As the US continues with its nonsensical governmental shutdown and the worlds eyes are drawn to the ever increasing debt that hangs over the economies of every nation like a Damoclean sword, threatening to sever the umbilical cord we await  the outcome of our fates. Do we still get a piece of the pie and get to eat it too? The last time I posted about the US debt ceiling back in May 2012 the debt stood at somewhere around the 14 trillion dollar mark, but has since increased another 2 trillion and edged over 16 trillion dollar threshold of something which we all have forgotten the name of. Oh yeah, some catch phrase like sustainability or some such.

As I stated in my previous post these figures are huge, they are ginormous numbers, that begin to take on a meaningless hue to laymen and women alike. We cannot fathom numbers so large and for the average Joe and Jane on the street , they do what’s natural and ignore the 12 zeros following the preceding two digits. A 2 digit number holds the attention and as zero’s get suffixed they are side lined into the periphery of meaningless.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the citizenry have lost the ability to think. What do they really think this number means or is it really a case of nobody even caring? Do they not ask themselves and question how in world is this debt ever going to be paid back? By what miracle will it ever get paid? If they did they’d know the answer with the most rudimentary of research. The short and quick answer is that it never will. The game will continue until one of the players fold, whoever calls the bluff will undoubtedly collapse the whole deck of cards so a challenge is unlikely lest the fragile bluff is exposed for what it is, a fraud. It’s a game of patience, the players with the most to lose are waiting, looking for their share of bonds to mature before perhaps finally calling. The United States obviously have nothing up their sleeve so we all await the day when one of the players decides to call or fold. We could be in for a long wait, never underestimate the irrationality of the market. Wasn’t it Nietzsche who said insanity was rare in individuals but abundant in groups. Anyway, either way insanity is where we are heading to be sure.

The winners in this game is definitely not you nor I. We will invariably pay the price for the game of poker these jokers have decided to play. The insiders already know how it will end and undoubtedly have measures in place to take advantage of the windfall they will receive once the transfer of wealth begins.

It’s almost a piss take, indeed it is. The notion of never ending debt is laughable and the joke is on us. I mean 16 trillion dollars on the credit card balance sheet, seriously? And you want to make next months repayment with an increase in the credit limit? You’ve got to be kidding me right? It’s no joke though and this is the exact strategy being deployed and all the media outlets are feigning concern and entertaining the notion that someone is going to call a show of hands. That the taxpayer will finally have to front the cash to pay. I mean it is possible that such scenario could pan out and it is perhaps long overdue, however which politician would ever take the path to their own political suicide? None! Nada! Zilch!

So in the final seconds a decision will come to fruition to increase the debt. It really is the only way to continue and stay in the game. Having to concede with reality and plug the taxpayer cash cow with admission of failure is not likely to happen in this round of gamesmanship. Plus I think the taxpayer likes this game as much as the players. It’s fun to play with monopoly money and why end the delusion now when the game is getting into higher adrenalin fuelled stakes?

Of course when we think about it in a more clear and level headed arena, away from the influence of the euphoria that is invoked by banging powerful narcotics of green backed currency into the constricted arteries of a strained economy, we will notice that the narcotic we are injecting is created from the tick we are accumulating with our dealers. The ticker is the debt and the debt is the drug. Debt is money. The greenback narcotic we so anxiously and  laboriously endeavour to fill our syringes with is created by asking our dealers for more and we’ll pay back next week. Promise. “You want mate” as the Vietnamese heroin dealers used to accost me with as I disembarked Cabramatta Train station to head home from my working day. Yes we want. We want more. Always more. Give me more of those greenbacks sir. They cure what ails me. But perhaps in the stoned and heady haze of debt ceilings and financial psychosis we will perhaps wonder if this lifestyle we ostensibly enjoy is but a mere illusion and that there might actually be a healthier and sustainable way to live.

Time is running out. The 17th of October is when our dealer lets us know if the ticker is doable. If the tick runs out I  guess a trip to detox and rehab is on the cards. I forgot the government facilities are closed and the private hospital require greenbacks. Cold turkey anyone?

Last time I wrote I delved a little into the magnitude of debt that the US has embroiled itself in. That number is set to soon tip the legal limit of a whopping 14 Trillion dollars. Let’s not forget this number, 14, 000, 000, 000, 000. Hold it in the minds eye briefly and imagine the enormity of such a giant of a figure. Imagine that One trillion dollars is a stack of $1 bills place on top of one another, which is estimated to total a height of 108km when stacked like that. Multiply that by 14 and we hit a stack that is roughly 1500km high. High enough to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and orbit in outer space.

It appears the level of debt is seeking a landing upon the moon as the criminals responsible for the travesty that this debt embodies is in fact seeking a grant from congress to lift the legal level of debt allowed still further. To what can only be thought of as a measure to enslave the US population to a regime of never ending debt that will be impossible to ever repay, for perpetuity. As it stands with 14 trillion dollars every man woman and child owes 45, 000 dollars assuming 300 million population, however if that wasn’t bad enough and it almost seems doable in comparison, the figure is then shot to the moon if the total level of obligations the US government owes its citizenry is taken into account. Adding social security, Medicare and Medicaid and the plethora of other year to year running costs a government is empowered to administer, then the debt quickly shoots to level closer to 80 trillion dollars. When these obligations are accounted for each American is indebted to a figure of around $266k. That is a lot of years of labour each man, woman and child has to endure to service such a debt and considering other commitments like food, clothing and shelter also have to be met, the citizenry sure has its work cut out. It could take decades of labour to repay.

With the World Gross Domestic Product as of 2009 at 59 Trillion dollars. Link  It appears the US debt far exceeds the worlds GDP so it begs the question of who is actually going to pay this impossible debt? The answer is no one will. Default or hyperinflation. Which will it be? More debt means more fiat currency printed which means less value which means more money printed and soon enough one hundred trillion dollar bills are being printed, Hello the United States of Zimbabwe. If the US continues with this madness we will surely see notes like below coming into existence and instead of Zimbabwe dollars they’ll be USD. Just way too much debt and all because for a few brief moments it made us feel rich. In reality we were becoming poor. Soon, possibly very soon the middle class are gonna get wiped of the wealth they thought they had. The printing press will take it all from them. Probably too late to switch it off now anyway. Just gotta wait and see I guess.

I don’t know what is wrong with me but lately, maybe months or over the last year I have slowly declined into an insurmountable sloth that has prevented me from doing the one thing that really made the slow grind of daily life even remotely bearable. That one thing is writing. The exercise of crafting fragments of words into some sort of stream that hopefully resembles a cohesive segment of thought and if I was lucky something that might strike a chord with anyone who might stumble upon it. But it just hasn’t been so. The problem is a lack of energy – a slump in motivation and too much time obsessing over things I have little to no control over.

The ironic thing is that I’ve often lambasted the object of my obsession and now I am fully within it’s grip. I don’t know why all of a sudden I have fallen prey to the idea that I just don’t have enough money. For all my ranting’s about the corruption that consumerism has bestowed upon the world I am now  gripped with an urgency to accumulate as much of the stuff that fuels consumption as I can and I often curse the crushingly slow path that leads to stacking the bundles of cash it takes to hoard. It’s gotta have something to do with age – a mid life crisis of sorts, although such crises are often symbolic of spending large sums on outrageous toys and going on some last adventure I find myself wanting to not really to spend but save. Although I do confess doing my fair share of superfluous and wanton wasteful spending does really mess up the plan to save. I just want to create a stack of wealth that might afford me a standard of living in the future. I know it’s crazy but I can’t help myself obsessing over this need. Yet implementing a serious strategy of frugality to achieve said goal is easier said than done.

I rack my brain with what I can do to get more money to hoard and all attempts to invent some method of getting a decent cash flow happening have amounted to naught. Then the dejected sense of doom arises from the pit of my stomach – it’s too late. I missed the boat and I am stuck in circling in the perpetual ebb and flow of paid slavery with the hopeless sense that there is no way out of the grind.

Perhaps I am best in changing my perspective rather than trying to beat myself out of the system. Lets face it – how many people actually escape the ripping jaws of working for money to create a life that is actually meaningful? Hardly any. The primary problem is that the conditioning of working for money has been firmly planted. The correct response or choice of wording is money working for you but that is not exactly what the system really wants of us. It wants and needs for us to work for money and that is what we pay with our lives for. Working for money while money gets handed over to the ones that knew that money worked for them.

Like the words from that song – “Money for nothin and your cheques for free!” – Dire Straits

Therein lies the secret to financial success. Get money working for you but bugger me if it doesn’t take a hell of a long time to get money in a position anywhere close to showing potential and fit for work. I guess it’s why leverage is the way of the world today. Money is debt and debt is money. Ingsoc’s 2004 amendment to 1984’s Freedom Is Slavery slogan. Cash is no longer King – debt is and you better be certain with your strategy lest your debtor performs a margin call.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength! All hail Ingsoc! Where big banks are too big to fail and too big to save. Privatise profits and socialise debt – that is if you live on Wall St – Main street can go and get stuffed – just hand over what’s owing to the Taxman before you head out that door. No wonder why I feel so dejected and disillusioned. Big Brother made sure of it!

Word count is one so it says under my Publish Status in WordPress, however I hadn’t typed a word. It caused the catalyst to type these words, words about nothing except a word count and that in itself is merely a pseudo word count because the words themselves are gibberish. Not worth the pixels they are written on. 50. 58. Up they go. Like seconds on a clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. 61. 69. Delay. Enough!

Onto something serious but what? I’m over the credit crunch and the financial crisis. We all know the outcome and it’s depressing. Depression is something I know a little about but it is hardly worth extrapolating into a 2000 word diatribe over. The world will soon embrace the dark eyes of greed, sucking the world dry of its fiscal prowess and we’ll all be hovering around the soup kitchen awaiting our daily bread but even that is not assured.

Although I said I was over the credit crunch my mind keeps returning to it. It’s kind of hard not to be enveloped in its implications when the media keeps the sensation alive. I’m probably alone in my obsession with control, I just can’t relinquish my love of certainty and it’s difficult to make a clear decision with my limited funds without certainty. My fear tells me to withdraw my savings and put it under my mattress because whose to say that all banks aren’t going to collapse with all these fraudulent loans in circulation. I have shares in my superannuation fund but that is money I’m unlikely ever to see anyway. Then when I think about it, if all the banks go under then what does it matter anyway? Money won’t mean a thing and even though I’ve half heartedly commented in previous posts that it is meaningless, I never thought we were all to become acquainted with the worthlessness of the piece of paper it is written on. Once the banks all go bust and all our savings dissipate into the ether then what conclusions are we to draw by this manufactured entity. It’s created from nothing and to whence it shall return.

I’m probably being influenced by Zeitgeist: Addendum that I watched last night but it suits my gloomy outlook on times to come. Whose to say that the movie isn’t a true depiction of the financial system and just because I’m not an expert in economic matters doesn’t mean I can’t be indoctrinated with the best of em. Although the true believers of the system will undoubtedly scoff at such alternative views it sort of clarifies why we are in such a mess. All this time I thought that there was this vault of money in actual existence, but as it turns out there is no vault filled with money, that in truth the money that exists in the system is just a paper trail of loans after loans of credits that in reality don’t exist. It is all created out of thin air at the whim of the reserve. I couldn’t understand why these major banks were going bust but after watching Zeitgeist 2 and being informed of that the monetary system is debt, has clarified the whole dilemma for me.

At least now I’m more initimate with why I’m a slave.