians as colonial conquerors, bullies, oppressors, and slave masters.

None of this would have ever been the case, however, had their experience been with true followers of the Christian faith (at least as Pridger sees it). Unfortunately, not even the missionaries consistently measured up, though may tried their best. But they often labored under the flawed evangelical dictates of their specific churches or denominations, not to mention national, cultural, and racial biases.

Pridger (though hardly what main-line Christians would even consider a "Christian"), is not, and will never be, an "anti-Christian" – any more than he is likely to become an "anti-American." This would not only be a betrayal of the high religious ideals and sincere faith of our forbears (not to mention the present true Christian faithful), but a repudiation of the very heritage of justice and liberalism upon which western civilization was founded. Try telling that to a modern political liberal, however, and he'd likely turn red in the face, move back a step or two, and regard you as a dangerous "true believer" – maybe even of the George W. Bush variety.

Naturally, we've still got plenty of professed born again Christians who perennially trip all over themselves to give the faith a bad name. Ironically, our current Christian administration, thanks to its neo-conservative brain trust (with the backing of an assortment of Christian fundamentalists with strong Old Testament leanings), has aligned itself with non-Christians against other non-Christians in what bears all the earmarks of a broad-based religious confrontation – a Crusade to establish democracy as the state religion where democracy has never tread before, and where it will probably never go very far.

All of this notwithstanding, for a person of Christian parents and pedigree to be an anti-Christian is to totally miss the Christian message, and repudiate almost everything good that our civilization and various root cultures once championed (but, unfortunately, never really managed to conformed to), and that which formed the core values embodied in our national charter – values that were intended to endure as our national character and our collective moral anchor.

To Pridger, the faith is a philosophical ideal and compelling moral guide rather than a strictly religious one in the fundamentalist context. Whether or not Judas was saint or sinner, or anything in the scriptures conform to historical fact or Divine Revelation, he has no way of ascertaining. He's pleased to leave such matters in the hands of the scholars and the faithful. Let them split the hairs, dissect and analyze the bodies, or appeal to God for a little special Devine intervention.

As for church matters and the raging religious debates, Pridger merely observes them, as he observes the antics in Washington and Wall Street, as a quite interested spectator, while trying to keep to the Commandments that Jesus thought worth preserving (according to words attributed to him in the Bible).

Pridger will here take the liberty of putting in a good word for God. He believes God was a pretty clever Creator and a damned Intelligent Designer. It makes no difference whether the heavens and earth, and all of God's creatures, were created in seven days, 6.95 milliseconds, or 7.32 trillion God-sized epochs (however they might be measured) – or whether He used a willow switch, blasting caps, or some sort of evolutionary process to urge his appointments toward maturity. It makes not an iota's difference, really, if you call Him God or nature with a small "n". In fact, it makes no difference whatsoever if you call Him "nothing" but the imaginative creation of ignorant, romantic, human dreamers (unless, of course, He really is a "jealous" and "vengeful" God with all the negative human attributes often attributed to him by the God "fearing" faithful).

Modern science, in all its advanced and arrogant splendor, can analyze and tinker with His creations and think itself pretty clever. But if it ever manages to duplicate the Big Bang (or even the mere destruction of our Earthly environment and the race itself), all its cleverness and creativity will have been in vain.

But, to God, another Big Bang will just be another kernel going off in the popcorn pan – or the results of another slight experimental miscalculation (such as the failure of man, presumably his prime creation on earth, to ever manage to get the message right).

Ironically, the more modern scientists study and learn of what we hopeless romantics insist on referring to as God's creations, the more they discover that life might indeed have been engineered, very cleverly, by very clever men, such as themselves – had they only been there at the time to do it.

But, of course, there were no such clever men at that point in time (or pre-time era), so it must have just happened by accident somehow on its own – probably originating as a very tiny speck of super-heavy matter that just happened to be exactly positioned nowhere, floating (or reclining), in precisely nothing, at just exactly the right point of no time at all.

Did nothing really do it? Or was there something that not even a codfish barrel full of the most enlightened and knowledgeable secular scientist can imagine or define (and the rest of us can only allude to as God), cause it to happen?  It did happen. It's obviously still happening. After all – here we are. At least most of us fervently believe that we are.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Pridger is neither a gambler nor investor. He has his own brand of stock that has very little co-relation with Wall Street. It's all in the form of physical assets (and few enough of them), on the ground, right on the old homestead. However, whether you are an investor or not, it makes sense to pay attention to what's happening on Wall Street and the world markets, because they increasingly effect our everyday lives and prospects for the future, whether we actively play the game or not.

Though far aloof from the stock and securities game, Pridger did pursue a career in a niche of corporate America (which metamorphosed into the "corporate world" during his working working life). By the skin of his teeth, Pridger managed to come out of the grinder with a whole hide and the promise of a pension for life. The pension fund (like all pension funds), is denominated in Wall Street stocks and bonds – so (at least to that degree), he is an involuntary stakeholder in the markets even though he'd much rather have his share of that pension money converted into gold and silver and safely buried somewhere in the back forty.

In several previous posts Pridger has alluded to our growing national dependence on China, both for the production of our consumer goods and as our prime national creditor. This dependence, of course, constitutes a major national economic and strategic vulnerability, the likes and extent of which, Pridger believes, we (including our trusty leaders in Washington), will sorely regret in the fullness of time.

For better or worse, since China is such a big player in our economic destiny, the health of many of the stocks traded on Wall Street are subject to the fortunes, vagaries, and whims of the Chinese economic miracle. This, at best. At worst, our national destiny is subject to the political designs and whims of a nation still ruled by a system historically committed to the destruction of our own.

Of course, since the economy is "global," all of our eggs are not in the Chinese basket. Our national creditors are many, and our consumer goods come from an array of other countries besides China. But we do have far too many of our eggs in the Chinese basket – and that share continues to increase.

In the interests of spreading information about this ongoing development, Pridger thought it might be useful to share a recent, unsolicited, promotional email. It tends to lend weight to Pridger's warnings with regard to our increasing reliance on China as a factor in the American economy, and may be of considerable interest or value to those readers who may take an active role in the Wall Street game.

-----------------------------------
China Affects Every Stock You Own
Why That Can Be Dangerous
Free new report: 
THE "RED FLAG" STOCKS
http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=6GL152
-----------------------------------

My name is Robert Hsu, and I have some shocking news 
for you:

China affects every stock you own.

Let me explain.

Wal-Mart is a China stock. If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank ahead of Australia and Canada as China's 8th-biggest trading partner.

But even this understates reality. A toy company like Hasbro is doing great business this holiday season, and over 20% of Hasbro's sales are through Wal-Mart. And most of Hasbro's toys are made in, you guessed it, China.

Boeing, Motorola, Cisco, Autodesk, Yum Brands and Caterpillar--all are China stocks. They are China stocks either because their profits depend on China importing their goods (Boeing is both outsourcing the new 7E7 Dreamliner assembly AND counting on orders from China Air) or because their profits depend on imports FROM China.

In fact, I would go even further.

EVERY stock in your portfolio is a "CHINA STOCK."

It is a China stock either because its fortunes are directly and openly enmeshed with China's astounding growth.

Or it is a China stock because management has steadfastly IGNORED the fact that China is the newest, most DISRUPTIVE and most important factor in its survival.

Which brings up a question that my American friends often find a little disturbing: What, exactly, is YOUR China investment strategy?

Because, if I were to look inside your portfolio, the stocks you hold--yes and the bonds and even the real estate--would imply a very clear China Strategy.

----------------
The China Factor
----------------

That's why my newest report, "Red Flag Stocks," is one of the most important pieces of research you can read right now. Best of all, it's FREE, and you can download it here. http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=6GL152

In this free special report you'll learn:

* The surprising reason that McDonald's won't be successful in China. 
* What China's monstrous appetite for oil really means for ExxonMobil and Chevron. 
* Why you should buy Motorola but not Qualcomm. 
* The real reason so many U.S. stocks are riding high 
on the China Miracle and so many China stocks are failing. 
* Do you Baidu--and should you? 
* Are stocks listed on the Chinese exchanges poised to make a comeback in 2006? The answer may surprise you. 
* PLUS 7 U.S traded China stocks that you should avoid. 

Full details on all this and more in my new Report, "Red Flag Stocks." It's yours FREE when you go here now. http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=6GL152

----------
My Mission
----------

I was born in Taiwan and made my first fortune in America as a hedge fund manager at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs. But I plan to make my second fortune from the rise of the next great superpower: China. I would be honored to be your guide to your China fortune.

My mission in life to help citizens of my adopted country, America, understand and profit from the return of China to the status of a great civilization. 

To help you, I want to send you my Inside China Dispatch every week from now on. This FREE Dispatch will direct you to investments that I am making and opportunities I see developing. 

Sometimes that opportunity leads us back to a familiar Western stock like Phelps Dodge or Yum Brands. Sometimes our Dispatch will lead you deep inland, to a local online auctioneer that's beating eBay at its own game. 

Our goal is twofold: one, always find stocks riding the China Miracle to a double in the next year.

Three of our China stocks are up over 20% in just the past seven weeks!

The second is to steer you clear of China stocks that are vulnerable to China's rise. That's why I want you to read my Red Flag Stocks. This is your chance to read this report absolutely free--no obligation, nothing to buy--so don't delay. Download it FREE here. http://investorplace.com/order/?pc=6GL152

Robert Hsu
The China Dispatch

Pridger has little doubt that Mr. Hsu knows what he is taking about, though inclusion of his message here does not constitute an endorsement for, or on behalf of, Mr. Hsu and his investment strategies.

China has simply become the largest single player in the American economy. And while Pridger is pleased at China's success, he feels our leadership has blundered tragically in allowing our nation to become in the least dependent on China – much less dependent on it for our very economic survival. He strongly suspects that China is going to play a major role in making Superpower America eat a little humble pie in the not too distant future. Both the economic potential and political motives are very much there.

Monday, April 23, 2006

THE PRO-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DEMONSTRATIONS

The specter of immigrants and their allies in any nation demonstrating on behalf of "illegal" immigrants and illegal immigration, is so totally absurd that it borders on the bizarre. It could only happen in modern day America. Illegal immigrants are hardly welcome anywhere, but in America they have become so "necessary" and numerous, due to decades of lax enforcement and cockeyed economic policy, that they seem to feel they have the upper hand – at least the Mexican immigrants do.

Illegal Gringos can certainly expect to be firmly dealt with south of the border. And why not? It's their country, and an illegal immigrant is an illicit interloper! Only legal Gringos with money will be welcome anywhere – but they'd better toe the line and stick to the letter of the immigration laws. Mexican jails are probably even less fun than American jails, and certainly not nearly as well appointed.

Mexican Americans are the only ones numerous enough in terms of both legal and illegal immigrants present to pull anything like this off and hope, not only to get away with it, but to favorably influence the powers that be in Washington. Not only do they want illegal immigrants to be legitimized and immunized from deportation – they want further immigration from Mexico on fast-track.

To add insult to injury, many make no secret of both a distain for the American flag and American sovereignty, and a desire to see the American Southwest revert to Mexican control. This, in spite of the fact that they or their ancestors have "escaped" that country for greener pastures in the U.S. for what must have been rather compelling reasons. They wave Mexican flags and declare that "This is OUR continent!"

Most of the Mexicans who immigrate to the U.S., of course, are Mestizos, and presumably feel, as "Native Americans" (at least much more so than most Norte Americanos), it makes no difference which side of the border they're on, it's still their land. Others feel that the American southwest was unfairly taken from their native country. Significantly, however, for some reason they still prefer the north side of the border – not because it was formerly Mexican territory, but because of U.S. job opportunities.

As for those relatively few radical Mexicans who seriously wish to "take the southwest back" (to Old Mexico), it might be time to take a look at the real circumstances of both their historical claims, and the likely results should their fantasy ever be realized.

Prior to the Anglo takeover, the former Spanish-American lands of the American southwest were the sparsely settled domain of a few favored Spanish grandes and their haciendas, and a networked system of missions that turned the Native Americans (and the racial admixtures that have since evolved in the intervening centuries), into the peon laboring class. This colonial caste system essentially survived Mexican independence and remains very much a part of the political and Mexican economic landscape today. It would have continued in the American southwest had Mexico retained sovereignty.

The race that most Americans envision as "Mexican" is not the same race as most of the Mexican ruling elite. Take a look at the current president of Mexico for ready example. Whatever his particular racial pedigree, he does not resemble most of the Mexicans clamoring to cross our southern border. 

The lands of the American southwest, were so vast, largely barren, and sparely populated, that, when the Norte Americanos began entered the picture in significant numbers, conquest (just or not, but very real), was all but inevitable. The Americans effectively occupied and developed what was a huge political and population vacuum. Nonetheless many, if not most, of the existing Spanish grant titles, as well as other private holdings of Mexicans, were honored.

It is the Spanish-indigenous racial admixture that forms the bulk of Mexico's population and overwhelming majority of those illegally immigrating to the U.S.. They are the descendents of the peonage class that (despite several revolutions and attempts at political and social reform), remain in circumstances of dire, and often increasing, poverty in modern Mexico. For those who are here, or aspiring to get here, it would be ironic indeed if the American southwest should ever be regained by Mexico. Yet they march in American city streets waiving Mexican flags.

Most of the struggles of the Mexican people since the days of Spanish rule, have been struggles to attain at least a modicum of social justice from their own government. To this day, the Mexican government has continued to be unable, or unwilling, to deliver the goods to its people (in spite of the nation's abundant natural resource wealth) – thus the continuing and increasing desire on the part of many Mexicans to better their lot by immigrating to the United States. 

Give Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California back to Mexico and those states would soon resemble Tamaulipas, Goahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California – and all future illegal immigrants would be clamoring to jump the border into the next tier of states north and beyond.

What the demonstrating Mexicans really want (just like the rest of us), is to have their cake and eat it too. But this is an impossibility, and all efforts in that direction, whether by immigrants or "regular" Americans, are certain to to be frustrated. In the course of time, they will inevitably lead to socio-economic disaster.

Los Angeles and much of southern California already (once again), resemble Mexico in many significant respects – but without the tranquil haciendas and orderly mission towns. One certainly doesn't have to go to Tequila's to get a good Mexican dinner when in LA, nor settle for cheap imitations at Taco Bell. Thus LA and southern California make an excellent first destination for illegal aliens.

Los Angeles, of course, is a many faceted megalopolis. In places it also resembles urban Vietnam, Korea, and probably a dozen other foreign countries, including Washington D.C. The hinterlands around the rich and famous of Hollywood, and other exclusive areas, have become dangerous grounds for the rich and famous. They are surrounded by people of many stripes, and some are both poised and eager for a hostile takeover.

The problem of Mexican immigration has eclipsed all other legal and illegal immigration problems by the shear scope and spread of its numbers. It has become a very intractable problem because American politicians are deathly afraid of large voting blocks, and (with their own New World Order goals), are very sensitive to charges of racism and xenophobia.

Even at best, border security can never again be rendered very effective, since such large numbers of Mexicans have already successfully made the leap, and have such a large number of legal, voting, and demonstrating compatriots. Closing the barn door after the fact, no matter how tightly, can never produce the desired results.

In any case, "the desired results" of the brand of globalism our trusty national leadership has unequivocally committed the nation to (and continues to ramrod everywhere else in the world – even at the point of a sword), is to take down all walls and borders. It is to relegate nationalism, isolationism, protectionism, and national sovereignty itself, to the dust bin of history. This is supposedly what it's all about.

So what is all this noise about national security, protecting the borders, and concern over illegal immigration anyway? Either it's just smoke, or the left hand is totally out of touch with the right hand, and we've got our backside up much higher than our head.

Apparently our leaders still actually believe we can have all the benefits the America people used to sing about and the Global Village too – the globalism they have been busy foisting upon the rest of the world. Our leaders delude themselves – and, having deluded themselves, have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD – TYRANNY ON THE MARCH!

Though it's very much in the works, we don't yet have an official national identification card, nor have to register all our guns. But it looks like we're going to have to start registering all our livestock or be counted out of the market. That's right! Animals are slated to be registered like so many Thompson sub-machine guns.

This in the name of public health and disease control, of course – thanks to mad cow disease, and a government that increasingly usurps the prerogatives of God (i.e., G.O.D. – Government, Omnipotent and Deified). The idea is to be able to track all meat-borne pathogens that turn up on the diner plate back through trade channels to the source of origin of the hapless animal. The system, of course, will always point to the farm or ranch as the probable source of the problem. Yet it is much more likely that the source of animal health problems originates somewhere between farm and packer – in over-crowed, stifling, contaminated, finishing feed lots, for example. 

The animal identification scheme was initially supposed to be voluntary, but it appears that its going to be mandatory, and this spells a draconian and costly nail in the coffin of freedom and liberty as we have known it – not only for those of us who have remained down on the farm, but even pet owners.

The registration mandate is not limited to cattle. It includes all livestock – horses down to chickens and (presumably), dogs, cats, and canaries. If you don't want to register your animals, you either get rid of them or become an outlaw.

Here's some salient opinion expressed in the March, 2006 issue of Acres U.S.A.:

The Beast Comes Forward

Before cattlemen line up like sheep and buy into the animal identification scheme being unloaded by USDA, all should pause to discern the real scheme afloat. The talking beads say "disease control" – they want to track down the individual responsible for retailing an offending organism in the event of and epizootic.
     That's the scheme – and its codicil called depopulation – what Truman used to call a red herring. This will be explained in the penultimate paragraph of this editorial.
     The real issue is analogous to a minor controversy in Kansas City. The Sports Authority wants to put a sliding roof over the football stadium so that by 2020 the facility might capture the Super Bowl, and Kansas City Chiefs own Lamar Hunt might grow his $62 million annual income from the team still more, at the taxpayer's expense.
     The stadium controversy has prompted this editorial chair to suggest a stationary roof and sliding bleachers. Why not, as long as we're talking nonsense?
     The point of this yarn is money. The point of the ID schemes is money. Disease control is the spin. The farmer is the victim.
     With the aid of computers, trade lackeys want to know to the last few pounds the next protein inventory on pasture and in feedlots. With the touch of a button they will know how much of a squeeze to put on R-CALF, independent growers, backgrounders, and most of all that 80 to 85 percent of the cow-calf producers with 25 to 30 head of animals.
    Oppressive measures work hand in hand with the accumulation of power. Power has now arrived at the top in the United States, meaning those who control industry and trade. The commodity exchanger will know exactly the supply and effective demand. This means the sheep called people who play the computerized commodity crap game will be trimmed and rudely dismissed.
     The USDA-backed scheme was to be voluntary. Now it is voluntary no more. States, forever panhandling the government, are getting into the fray with even tougher laws, this to express fealty to the illegitimacy now debilitating the last of America's most valued freedoms.
     As these lines are set down, Texas proposes a draconian measure designed to validate pseudoscience. The last date for comment and legal hell-raising rejection was early February.
     The legislation proposed and available to be copied by other states is presented here in abstract form.
     Texans are to be fined $1,000.00 a day for not registering when they own any animal whatsoever – cow, bull, horse, goat, llama, any poultry (turkeys, chickens, ostriches, emus, etc.). Even the house canary is covered. Add the pet dog.
     Registration is $10.00 a year, this for as long as the animal is owned. The family rooster and a 25-bird flock is treated the same as a rancher with 500 steers.
     The identity numbers are assigned by the National Numbering System. The system contains 15 digits. The first three are the country code, 840 for the United States. The remaining numbers tell the managers of everyone's private affairs what Iowa Beef, Monsanto, Cargill and the rest need to know. Radio frequency equipment – paid for by fees and taxes of the victims – will read the code.
     The program, which only a few months ago was voluntary and slated for 2008, is now leaping forward while the victims sleep. Our editorial "The Mark of the Beast" (December 2005) implied that farmers could come together on the issue in time to upset the 2008 target date. This no longer appears to be possible. The time for action is now.
     The health canard has been worked to death. The way it stands, a contaminated hamburger will now be traced back to a grower who sold to a feedlot, where fecal dust installed a disease problem. But it is the primary producer who will find his small herd depopulated.
     The concept of disease transmission, now holy writ at USDA, belongs in the Stone Age. Debilitated, undernourished animals, animals fed according to "settled science" of universities, invite transmission. Animals with a healthy bodily terrain can walk into and out of Mad Cow pens with no chance of taking on the disease, which in any case has no settled etiology. Infectious brucellosis abortus – about as infectious as the stomachache, Dr. Albrecht said – merely denotes an absence or marked imbalance of magnesium, manganese, cobalt, copper, zinc and iodine. Yet, Stone Age style, the treatment of choice is depopulation and so-called eradication of the agent.
     You may copy this editorial, reproduce it, hand it out as a flyer, adding our blessing and identifying logo.
      

The agent to be eradicated is the small independent farmer – whether he produces for the market, his own family consumption, or a simple affinity toward animals. If he is to own and operate his small livestock holding legally, he'll have to register every animal as if it were a Thompson machinegun. Failure to do so will make him some sort of a felon. The proposed fines for noncompliance can swiftly and easily force his farm onto the auction block. Another bastion of personal freedom and independence at the personal and family level will have died at the hands of bureaucracy gone mad.

The fallback position for the independent farm, of course, is vegetarianism. But the corporate big boys are busily working on that too. A concerted effort is being made to eradicate all natural crop seed species, making the remainder patentable, and thus licensable, through biotech and the manipulation of plant gene makeup. In the case of most field crops, once this is sufficiently wide-spread, the wind and involuntary cross-pollination will complete the process.

Ten dollars a year per foul or animal!! This amounts to licensing of the activity of animal husbandry, stock farming, and even pet ownership – the effective criminalization of an entire age-old way of life! This is demonstrably tyranny on the march under cover of multiple health scares combined with the increasing hegemony of corporate governance. A thousand dollars a day fine for not registering an animal is really getting tough on crime, after criminalizing another innocent, valuable, productive activity!

The mad cow disease scare, of course, is deemed both excuse and justification for animal ID – introduction of the disease into the United States being one of the many rewards of free trade and globalism, and the totally needless importation of cattle and other livestock from other places. We seem to have imported our few cases of mad cow from Canada. Already the USDA is apparently much more adept at tracking sick cows than the Immigration Service is at tracking illegal aliens.

Yet there is no reason on earth why we should import either meat or live animals from foreign countries. The only half-way valid excuse might be to import exotic breeding stock, which is a very small, exclusive, and (presumably), already highly regulated activity. But to routinely import cattle or other stock as a normal means of supplying food for the population is totally ridiculous. But we do it. By this means, cattle and meat prices can be kept down to the required international levels – and under the control of the big ag commodity traders – to prevent domestic stock farming and ranching from being too profitable (at least for small, family scale, operators).

As for the risk of disease, as implied in the above Acres U.S.A. editorial, the number one culprit in the supposedly increasing animal public health threat is feedlot over-crowding and unnatural diet of corporate scale stock raising and finishing. Cattle born on the ground and raised on good pasture are generally immune to serious health problems, and certainly well insulated from exotic diseases that must be imported from elsewhere. Yet, this is the point of origin that the national ID system will call up by computer and focus on. Massive industrial feedlots (big money corporate concerns), will escape undue scrutiny and culpability.

Compare how the almost phantom mad cow public health threat is being handled compared to the supposedly much more serious and long ongoing AIDs epidemic. AIDs carriers are neither sought out nor tagged. It's illegal to test for HIV or AIDs (another disease with no settled etiology), unless the test is requested by a party desiring to be tested. They tell us that millions are dying of AIDs every year, and many millions more are supposedly infected and slated for early death. Yet it is illegal to use traditional public health techniques to get a handle on what is billed as a major threat to humanity.

In the case of AIDs, the privacy issue has trumped public health concerns. The reason is two-fold. (1) Our mis-representatives in Washington are deathly afraid of loud, articulate, voting blocks. The two most AIDS effected groups in the U.S. – neither of which apparently want either forced or any broad-based testing – are such blocks (i.e., homosexuals and African Americans). The homosexuals don't want testing because it might tend to focus too much negative public attention on their own community and peculiar lifestyle. For African Americans forced testing would be construed as racially discriminatory. And many African Americans believe that AIDs was invented, and purposefully upon them, by the white man as a form of bio-genocide. (2) MONEY again! The big research and drug money is on the side of a continuing epidemic. Without the epidemic, billions in research grant money, and many more billions in drug profits would dry up.

IMPORTING FOOD INTO THE LAND OF PLENTY   

As for stock and meat imports, the truth of the matter is that we need them just about as much as we need mad cow disease itself. Such imports merely serve to disrupt domestic markets, and keep small independent operators in their place. "Their place" in the New World Order, of course, is oblivion. "If you can't get real big – then get out!" (has long been message of the USDA to the farmer – triple it under the present scheme of globalization). Ditto now for the farmers who don't knuckle to the National Animal Identification System. If you don't like it, raise turnips, go flip burgers, or become a prison guard!

Why don't farmers stand up and make themselves heard as "gays" have at various AIDs summits? For one thing, America's farmers (small and large) are already a seriously endangered specie. They are generally members of the ethnic majority, and thus politically faceless and ethnically non-threatening. As a professional group, they have become so numerically insignificant that they no longer pose a serious voting threat in any statehouse or in the national capital. 

Perhaps more significantly, surviving farmers are already almost totally dependent on Iowa Beef, Monsanto, Cargill and a few other big boys for their markets. Those who aren't, are a far less numerous minority. The powerful, so-called, "farm lobby" today is the big agribusiness lobby. Agribusiness, of course, is joined at the hip with the petroleum, chemical, and drug industries. Needless to say, this is where the big money is. Big money not only talks – it bullies – and has the undivided attention, and thus representation, of Congress. It is to this inherently hostile corporate element to which farmers are today forced to be most beholden – the very entities that least have their interests at heart – this for their merest chance of continued survival .

The National Animal Identification System will be the final straw for a lot of small and intermediate stock farmers. Rather than knuckling to what is perceived as an Orwellian farm regimen, they'll simply abandon efforts to be productive.

Pridger got his National Animal Identification System notice from the Illinois Department of Agriculture a month or two ago. He hasn't yet figured out how he's going to handle this new frontal assault on his personal freedom. He found the specter of the notice in hand so depressing that he immediately misplaced it before bothering to read the fine print. It remains buried somewhere under the piles of books and papers on his desk. His only real interest in relocating it is to determine when the final shoe might fall and his small beef herd finally foreclosed.

Yours truly has always been fond of considering himself a law abiding citizen, though it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually be one. He goes through a lot of motions – maintains his driver's license, buckles his seat belt, and pays his taxes and auto liability insurance, pays his Second Amendment dues to the state of Illinois, and avoids going to town for a drink.

When the animal ID shoe finally falls, Pridger will probably take a few half measures to maintain the appearance of legal living. Likely he'll liquidate the beef herd, eat the horse, down-size the chicken flock to about two egg layers, camouflage the chicken house and yard, free the canary, remove the collars from the dogs and declare them homeless strays. As for poor old Red, the milk cow, she'll pastured in the woods and will perhaps look somewhat strange in a set of deer antlers and a foreshortened white tail.

On the other hand, would it be worth all the trouble? Pridger might just throw the towel in completely and become a deer and varmint slayer to keep sufficient meat on the table. Maybe he could reforest all the pastures and become a nut farmer. It'll probably be a while before all trees have to be registered.

But wait, maybe that's not such a good idea either. It has recently come to Pridger's attention that private timber land in Illinois is due for higher taxation. Trees are valuable assets and the taxing authorities feel they haven't been getting their rightful due. (Too bad they can't tax the Forest Service.) Maybe it would be better to clear the rest of the woods and hope worthless saw weed and barren gullies take over.

There are other options, of course. Pridger is retired from industrial America and sorely tempted, in the face of the Brave New World, to abandon all pretence of "producing anything." In fact, he can survive perfectly well on his so-called Social Security and modest pension – either here or in perhaps more hospitable environs.

The old folks are all gone, and the children have long fled. The land of the free and the home of the brave that once swelled Pridger's pride in being an American, hardly exists any more. The grand old songs no longer ring true. Why not sub-divide and sell the old homestead – or go the easier route and simply sell to the Forest Service or Nature Conservancy? Then he could poach on "public" other people's land without having to pay any land taxes on it at all.

Then there is the other option. There are other countries where Pridger's new fixed income will go a lot further, and speak a lot louder, than it does here – and where (though he will always have to be an unarmed alien in a foreign land), life in general is still a whole lot freer than it is here – as long as you don't require a job, insist on the right to vote, or apply for welfare. Money talks in such places, just like it does here, only louder. Perhaps being an alien in a foreign land would be more congenial than living as an alien in the land of one's birth – or in an increasingly "alienized" land. (But he wouldn't go to any newly "democratized" nation, such as Iraq – it's even worse than here!!)

Leaving the homeland, of course, would be a real cop-out. But, what the heck, isn't this the New World Order? Home is any place you chose to hang your hat and deposit your Social Security check – and especially where a modest income can find a healthy voice. Even Mexico, Pridger understands, now tolerates retired Americans with sufficient income to make them an economic asset.

America has been experiencing a radical make-over for several decades. This, without the benefit of the fully informed consent of the governed. All high sounding rhetoric aside, it has repudiated its founding principles. It has become the prime receptacle of both alien cultures and foreign industrial production. It has lost its former national identity and purpose, along with the unifying culture and productive energy that it once developed. It is experiencing an accelerating erosion of the very principles of freedom, liberty, and justice that once inspired hope that its example would constructively inspire all other peoples of the world.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, while still enshrined under glass in the nation's capital, have lost all purposeful meaning and political relevance. Commensurate with this, all semblance of resistance to the encroachment of tyranny seems to have vanished from the national landscape. The popular goal is now simply to maintain what has become "the American way of life" (every nature of over-indulgence and waste, while ceasing to be productive), and, of course, "safety and security at any price" – from real, imagined, and contrived, threats.

"Old-fashioned" Americans (themselves the descendents of former waves of immigrants seeking a new life of freedom and liberty in a New World), can hardly feel at home here today. We crawl into the shells of our homes and shrinking personal environs (shrinking from our riddled, dead, and too often dangerous, communities), watch media entertainment, or peck vainly at our keyboards, and view the accelerating changes with a combination of alarm, resignation, and increasing hopelessness.

Rest in Peace, oh Great Republic!

Can the original American dream be recaptured in a world now dominated and controlled by the agents of Mammon and the powerful corporations that have grown up around them (and been given the keys to an unbridled and avaricious global liberty)? Can freedom and liberty again evolve (for We the People), after all political power has been subverted and engulfed by an orgy that amounts to a global "fascist Disneyland?" Perplexing questions – the answers to which only time can sort out. But for this generation the future appears pretty bleak.

After it's all said and done, Pridger will probably stay the course – even foray into battle (in defense of the homeland), if he has to. But that isn't exactly a solemn promise made on a stack of Bibles. Pridger has become at least part Jewish, and mentally recites his "Kol Nidre" prayer about once a week – just in case.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

LABOR UNIONS ARE WAKING UP – 35 YEARS LATE

But better late than never. Pridger was recently a little surprised to find a labor organization promoting books in its periodic emails. (Imagine organized labor actually promoting reading and thought as well as worker wages and benefits!!) Pridger doesn't often promote specific books on this blog, and particularly books he has not yet read himself, but here's betting these three books are well worth reading. The following excerpts are quoted from a recent email from http://www.unionvoice.org (AFL-CIO).

Mother Jones said it best: “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflict.”

Conflict is busting out all over. Are you prepared?

These three books can help us make sense of the mess our country is in right now, the repercussions for our struggling middle class and what we can do to put America back on the right track.

The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, by veteran New York Times business reporter Louis Uchitelle, is an eye-opening account of the devastating impact of layoffs on individuals at all income levels. It traces the rise of job security in the United States and the factors that caused a U-turn beginning in the 1970s. Uchitelle chronicles the experiences of both executives and workers, following three Stanley Works CEOs from 1968 through 2003 and showing that each gradually become more willing than his predecessor to lay off workers. Uchitelle makes clear that layoffs are counterproductive and rarely promote long-term efficiency or profitability. This is a passionate and compelling book that argues our government must create policies to encourage companies to restrict layoffs and create jobs. Alfred A. Knopf publisher, 304 pages, hardcover. $25.95...

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips, takes on three great threats to America’s well-being: our dependence on shrinking oil supplies, radicalized religion and massive domestic and international debt. Phillips draws historical parallels to similar conditions in the past, describes the growing power of the financial services industry and suggests healthier approaches that encourage personal savings and manufacturing. Viking Adult, 480 pages, hardcover. $26.95...

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government—And How We Take It Back, by David Sirota, describes the conquest of America’s democratic government by Big Money interests. Sirota, a former congressional staffer, says although major, high-profile scandals are roiling Washington, D.C., the most prevalent examples of the hostile takeover are “the almost invisible, day to day corruption tales that plague American politics.” This book is not just for the political elite—it’s written for regular Americans who want to know what is happening to their democracy. Crown, 384 pages, hardcover, available in early May. $24.00...

Visit the http://www.unionvoice.org web site for more information.

From those short promotional reviews, it can be seen that others are getting the picture and saying many of the same things that Pridger has been trying to weave into many of these posts. Of course, there is a vast array of reading material that not only tells us what has happened to America, but told us what was happening a long time ago – not to mention all those who tried to warn us many decades before that. It didn't start happening yesterday or the day before. It was in the works a long time before the major policy changes of the 60's, 70's and 80's transformed the nation into what it is today – poised for catastrophic disaster of several geneses.

The books that were ahead of the curve – trying to warn us of the dangerous direction our government was taking us, were often those categorized and belittled as the alarmist works of paranoid conspiracy theorists. They not only saw the threat of communization, but the threat of global capital and corporate collectivization as well.

Today we are at war (a new kind of war, of the nature George Orwell wrote of), but our wars are mere (but nonetheless very serious and costly), distractions. (We have traded the chore of building and improving our own nation in favor of nation building on the other side of the planet.) As the big national focus of the moment, our efforts both obscure and exacerbate all other socioeconomic problems – and exacerbate them on an exponential basis.

The trouble is that few authors manage to get a focus on the whole canvas, or pin down all the corners in any single text. Many have come close, but usually certain economic fundamentals are omitted – fundamental economics and the monetary system being two of the basics seldom addressed. 

Stephen Zarlenga, in his The Lost Science of Money, The Mythology of Money – the Story of Power (a good, recently published, book), focuses on that issue almost exclusively and is highly recommended. Zarlenga does a pretty good job of explaining what money has been, is, and should be – and he outlines how we might climb out of the deep hole we've dug ourselves into over the period of a century. See http://www.monetary.org for more information on the book and money matters.

Money alone, however, is far from being the whole issue. Money is merely the blood that circulates like blood through the economic body. Inputs must be constantly present to build and nourish the brain, muscle tissue, and bone. Charles Walters, Jr. (publisher of Acres U.S.A., a A Voice For Eco-Agriculture http://www.acresusa.com), connects most of the dots for us in his Unforgiven ...the American Economic System SOLD for Debt and War... In this book you will find all of the fundamentals at the very core of our problem, as well as a lot of detail. But Unforgiven isn't a particularly fun book for the average reader to tackle. It must be read and reread, then studied.

It's pretty difficult to get the whole complicated picture into a single volume of modest size, but Mr. Walters has done a pretty good job at a very difficult task. Another valuable book on related subjects by Mr. Walters is Raw Materials Economics – a NORM Primer (N.O.R.M., stands for The National Organization for Raw Materials) – "Physical facts, not abstractions, preside over the exchange equation... This makes agriculture the flywheel and balancewheel of the economy." As the sub-title indicates, this work was intended to be a primer – a "...first eclectic reader on raw materials economics. Its objective is to simplify the subject so that anyone can understand it."

Raw materials economics, whether recognized or not, is fundamental to all other schools of economics – for it is upon the back of raw materials that everything else turns. 

Agriculture, of course (as Mr. Walters drives home), is the very bedrock foundation of any viable economic system, and this is what most economists and socioeconomic writers tend to forget or (in this post industrial age), actively discount. Yet, historically, it was a "known" that "all wealth comes from the soil." Absolutely nothing else gets done until enough people get fed well enough to turn their attention to other things. And, after food, clothing, and shelter come in vying for second place. Only after those basic needs are satisfied, can other jobs be performed and commercial activities take place. Even the arts and sciences depend on them.

The forgotten basic principles are:

1. All initial wealth comes from the soil, compliments of nature and labor.
2. Before the automobile or computer can be manufactured, labor has to be fed. And labor must be fed, nurtured, and educated for about 18 formative years before it becomes fully functional and prepared for its productive role.
3. The fundamental E=Mc² of economics is simply, "I = P X P" (i.e., Income = Production X Price). If primary (or any), production is under-priced or short-changed at the point of production and delivery, all upper tiers of productive income suffer a significant short fall. When fundamental raw materials production is under-priced, the entire economic pyramid above is financially weakened and destabilized.
4. Agriculture and mining activities produce the raw materials that provide the wherewithal for all other socioeconomic activity that follow.
5. Agricultural activity provides the nearest thing to miraculous real wealth creation that we have. Seeds (which are essentially gifts of nature), are sown, cultivated, and (with good and diligent husbandry), reproduce themselves exponentially to be harvested at the end of the growing season. The only requisites are soil, water, sun, seeds, human labor, and ingenuity.
6. Wealth distribution, in the form of money paid to labor for basic production, must begin at the primary sources of production, and that production should be sufficient to provide a decent livelihood for those primary producers.
7. In a rational economy wealth is multiplied as raw materials move up the value-added market chain to final use or consumption.
8. Credit and debt are not viable substitutes for wealth.
9. An honest medium of easy exchange (money, or currency), must be provided to facilitate convenient payment of productive labor and a fluidity of commercial activity at every stage of production, processing, and manufactory, as well as at every point of both sale and services rendered in the course of all commercial activity.

MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT ON THE CONFIGURATION OF A VIABLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM

Few young people today give very much thought as to where their food comes from and all the things that have to be accomplished to put it before them. Most know only that food comes from the supermarket or fast food restaurant, and are perhaps vaguely cognoscente of the abstraction that most of it is grown on farms or ranches. Still less are they apt to stop to think that agriculture is the most important sector of any economy – that without agriculture, they wouldn't be able to play video games, listen to CDs, go to the ball park, or watch a movie. Few really know what an economy are.

Those few who might tend to think seriously about economics may know that it has something to do with industrial production, the consumer price index, housing starts, wholesale prices, trade statistics, Wall Street, the GDP, or the prime lending rate.

As for agriculture, they might know little more than that ours is the most efficient and productive in the world, and that our farmers "feed half the world." Chances are, they are also aware that "farm subsidies" are supposedly a drag on the free enterprise system. But there is much more to consider.

1. Since agriculture is both the primary raw material production industry (upon which literally everything else depends), it is also the primary wealth-producing industry. Food and fiber are almost the exclusive products of agriculture. This being a given, it is only a matter of common sense that a significant percentage of the population should be employed in it, in the form of independent family farms.
2. The importance of the family farm is that it is not only the well-spring and epitome of self-sustaining commercial free enterprise activity, but the only one that can be considered sustainable through both hard work and self-interest. Only on such a human scale can the land itself be protected through natural pride of individual ownership, and a reverence for the land and occupation themselves.
3. One of the reasons that capitalism works so well is that it harnesses both the best and worst in human nature, along with human ingenuity and productive capabilities, as a means to an end. The problem with capitalism is that, by nature, it tends toward monopoly and excess. It is both naturally predatory and cannibalistic, with neither heart nor soul, nor community spirit or national patriotism. Thus it is that government regulation is necessary to both tame and tether it to work for the general public good. Unfettered capital simply cannot be self-regulating, for the only accountability it knows is owed exclusively to stockowners rather than society at large. It knows no natural limits in it's quest for gain, and market forces possess nothing in the realm of moral guidance.
4. The family farm and individual proprietorship, though the purpose is also gain, are self-limiting. There is only so much a man can do to enrich himself with his limited means and capabilities. His own self-interests, while desiring greater wealth and comfort for his family, limit him to the degree of wealth his own personal labor and ingenuity can facilitate. Thus the individual who makes his own living by his own labor, using his own personal capital (unlike corporate capital), seldom becomes predatory except perhaps in somewhat petty ways, which local customs and generally held moral precepts, if not laws, tend to limit.
5. As with all wealth, land ownership distribution should be as broad-based as practical. Our farmlands should be the property of as many individual farm families as is possible, to insure a stable and dependable food supply for the nation, as well as self-employment for a significant portion of the population.
6. Every farm family should be as self-sufficient as practical in a modern world. Only this could provide the nation with a dependable food insurance policy. And that's why the family farm agricultural system was once the both the bedrock and balance wheel of the national economy.
7. Mono-cropping, corporate scale farming operations, while obviously extraordinarily efficient and productive, cannot provide high quality foodstuffs or sustainability – thus, in the long run, they cannot provide food security.
8. Too many eggs in too few baskets are always a bad bet. Thus, the fact that only about two percent of the population is currently feeding the rest of us is dangerous. Our present system is highly dependent on fossil fuels, the petro-chemical industries, and long, complex, petroleum-dependent, transportation systems. This is a formula for future disaster.
9. At the time of the crash of 1929, we still had a large and viable family farm population. Though the Great Depression destroyed many farmers because money was withdrawn from the economy, the family farms that were not lost outright managed to prevent widespread hunger among a large percentage of the population. Many survived the depression because they were able to return to the farm, where food, if not money, continued to be plentiful. This was possible because there were still sufficient numbers of family farms that could feed extended family members.
10. The devastation and long duration of the Great Depression were much more the result of the wrongful monetary policy that followed than the stock market crash and banking panics which triggered it. People were hungry because a lack of purchasing power rather than a shortage of food. Food was plentiful, but livestock and other farm commodities were destroyed as a matter of official policy because of the economy-wide lack of purchasing power. This wanton destruction of food supplies was said to be necessary due to "overproduction". Meanwhile a large percentage of the population went jobless and hungry.
11. The fact that "overproduction" was deemed to be a major problem during that much less modern and efficient agricultural era, puts the lie on the present presumed need for our present, relatively people-less, agricultural efficiency.
12. A similar crash and depression today would be much more devastating. Only nationalization of corporate agricultural and distribution systems would be sufficient to avert wide-scale hunger and starvation. 
13. Prices of almost all basic agricultural commodities are undervalued under the corporate model of agribusiness – this in order for the big international commodity traders to sell at a profit whether by export or import. Farm commodity prices have not kept up with with inflation nor industrial pricing trends. Thus small operators have been squeezed out of the business – and this squeeze was intentional. It constituted the corporate collectivization of the nation's food supply production machinery.
14. Ultimately, corporate collectivization of all means of production is just as dangerous (arguably much more so, in fact), as the communist collectivization of the same thing. Communism at least had an ideology, capital has nothing resembling any such animal.
15. This was vaguely justified as a "cheap food" policy. But such a policy doesn't make food appreciably cheaper, because it must also insure that all the corporate middle men realize a profit. Meanwhile the struggling independent farmer continues to struggle. Saudi Princes probably realize a greater profit on a loaf of bread than wheat farmers do. As for the real cost of food, a partial bill arrives every April 15th, when the taxpayer makes a large invisible payment on part of the subsidy of the corporate agribusiness and international trade system.
16. Dependence on distant sources for food supplies and other critical raw materials (not to mention manufactured goods), is a formula for eventual disaster.
17. If these most vital primary raw materials industries are activity shortchanged in terms of "just reward" for the production of real wealth, the entire economy suffers a debilitating handicap at the very font of initial wealth creation. This is a critical point that seems to totally escape the contemporary economic policy brain trust.
18. All other wealth generated within the economy is produced by labor in various value-added processes – processing raw materials into usable finished products, i.e, mining and refining, food processing, turning fiber into clothing, construction, and all other fabrication and manufactory. And, since this is second only to agricultural production in importance, these industrial processes should also employ a significant percentage of the population. And this economic activity must be sufficiently rewarded to allow those producers to be the primary consumers of their own production.
19. All other commercial and cultural activity depend on the above in order to exist, develop, and flourish. This includes distribution of raw materials and finished products, government, all nature of other service and financial activity, education, the arts and sciences, entertainment, etc.
20. If this is to be an egalitarian nation with broad-based prosperity, the principles of "distributionism" must come into the broadest possible play. This means that the ownership and activity of both production and services should be as democratically facilitated and distributed as practical, providing for ownership and productive employment – and thus broad-based wealth and income distribution at the grass roots level of the economy. In other words, the nation would be much better served if it was still a nation of family farmers and individual and family proprietorships that provide a healthy consumer base beneath the industrial sector.
21. Corporate productive enterprise comes only on the back of an egalitarian economic base. Large mining and mass production manufactory are the appropriate domain of corporate scale industrial enterprise. But that egalitarian economic base must be there for the system to work in a rational, democratic, and sustainable way.
22. All commercial activity, as well as the business of living a meaningful life itself, is dependent and facilitated on an honest and plentiful monetary supply (currency), that answers the needs of labor and society as a whole.
23. Money, in order to be just (rather than a corrosive force), must be designed and issued by government authority to serve the interests of society. The privately controlled monetary system that we currently have naturally results in an unjust burden upon the people and disproportionately favors a privileged few at the expense of the many. 
24. "A society such as the U.S., depending on private bank credits in place of government-created money, is operating in moral quicksand. ...the reading and thinking abilities – achieved by the typical American needs to be raised." (The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen Zarlenga)

Short change initial wealth production at the farm, mine, or factory level and the entire economic underpinning is undermined, for this is both the initial and value-added machinery of wealth production upon which all else depends.

Wealth creation is actually a "from the ground up" business. It shouldn't be manipulated into a top down proposition as has been the case. Rain and sunshine come from above to facilitate it, but the work is done in and on the ground. President Reagan's famous "trickle-down" theory was based on an opposite view of the economic pyramid. It stems from current economic conventional wisdom, that all wealth comes not from the soil, but from the money font of the international banking and credit system, from which it trickles down to society from the top down from the grasping hands of an esoteric few – hopefully eventually rewarding producers.

This present system has money and credit playing the role, and displaying the characteristics, of nature's seeds – with money reproducing itself and bearing the fruit of compound interest. However, the idea of money reproducing itself exponentially, and bearing fruit in the form of interest is a dangerous Ponzy scheme, while real wealth production through seeds exponentially reproducing themselves is a genuine miracle.

Real wealth creation is what should be monetized and multiplied in as it makes its way up through the trade channels of the economic pyramid, through value-added processes and the payment of several tiers of labor. Debt should not monetized (as it is now), for debt is a negative and avaricious entity. Yet, the monetization of debt is the basis of our current monetary system (and is the premise of the trickle-down theory). It is a game devised by financial interests to shift wealth from producers into the pockets of the privileged few – benefiting the them at the expense of the many.

The selling point of trickle-down, of course, was that the rich (and corporations), are the ones rich enough to provide jobs. Deceptively true – to the degree needed to sell the idea to an unwary public (and perhaps a well intentioned president) – but it fails to take some important economic basics into account. What it overlooks is the fact that if the goal is a broad-based economy-wide prosperity (and the conditions conductive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), labor must be considered a full partner and stakeholder in the industrial enterprise rather than a receiver of alms from above, and otherwise a mere cost to be cut at every opportunity.

In a truly egalitarian, well balanced, and democratic society, many people would be encouraged to produce their own jobs – not only service job, but productive jobs.

Proponents and apologists for the free international market system somehow contrive to equate trade with wealth creation. But this side-steps the fact that all real wealth has to be produced by labor before it can enter into trade channels. Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern that, all else being equal, trade merely adds transportation costs, not additional wealth.

In trade, the comparative advantage (born of wage and raw material price differentials between the array of producing and consuming nations), resides solely with the corporate employers and mercantile classes at both ends of the trade route, and the profits they gain are at the expense of the labor that actually produce the trade goods.

For Americans, the carrot is cheap consumer goods from abroad. The stick (which is conveniently separated from the the carrot, and made to seem a mere factor of "progress"), is job loss and/or reduced wages and benefits – making the carrot appear more and more appealing as time goes by. It's an ingenious mechanism, and, given the active support of both government and mass media, has wings of its own and effectively operates on autopilot.

In the end, however, America cannot be a prosperous place if all the productive labor and manufactory is accomplished by others elsewhere. We cannot long remain a nation of consumers if we are not the ones producing the products we need for consumption (and being well compensated for the trouble), whether agricultural or industrial. And the routinely offered panacea that "we must produce more for export" to others elsewhere is a dangerously false remedy for a failing consumer base.

A comparatively wealthy industrial society cannot sell into a more impoverished world at a profit. The only way to sell into poorer markets is to sell at a loss. And, since we do endeavor to do this, who absorbs that loss? Certainly not the corporate mercantilists or financial classes. Labor takes the hit, whether it's here or elsewhere. It is labor that must become more competitive in the new global marketplace so their betters can continue to reap the profits.

Global free trade, and globalism itself, is little more than a financial conspiracy that seeks to maximize the rewards of the owners and managers of corporate capital (and the financial institutions around which they have developed), at the expense of labor. By now the operational axiom of the New World Order should be clear enough for everybody to see.

The business model is to find the cheapest labor in the world to do the work. The system is set up to lavishly reward a vast array of the corporate mercantile classes, while relegating labor to its ancient role of serf-like economic subservience. All nature of self-reliance and independence at every economic and political level is actively being undermined. All the rewards for wealth creation are deemed the rightful property of the captains, owners, and upper management levels of capital, while labor (that which actually creates the wealth by the sweat of its brow), is deemed nothing more than necessary, but inconvenient, evils to be rewarded as little as possible.

The irony is that capital is also dependent on the money that trickles down through the system. It flows downward through the system under "trickle-down" (after the bulk of it is safely stashed in the pockets of those nearest the source), and literally flows back up again from the pockets of "consumers." Without a viable consumer base, the system simply won't work. 

The inevitable result of undermining labor is to undermine the very consumer base necessary to sustain this upside down system. The "great hope" for a semblance of sustainability on the part of the corporate world, of course, is that huge new consumer bases will materialize in such distant places as India, China, Latin America, Africa and the rest of the developing world. These markets are the gold at the end of the global rainbow – and toward the end of the booming American consumer market. But even if those potential markets develop as expected, it won't be American production that satisfies them. Production will continue to be done wherever labor happens to be the cheapest. 

Then, naturally, there is the problematical potentiality that the world's dwindling store of non-renewable natural resources will not be sufficient to satisfy those ever-expanding markets. Is the state of "modernity", over-abundance, obscene over-consumption, and waste, to which we Americans have become accustomed, even remotely possible for the entire global population? If not, why is that the apparent goal? And what are the alternatives?

The present model of the New World Order is to insure that every life-sustaining morsel of nourishment, and every item necessary to satisfy every creature needs of the world's population (regardless of the standard of living), will be produced, traded, wholesaled, and retailed through approved corporate channels. And that all forms and degrees of self-reliance and independence (individual, regional, and national), shall be banished from the face of the earth (government of the people, by the people, and for the people, having first been long relegated to the dustbin of history).

American "consumerism" is presently the major driving engine of the upside down global economy. But, in spite of a continuing super-consumer spending and borrowing spree in the United States, there are some serious signs that the party might be about to come to an end. A minus national savings rate, increasing personal bankruptcies, and leap-frogging national and personal indebtedness will eventually tip the economic scales into a very unstable equilibrium. Actually, it already has – but (Voodoo economics being what it is), we have thus far been spared from having to pay the piper. We are accomplishing this apparent miracle on a combination of stored and borrowed national social and financial capital – and the coerced good will of nervous foreign creditors. And the average taxpaying family has an additional debt-load of about $90,000.00 it hasn't budgeted for.

The current direction of the global economy and the New World Order amount to a form that somebody has called a "Disneyland fascism" (The Lost Science of Money), and must change if we are to avoid a catastrophic economic awakening.

Today the idea of actually producing something to make a living is about as anachronistic in America as the ideas that God created Heaven and Earth and that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are still valid and binding on government powers. America's real producers, as a percentage of the population, are coming closer to qualifying as an endangered species. The lion's share of the American labor force (those fortunate enough to be gainfully employed), is engaged in taking in each others' laundry. Most of the rest are either working for some level of state, local, or federal government, or are (like Pridger), otherwise receiving government checks in the mail. Only a very small percentage are actually producing anything. The professions, of course (often necessary), live off of the needs and incomes of the rest.

The time may be approaching when the numbers domiciled in jails and penitentiaries will exceed the numbers actively engaged in any kind of real production.

Indeed, prison building is one of our booming growth industries, and being a prison guard is to have one of the few really secure jobs in our society. Pridger's own neck of the woods is one of the Gulags – and local governments lobby and compete for the next prison project. Prisons are one of the area's best employers. Gambling casinos, and tourism are also growth industries. We've got both, and they vie with prisons to become our primary regional economic base.

Agriculture is still the real base of the local economy, but without very many individuals or families benefiting from crop sales or value added activities.

We have fine hardwood forests, but we export logs to other places and buy our furniture from China or Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile, companies like Ford and General Motors are continually downsizing – their best hope for survival being to produce more cheaply elsewhere. The last best hope for many productive American companies is a foreign buyout. China, for one, is particularly eager to oblige. The United Arab Emirates is another eager to buy a piece of America – at least as long as the current trade boom continues.

And a great percentage of "middle Americans" are having difficulties meeting their bills. Incomes are stagnant or falling. Healthcare costs are outrageous. (And the only solution the governor of Illinois can come up with is to buy and "re-import" our prescription drugs from Canada!)

The dollar itself is in very serious trouble, of course. So, after the pay and benefit cuts, the job cuts and the outsourcing, and getting more competitive, there remains the prospect of the dollar leaking the residue of its purchasing power like a buckshot riddled coal bucket.

Just a whole lot of the present trickle-down of money in the present American economy is trickling down in the form of Social Security, Supplemental Social Security, aid to women with dependent children, food stamps, increasingly endangered private pensions, etc. Families, communities, whole towns, and regions are literally on the dole and depend on them – for precious little is being produced in or by them. In effect, half the nation is on some kind of government subsidy or other government payroll.

The biggest single corporate trickle-down goes to Wal-Mart (biggest, richest corporation in the world), and the numerous other chain store and fast food restaurant employees. All at or near minimum wage, and usually without health care or pension plans. Money spent in those places literally flows, rather than trickles, back up to corporate headquarters and Wall Street.

The money is out there in great abundance, of course. But it is literally all debt, and the grand economic edifice was built strictly on credit (so-called OPM, or "Other peoples' Money" – which is increasingly a euphemism for credit expansion out of thin air). But profits are being made from our still hyper-active consumers, and those profits go to others elsewhere – "up there." It's wonderful if you happen to be the owner of a large stock and bond portfolio, and are counted among those who really do count in this world.

But there aren't even any guarantees for those people who count and actually have representation in Washington. The stock market has been pretty lack-luster these past few years, and we can only hope that the whole stock exchange won't be the next Enron or WorldCom. Aside from hot air, the entire global securities market is infected with an AIDs-like virus, known as derivatives. And, as with the AIDs epidemic, nobody knows the extent of the infection.

A century of the wrong kind of money has already rendered up a four cent dollar in terms of the dollar's turn of the twentieth century purchasing power, and a ten cent dollar in terms of its 1960s purchasing power. What will the first decades of the twenty-first century bring? Perhaps the crash of the Titans. At best there is still plenty of hot air in the Wall Street bubble. All the money represented by Wall Street stocks and securities is as subject to evaporation as the helium in a party balloon. All we can respectfully hope for is that the air won't escape all at once.

We agonize over the high price of gasoline, but it's merely catching up to where it ought to be given the decline of purchasing power of the dollar. Pridger remembers twenty-five and thirty cent gas back in the 1960s. This translates into $2.50 to $3.00 a gallon in today's dollars.

While the purchasing power of actual cash and cash accounts (hopefully), isn't subject to immediate evaporation, it's on a long-term downward slide, with nothing in sight but the downhill horizon edge of a steeper downward slope.

The dollar is not only declining in purchasing power at an increasing rate, but is literally beyond the control of the chairman and governors of the Federal Reserve System. As for Congress, it can only look on like the rest of us, while spending us further into a big dark hole. It reneged on its monetary obligations to the American people back in 1913 and (with precious few individual exceptions), hasn't looked back since. If Congress ever spots a glimmer of light from the opening of the hole they've dug us into, they simply declare it "the light at the end of the tunnel" and dutifully raise the debt ceiling by a few billion.

Inflation or deflation? Both possibilities are in the offing. How could deflation occur in a world literally swimming in dollars? Simply because a huge percentage of dollars are nothing more than ledger entries or cyberspace data – subject to evaporation at a moment's notice. The 11,000 DOW could go to 4,000 in the twinkling of an eye – and be more realistically priced than it is today. While the money may evaporate, the debt remains and grows, insuring even more rampant bankruptcies at some point in time.

Watching the price of gold double in the last few years gives a pretty good indication of what is currently happening to the dollar's purchasing power. That old barbaric relic of more primitive economic times still serves as a handy snapshot "leading economic indicator." Though the gold price may gyrate somewhat in the short term, and be subject to considerable manipulation, it still serves as a solid benchmark over the long haul.

The cost of gasoline, steel, and cement are perhaps more meaningful indicators to most people. The SUV and building construction depend on them.

What is most frightening is that a major crises hasn't even arrived yet – we're still experiencing the "best case scenario" – gas prices not withstanding! A serious crises is endemic to the present state of the economy, no matter what the experts may say. In fact, this state of crises in the offing has become the norm. Few are aware of it because we've already become accustomed to a nagging feeling that, "though something is seriously wrong, the world hasn't yet come to an end. Hopefully, it won't happen on my watch!" But a major shocker is just as inevitable, and much more likely in the immediate future, than the "big one" in California. There are several varieties of economic "big ones" in the offing. The terrorist threat, as well as that of the bird flu scare, pale by comparison.

Hurricane Katrina was a pretty big one for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. But to listen to the media talking heads, the economy took it in graceful stride. The resultant activity, in fact (and in spite of the higher costs of gas the devastation helped cause), has caused a slight economic spike. But the bill has not yet been calculated, much less delivered. For one thing, a lot more money has been trickling down into the region from the almighty federal government Santa Claus. The fallout has not yet come down because our economy has taken a temporary (though miraculously long-sustained), departure from reality.

John Q. Pridger
13 April, 2006