Commentary for the Week of March 8

[America’s supposed recovery from The Great Recession is a hoax so obvious that only the mainstream news media, too lazy, cowardly and stupid to stray even an inch from the officially approved narrative, could fail to see it. And yet, here we are, so glutted with brick-and-mortar retail space that even if it were to be reduced by half there would still be an economically fatal overhang. Sales are plummeting and malls are dying – a matter of no small consequence, considering that retail business supposedly makes up two-thirds of America’s GDP. In the trenchant commentary below, the intrepid Jim Quinn updates and amplifies an article he wrote four months ago on this subject. With his kind permission, I am reprinting it here because it deserves as wide an audience as possible. The original is copiously illustrated with charts and can be accessed at the link above.  Other powerful essays by Jim can be found at numerous high-traffic web sites, including those shining beacons of truth, LewRockwell.com and ZeroHedge. Also, you can find David Stockman’s approving comments on Jim’s essay here.  RA] The definition of death rattle is a sound often produced by someone who is near death when fluids such as saliva and bronchial secretions accumulate in the throat and upper chest. The person can’t swallow and emits a deepening wheezing sound as they gasp for breath. This can go on for two or three days before death relieves them of their misery. The American retail industry is emitting an unmistakable wheezing sound as a long slow painful death approaches. It was exactly four months ago when I wrote The Retail Death Rattle. Here are some excerpts from that article: A Warning Siren The absolute collapse in retail visitor counts is the warning siren that this country is about

[The disaster that is Obamacare continues to grow, even as the mainstream media remains in denial about the program’s inevitable crack-up. In the guest essay below, Neal Muhlberg, a licensed health insurance agent with 25 years of experience, examines some of the ACA’s failures. He fears, however, that the best opportunity to replace the program with one that works came and went with the unsuccessful presidential bid of Ron Paul. Even so, there are glimmers of hope in evolving health care practices such as “concierge care,” which allows patients to pay with cash rather than insurance in order to receive prompter and more-attentive care. RA] A new McKinsey & Co. report finds that Obamacare's goal of providing coverage for the previously uninsured has failed. The report concludes that 74% of Obamacare enrollees at the end of the first open-enrollment period already had health insurance. Just 26% reported being previously uninsured. According to the Associated Press, at least 4.7 million policy holders lost their health insurance policies when their plans were declared “substandard.” Many of those individuals simply went through the Obamacare exchanges to buy policies to replace the ones outlawed by the Affordable Care Act. The same phenomenon occurred almost 50 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson implemented the Great Society programs of Medicare and Medicaid, ordering all insurance companies to cancel major medical policies for those 65 years or older, and charging a tax that everyone was forced to pay for programs whose resemblance to a Ponzi scheme has become increasingly obvious over time.  Under the ACA, this is occurring again for those under age 65. Is there any hope that the voters will rise up and throw the rascals out, repealing this disastrously misguided law? I hope so, but I doubt it. No Real Choice Let me explain. Polls

[In the guest commentary below, Ricks Picks forum regular ‘Oregon’ details some of the steps that he and his family have taken to live off-the-grid. Try to imagine what your life would be like if your home were without power for days or even weeks or longer. The author has done many things to insulate his household from such a catastrophe while saving serious money on utility bills. He has also gained the peace of mind that comes with simplifying one’s life. Perhaps his experience will inspire some of you to take steps of your own toward self-sufficiency. RA] What is off-grid living?  In the simplest terms, off-grid living is taking responsibility for one’s way of life, which means sustaining one’s own water, energy, and waste systems.  Although off-grid living means there is no one to yell at if the power is out, the water isn’t running, or the s**t isn’t running downhill, it also means peace of mind when nearly everyone else is without one or more utilities.  Other benefits include no one demanding payment each month for utilities, nor having to give legal easement to utility companies. The on-site production of food, building materials and an income source will round out true off-grid living, but makes it far more complex. As with any major decision in one’s life -- and the decision to move off-grid is indeed a major decision -- you should “know thyself” before attempting it. Can you handle the role of systems manager?  Can you simplify your lifestyle; become more efficient with your time and energy?  Can you afford it?  Often overlooked, the upfront costs for living off-grid are huge and obtaining conventional loans is difficult at best and should be avoided.  The major theme here is to live more simply, and starting with a

[The following is a personal favorite that I re-publish from time to time. It originally appeared in the form of a column that I freelanced for several years to The Sunday San Francisco Examiner. RA] Talk about a sure thing! Here was the kind of inside information that one imagined tumbled from heaven into the ears of the anointed. It concerned not the stock market - we'll get to that part soon - but a pacer named Happy Yankee A that was running in the seventh race at Roosevelt Raceway outside of Philadelphia one evening nearly four decades ago. According to my source, this horse was not merely a strong bet to win, he was an absolute lock, lead-pipe cinch. This horse absolutely could not lose. What's more, the Yankster had looked so tired the last few times out that he would probably go off at fat odds. My tipster was Willie D, a storied acquaintance and unusually gifted confidence man who could loosen a mark's checkbook the way a starfish pries open a clam. Here he was on the phone one Saturday morning - probably to everyone he owed - trying to burnish his karma with an offer of timely investment advice. One seldom saw or heard from Willie D around breakfast time, since that was when he usually went to bed. But that day he had stayed awake, he said, to get the word out. He wanted to give his pals enough time to borrow, beg or steal as much cash as they could by post time, the better to wager on the seventh race. If word of Happy Yankee A's expected trip to the winner's circle had come from anyone else, I might have shrugged it off. After all, how many touts die rich?  But a hot

[Plagues and drought have ravaged the U.S. food supply with unusual ferocity in recent years. The near-absence of rainfall throughout much of California has pushed produce prices to record highs and threatened to turn the state’s agricultural land into a dust bowl.  Elsewhere, a global fungus called TR4 could virtually wipe out the type of banana that Americans eat, the Cavendish, which accounts for 45% of the fruit’s global crop. In Florida, something called citrus greening disease has reduced the orange harvest to the smallest in 30 years. And porcine epidemic diarrhea has spread to 27 states, killing as many as six million pigs since first surfacing a year ago.  For the farmer, these are decidedly interesting times. But are they so interesting as to be properly described as accursed?  For an answer to that question, we sought out a friend who has weighed in here before on the subject of Nostradamian prophesy. Turns out that, at least for now, he is more worried about the rise of corporate fascism than by the role of accursedness in making these times so wretchedly interesting. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of your editor. RA] There are plagues in our future, and in the end we will use all the weapons at the military's command -- it was ever thus. There is one human-disease plague coming soon that will primarily victimize younger women,  according to the 16th Century prophecies of the noted French seer, Nostradamus. The food supply is in real danger -- not just from plagues, but from the consolidation of independent seed companies by a handful of agribusiness giants that are limiting food- genetic diversity in favour of copyrighted GMO foods. Their final goal is corruption of our former, naturally re-generating seed-based food system with the development of Terminator

With U.S. consumption of soda pop falling, it would appear that Coca Cola’s unwholesome ingredients are finally catching up with it.  I swore off the stuff in 1964, when I was 15 and worried that Coke would make my zits worse. What cemented my doubts was a provocative cover story in Fact, a magazine published in the mid-1960s by impresario Ralph Ginzburg that took journalistic muckraking to new heights.  In one of Fact’s notorious broadsides, the magazine asserted that drinking Coke regularly would not only cause acne, but a host of other problems, including “tooth decay, headaches… nephritis, nausea, delirium, heart disease, emotional disturbances, constipation, insomnia, indigestion, diarrhea and mutated offspring.”   If that wasn’t warning enough, Fidel Castro weighed in around the same time with a jeremiad against sugar.  It was Americans’ addiction to sweets, not Communism, he asserted, that was causing the nation to rot from the inside. In retrospect, the dictator appears to have been onto something. Fifty years later, Americans are finally starting to take the message to heart, switching en masse from soda pop to juices, bottled war and energy drinks. The shift has been so pronounced in recent years that an industry analyst, Tom Pirko of Bevmart, was led to comment recently that “sugar water with bubbles is not the future of the world. There’s an existential issue.”  Not that a visitor from another planet could tell. The typical Coca Cola commercial would have viewers believe that the product is the very elixir of life, and that quenching one’s thirst with a cold Coke is one of the few things we humans can do that is as enjoyable as sex. Coming Soon in a Big Way: Taylor Swift Whether or not you believe this, even subliminally, Coke certainly seems to. Although a growing number of

Like George Bush before him, Barack Obama unfurled a “Mission Accomplished!” banner last week that can only come back to haunt him. To assert, as Obama did, that the Obamacare debate is settled is to flout hard truths that are negatively impacting the lives of virtually every American each and every day, hitting them literally where they live. Although the overweening arrogance of the man has undoubtedly blinded him to the risks of such hubris, Democrats running for their political lives in November can smell the impending disaster like a dead skunk a mile down the road. Not that Obamacare isn’t a disaster already  – only that the looming catastrophe will make the ‘Affordable’ Care Act snafus to date seem mild in comparison. Coming Soon to Your Home For  starters, although millions of Americans who had individual insurance have lost their coverage, that figure will grow to tens of millions once Obamacare has laid waste not just to health care plans offered by the largest employers, but to the insurers themselves.  More immediately,  however, and despite the almost weekly watering down of Obamacare mandates, an unprecedented spiral in health insurance premiums has begun that can only accelerate between now and the fall elections.  In this regard, there was bad news for Democrats last week when a quarterly survey of 148 health brokers was released by Morgan Stanley. Focusing on policy renewals, it showed the biggest surge in rates for individuals and small groups since the survey began three years ago.  Rate hikes over the three-month period amounted to about 12 percent, but some states are experiencing surges 10 to 50 times that.  They are hitting New Hampshire hardest of all, since all but a handful of health care providers exited the state after its Democratic governor became the first to

Think you could make it in business with a trillion dollar subsidy? That’s a very conservative estimate of what the banks can borrow each year at almost no cost, courtesy of Fed easing. Returning the favor, the banks plow most of the funny money into Treasury paper, stocks and bonds, then lend the crumbs that remain to the riff-raff at usurious rates that can exceed 20% -- a tad more than Frankie the Camel charges his customers.  What a great way to make money!  And yet, how do we account for this recent headline in The Wall Street Journal:  Bank Profits Are Looking Stressed – Slumps in Trading Revenue, Mortgage Business Are Expected to Weaken Quarterly Earnings Reports.  Can this be right?  Actually it’s even worse than it sounds, since, on the trading side of their shady business, banks have something going for them that’s even better than subsidies – i.e., the ability to control securities markets like a Big Six wheel on the carnival midway. No One Is Fooled Speaking as a former floor trader, I can attest that institutional trading desks seldom execute an order unless it affords them a fool-proof opportunity to front-run their own customers, and, as part of the process, to steal a little extra from each and every other party to the transaction. High frequency trading is just one of the ways they do this, scooping up shares nanoseconds ahead of you or I in order to sell them to us for a small fraction of a penny more than they paid. Michael Lewis is out with a book called Flash Boys that explains this in detail. Caught in flagrante delicto, Wall Street’s reaction is to deny everything.  In this they have been abetted by the usual morons and shills in the financial press,

A bad dream jolted me awake one morning last week: the economy had crashed, the banks were shuttered, commerce had ceased, the stores were stripped bare and rioting was everywhere. This bleak vision is not unusual for anyone who has imagined what the U.S. economy is going to look like when the ponderous hoax that sustains it has been fully revealed.** What was most troubling about the dream was that the collapse evidently had taken me and my friends by surprise. The survivalist inventory that we were supposed to have kept in our basements had gone unfulfilled. Still worse, the things we needed most were nowhere to be acquired: food for six months, medical supplies, batteries, ammo, emergency generators, toilet paper, etcetera. In the dream, a friend, a successful financial adviser who has provisioned his retirement generously, was scurrying around town on a vintage motorcycle with a sidecar, trying to scrounge essentials that he had not thought to store against a civilizational emergency. A Stark Fact Do we dare doubt that such a day awaits?  If you’re having trouble sorting out the possible reasons why, and if you can’t quite wrap your mind around the certain, deflationary collapse of the banking system’s quadrillion-dollar derivatives bubble, consider just this one fact:  Millions of 20-  and 30-somethings working in low-wage jobs and in debt up to their eyeballs will be footing the bills for the Baby Boomers’ Social Security and Medicare. And now consider this stark fact:  Each and every day between now and 2030, 10,000 Baby Boomers, relatively few of whom are financially prepared for retirement, will reach the age of 65.  If you think there must be a workaround , some path other than mass destitution and tightly rationed health care, then you don’t understand the problem. So why, if