Ruh-roh.

"The world is not going back to normal after the
magnitude of what they have done"

Greek-inspired demonstrations spread

MADRID, Spain (AP) — As Greece suffered through its sixth day of violence Thursday, there were troubling signs of unrest spreading across Europe.

Angry youths smashed shop windows, attacked banks and hurled bottles at police in small but violent protests in Spain and Denmark, while cars were set alight outside a consulate in France.

Authorities say the incidents have been isolated so far, but acknowledge concern that the Greek riots — which started over the police killing of a 15-year-old on Saturday — could be a trigger for anti-globalization groups and others outraged by economic turmoil and a lack of job opportunities.

Just in case things don't turn out so swell

1) Do you know how to garden and raise your own food?

2) Do you own a gun and know how to use it?

3) Can you live with no income or fiat money for two years?

4) Do you own physical gold?

5) Does your family support the fact that you're a (prepared) nut?

6) Do you consider yourself sane?

7) What are the odds we go off the charts? Or have we already hit bottom?

Soot and Ashes Quote of the Year Nominee

"No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine!"

- Jim Cramer, CNBC, March 2008

"To many Americans, the Bush administration WAS a national disaster."

"An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent -- that's the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush administration WAS a national disaster."

- Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst, December 2008

Soot and Ashes Quote of the Day

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood"

- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly, 10 December 1948, and still sadly ignored by America as of December 2008

OJ Simpson jurors. Bush supporters. Evolution deniers. And American homedebtors. Why are some people so clueless?

Man, I just don't get it.

How can so many people be so incredibly clueless?

Still? After all we've been through?

Do they not read?

Do they not understand what's going on?

Is it groupthink?

Are they surrounded by realtors and housing porn?

I'm going to post this again so that Mike Norman, Tom Adkins, Ben Stein, Art Laffer and the rest are completely and forever destroyed

And add to that list Kendra Todd, Nicholas Retsinas, Greg Swann, Leslie Appleton-Young, Lawrence Yun, David Lereah, Connie De Groot, Neil Cavuto, Ben Bernanke, Charles Payne, Stuart Varney, Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow... I could go on and on and on and on.

It took a lot of conmen and fools to inflate the Late Great Housing Bubble. Americans trusted these talking heads and commission-hungry thieves, and it needs to be drilled into their heads - DO NOT TRUST ANYONE ON COMMISSION. EVER. DO NOT TRUST ANYONE ON TV. EVER. DO NOT TRUST THE MEDIA, DO NOT TRUST BLOGS, DO NOT TRUST YOUR FRIENDS, DO NOT TRUST YOUR NEIGHBORS.

You're on your own. Do your own research. Run your own numbers. And then when you're right or wrong, you only have yourself to blame.

Citigroup: "The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. There is a risk of domestic unrest."

Flash forward a few days from that spot-on prediction, and you have this:




How much longer can they keep the lid on the pot in America? And England? And France? And Spain? And Dubai? And Ireland? And Iran? And everywhere where this epic and colossal bubble has spectacularly burst, leaving youth unemployed, desperate and pissed.

Fannie and Freddie CEO's - "We knowingly endangered the economic health of the United States of America and its citizens for our own personal gain"

Traitor:

1 : one who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or duty
2 : one who commits treason

Treason:

1 : the betrayal of a trust : treachery
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family

Article III, US Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying (economic - S&A addition) War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies (bankers - S&A addition), giving them Aid and Comfort.

FLASH: US T-BILLS, IN BIGGEST BUBBLE EVER, NOW PAYING LESS THAN CASH UNDER THE MATTRESS

This makes no sense, unless a depression significantly worse than the Great Depression is upon us.

A year or two from now, you'll be amazed, that there were idiots out there willing to PAY the US to hold their dollars.

Cats sleeping with dogs.

The end of the world.

And probably one of the best shorting opportunities of a lifetime. (right? I mean, someone try to explain this to me. Is Bernanke buying up t-bills? Is the market trying to tell us something?)

Treasury Bills Trade at Negative Rates as Haven Demand Surges

Treasuries rose, pushing rates on the three-month bill negative for the first time, as investors gravitate toward the safety of U.S. government debt amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills yesterday at a discount rate of 0.005 percent, the lowest since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929. The U.S. also sold $30 billion of four-week bills today at zero percent for the first time since it began selling the debt in 2001.

If you invested $1 million in three-month bills at today’s negative discount rate of 0.01 percent, for a price of 100.002556, at maturity you would receive the par value for a loss of $25.56.

Soot & Ashes calls for the trial and public humiliation of Democrat Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. And then hopefully a brutal prison rape.

No mercy.

Period.

Chris Dodd. Ted Stevens. Kent Conrad. Alphonso Jackson. Donna Shalala. Sarah Palin. Duke Cunningham. William Jefferson. Tom Delay. Harry Reid. Rick Renzi. Mark Siljander. Brian Krolicki. George Ryan. Charlie Rangel.

Enough.

And after Democrat Blagojevich is tried, he should be marched out to the public square, where citizens of Illinois then take turns pissing and spitting on him.

This sh*t must end.

CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on Tuesday on charges he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder in what a federal prosecutor called a "corruption crime spree."

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a news conference prosecutors make "no allegations" Obama was aware of any alleged scheming.

Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field, according to a federal criminal complaint. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

"We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it," Fitzgerald said Tuesday, calling the corruption charges against Blagojevich "a truly new low."

What would Saudi Arabia and the Mideast be like if they had no oil?

What will they be like if oil hits $10 a barrel soon?

What will they be like when the US bans gasoline-powered cars?

What will they be like when the oil runs out?

Should the US taxpayer bail out Starbucks?

They've got 176,000 employees. They have 8,500 stores. They're an integral part of American life.

realtors and small businesses depend on them. And they sell an addictive product.

Sure, they became arrogant. Sure, they paid their employees too much. Sure, they overbuilt crappy sterile soulless locations.

But shouldn't they be bailed out too? After all, their failure would be CATASTROPHIC! It would be the end of America as you knew it. Starbucks is at the very fabric of American life.

How about $500 billion in loans, to build 100,000 new stores, update their furniture, and maybe a $100 direct tax incentive to help cash-strapped over-indebted Americans buy their coffee?

Or hell, maybe free coffee for a year for everyone?

Bail out Starbucks! It's too big to fail!

What does this mean to you? What do you think it means to most Americans today?

In the next 100 years, will we see the creation of a world government, and a one-world currency?

On a high level, when you think about how inefficient the current fractured system of nations, regulations, laws, trade and currencies is, it makes you wonder, will the people of the world see themselves as better off economically and environmentally if there was more global cooperation, and more legal, regulatory and trade standardization?

And won't there be more momentum for this concept, given the ongoing global financial meltdown, the rapidly expanding and internet-driven global information and trade integration, and the onset of global warming?

When you see how the sovereign independent nations of Europe have combined into the EU and Euro, considering their history of conflict and fierce nationalism, you wonder, will it stop there?

Hmmmm....

Oh, maybe this little piece of text has you nervous

Revelation 13:16-17 And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, save him that had the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Or is this all already in the cards, a New World Order, controlled by a secretive and powerful cabal?

But maybe this will be impossible, considering the upcoming (and ongoing) commodity wars, as the world runs low on oil, minerals, water and food?

When you think about it though, at least on the monetary front, wouldn't a sound digital currency like a UN issued e-Gold solve a lot? Wouldn't it be better than the dollar-driven fiat currency mess we have today?

I'm freaking you out, eh?

So, what would it take for the people of the world, via their governments, to agree to a world government, and a one-world currency? Will people 1,000 years from now look back at the wars and problems of the past 2,000 years, and wonder - 'what took them so long'.

Or will it never, ever happen?

Here's Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times on this very subject.

Hmmmm.... Pretty freaky....

And now for a world government
By Gideon Rachman

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Bankrupt

Thank you realtors.

Revised GM Ad

Hey, I committed mortgage fraud, and bought a home for way more than it was worth. And now I'm not going to pay, and I'm not going to leave.

Here's a story where over 50% of mortgages that have gone through a work out are right back in default.

And you know what is really sick? It's the government giving all the incentive in the world to people to NOT PAY THEIR F*CKING MORTGAGE!

If you pay your mortgage, per the agreed upon terms, you get no interest rate reduction, no 'work out'.

And if you STOP PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE, first you get to live rent free, maybe for a long, long time.

Then you have the bank come to you pleading and begging that you pay something, while cutting your rate and terms. And then you have the government crafting all sorts of programs, potentially even cutting the amount you owe.

So would you pay your mortgage?

Idiots. Monkeys. And if this crap keeps up, including forced modifications, nobody will ever do business with the United States again.

We will be a banana republic, where contracts are worthless, laws are unenforced, and trust is no more.

FLASH: Here's "GM's Commitment to the American People" ad out today. Maybe we can get the same kind of mea culpa from realtors and the NAR?

GM'S COMMITMENT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

We deeply appreciate the Congress considering General Motors’ request to borrow up to $18 billion from the United States. We want to be sure the American people know why we need it, what we’ll do with it and how it will make GM viable for the long term.

For a century, we have been serving your personal mobility needs, providing American jobs and serving local communities. We have been the U.S. sales leader for 76 consecutive years.

Of the 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads today, more than 66 million are GM brands — nearly 44 million more than Toyota brands. Our goal is to continue to fulfill your aspirations and exceed your expectations.

While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you.

At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market.

We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry. We have paid dearly for these decisions, learned from them and are working hard to correct them by restructuring our U.S. business to be viable for the long term.