Missoula News

Nothing like a pink slip to make your day. I got mine today. I knew it was coming sometime. The farm cannot support family who can't get their hands dirty, and the people that do at the same time. Family comes first.

I spent my last working day at a pesticide seminar put on by Oregon Dept of Ag. The pesticide registration woman told us, in introduction, she had some bad news, some really bad news, and news that none in the department had yet been able to understand or get a handle on, but it was also bad news. All of that news comes from the EPA in response to NMFS and NOAA losing lawsuits to NGOs over pesticide use and ESA protections for fish. I left at the end of the seminar more depressed than I had been for years.

I guess if you want to eat in America, it is going to be imported food. But never inspected imported food. Never food that is inspected and measured like American exported food. The crop I was in charge of growing is very limited in what pesticides can be used and when, due to export restrictions imposed by Japan, mostly. So all the crop that goes into the US market is meeting the more strict Japanese limits on pesticide use. Or was.

Pesticides are chemicals to kill or control plants, insects, mollusks, rodents, fungus, bacteria, and whatever I forgot. Our ground floods, and we have new weed seeds almost every year. All the weed control pesticides I now have, that work, will not be available later this year. The only insecticide that works on the new fruit fly that bores into ripening fruit and lays two eggs is not going to be labeled or available for our crop. Thankfully, I have been into Integrated Pest Management for over 5 years. We do have a healthy insect predator populations to take out the sucking insects like aphids. But, the prospects for good crops has been sorely impacted by the Obama EPA. Just another discouraging day in a week when voters driven by public employee union propaganda raised income taxes on the rich and "corporations that don't pay taxes." Part of the tax is a gross sales revenue tax on business that is organized as a C corp. Lots of sales and no profit, you pay on your sales dollar volume.

I was laid off because the labor contracting part of the owner's business has not been paid by vineyards for grape picking last fall, and by a large farm that he just plain let get into him too far. He paid his labor, his taxes, and now has used up the line of credit, and his cash, and there is no money until after the crop is picked this summer. How he gets there from here without being paid by those who owe, is beyond me. Litigation is under way, and that will never see the court room for a year. That is how lawyers work. Stall and starve you.

I guess the fertilizer company will have to carry him. He does belong to a co-op and probably can drag his fuel bill for a while. Tractors don't run without fuel. Crops don't grow without fertilizer. It is ugly and will get uglier. I hope he survives. They told me this was a month or two month lay off, at the most. I will approach it like it is permanent.

But those Wall Street bankers, the insanity at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the inertia of an economy without a backbone or base for several years as America exported its jobs, has yet to play out. There is the second bump of foreclosures from the people who did have a war chest, savings, going into this deal, and now have run out of money and prospects. There is the commercial real estate crunch that has yet to quit crashing, and there are a thousand banks that have been NOT foreclosing because they are still staying solvent by capitalizing fees, charges, judgements, on properties they have yet to take title to. Ask anyone who tries to buy a "short sale" from a individual. You just can't get the bank to sign off. Meanwhile, your offer ties up escrow money while the upside down mortgage goes further upside down as all those bank add-on costs are accrued. Lucy bankers and Charlie Brown buyers. All based on the lie that the banks need to get their bottom lines secure. The banks are still hiding behind phony balance sheets, and the Fed does not have enough bank examiners to keep up with the charade. We are far from over this deal.

I asked my State Representative why the Super Majority Oregon Democrat Legislature is not asking Obama how they are stuck with a $17 billion Wall Street loss on invested trust, retirement, and tax monies, almost twice the discretionary annual budget of the State, and GoldmanSachs, et al, were saved and Oregon, among 49 other states, was tossed to the dogs. Now he comes up with this multi trillion dollar budget and talks about reducing spending. Smoke and mirrors. The change is that we get another set of mirrors and different smoke. The hope is that the electorate won't notice. The new broom is worn out, and we are only a little more than a year into the deal. This economic recovery will be longer than any one is saying, and if it is as jobless as it appears, a rough time for elected officials. My guess is that a lot more than who have committed are going to take a hike, punt, leave Congress while they are unsullied, and use their experience and influence to lard the home pantry. The hard left that is not yet satisfied that sufficient punishment has been inflicted on the conservatives are going to find themselves isolated and alone by these desertions. The political landscape is changing, and the big changes are forthcoming. I guess all the average Joe can do is hang on and try to come out the other side with some skin, and the will to survive. Tomorrow is my birthday. Big Whoop.

I really appreciate the post, Bearbait, although that seems like the wrong thing to say, considering the circumstances. Let's hope it's just a month off and not permanent. Here's to happier days.

Yesterday, MSNBC came out with a story that exposed the lamentable fact that the Federal Reserve (a "For Profit" private bank, not part of the Federal Government. If you desire easy proof, Google up legal cases against it and Judge after Judge rules it as such) gave the large banks access to over 23 TRILLION dollars to bail themselves out with. And let us not forget that when A.I.G. was heading down the tubes, our dear friends at Goldman-Sachs ( which in effect runs the U.S. Treasury) somehow maneuvered the system to guarantee themselves a 100% R.O.I. on stock worth no more than 10 cents on the dollar.

Yeah, that's 23 TRILLION dollars, as reported by a news organization as far to the left as is Fox to the right. Now comes the question: Where did the 23 Trillion come from? I mean, the stuff just isn't lying around, and we're talking about real fake money here.

It's made up out of thin air, a bookkeeping entry. The stuff is fake but the debt is real, and this debt has been socialized while the profits were privatized. A critical point not mentioned in the article is that sooner or later, but nevertheless inevitably, this creation of "money" out of thin air results in either inflation, hyper-inflation, or a collapse of the currency. Based upon the price of gold and damn near everything else, the once mighty U.S. dollar has lost literally 98% of its value since the creation of "The Fed" in 1913, and "The Fed" creates money for itself out of thin air.

It's a hell of a racket.

So here we hear the F.D.R. fear inference and the fairly correct jibe at Reagan's "trickle-down", which by the nature of immoral man simply trickles up. Left unexamined is the creation of the Petrodollar in 1973, a Nixon (Rockefeller) - Kissinger (Rockefeller)- Saudi operation which forced the rest of the world to trade in non-gold backed U.S. dollars to buy oil. All of a sudden, everyone literally needed a buck, and all those dollars abroad then repatriated such via oil purchases, thus helping to fund our out of control government spending and the resulting debt to "The Fed".

Add NAFTA, GATT, and all the other alphabet soup "kiss your manufacturing goodbye" agreements also meant more and more depreciating dollars going abroad to pay for inferior products formerly manufactured here, which also meant more foreigners and foreign countries buying our debt. it all works, for a while. And the "while" is over.

Retreating to colloquial quotes from dead guys isn't going to change things economically. And while "fear" is a factor, is not this this supposed "fear" is simply reflecting reasoned uncertainty at this point. The government is currently 14 TRILLION in debt, the deficit spending is beyond the scope of belief, and the "unfunded liabilities" the government is responsible for are in excess of 50 TRILLION dollars. Now where does that new 23 TRILLION fit in to this already dark picture? And we haven't even discussed consumer debt loads yet..

And the solution offered to this rather obvious crisis by the author? More debt, with an optimistic smile plastered from ear to ear. "No fear", so to speak.

Look - When MSNBC shakes the tree and finds that another 23 TRILLION appeared out of nowhere and ended up in the pockets of the usual suspects, this train is derailing. The cars are beginning to telescope in on each other, and people are so deaf, dumb, and blind they cannot hear, feel, or see what the hell is going on. Given that we've a couple generations exposed to video games, what part of "GAME OVER" don't you understand. We've spent a few decades living large on fake money, and the gig is up.

Let's get Biblical for clarity here, because the following cannot be more painfully clear: "The borrower is the slave to the lender."

"Be afraid, very afraid."

Let's keep it simple. Canada has about 5 banks that are all too big to fail yet no banks failed in Canada requiring a government bailout because their capital to risk ratio was capped by the Government. Home ownership in Canada is about the same as the U.S., about 61%. American right wing politicians are too dumb and conceited to admit that some other country is doing it better the the U.S. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Whoa, Milky!!! I gotta side with Frank n' John on this one. I came to the cniulcsoon some time ago that the government milk numbers are largely bullshit! Afterall, who audits the government's numbers? As I understand it the gov. numbers are claiming a large increase in Texas milk production this summer! Bullshit? You bet!