The stock markets were down sharply today on the release of the last Federal Reserve Board minutes that suggest they are are losing their consensus on the continued printing of more money to plump up the bond markets. The Fed has been pumping out $85 billion a month in the effort to hold deflation at bay. The math on what they've been doing is that this is roughly equal to a quarter of the Federal government's budget. Not that the taxpayer is funding this, the Fed just prints it, or rather they move electrons around in some computers to buy bonds from rich people and institutions so that they can show a profit and reinvest.

 

The worry isn't over the fact that the Federal Reserve is doing this, the panic is over the idea is they might stop. You can't let go of the tiger's tail until he's really, really tired. A lot of people on the right think we're just annoying the tiger, if we would only let go he'll be a good kitty and lick our hand. Does kitty want sauce with his finger snacks?

 

The Elite surround themselves with their peers, minions, and court jesters. Their minions are expendable, the jesters replaceable, and periodically they wage war against their peers. But … The Elite can always agree on this:

They never support anything that would thwart whatever it is they want to do. And they want what all gangsters have always wanted … more.

Yesterday I read the latest at the Brilliant at Breakfast Blog:

The rise and fall of prog-talk radio

http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-prog-talk-radio.html

She extensively quotes from a column at Truthout.org written by Peter B. Collins.

An Insider's View of the Progressive Talk Radio Devolution

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14355-an-insiders-view-of-the-progressive-talk-radio-devolution

The blogger and Peter B. got some of it right but most of it wrong.

I'll bet you five bucks you'd react differently than you think you would, once your doctor tells you that you've got lung cancer.  And that it's been using your body as a combination playground and nursery for four years.  Or that it's possible you might not be here this same time next year.

No, wait -- scratch that idea.  The only way I could collect on such a bet would be for your doctor to actually break that same news to you, and I wouldn't wish that pronouncement on anyone -- not even on lower life forms like brain-damaged Teabaggers, deluded Ayn Rand supporters, those struggling with the selfish demons of religion, or any other member of the helpless, hopeless, and hoodwinked.

Believe me when I say that the news, when it breaks, is filled with puzzling, aqueous cartoon moments involving stopped time, suspension of gravity, and immersion into a sluggish, slow-motion world usually reserved for filmmakers' shorthand, where someone's ambushed drug state, psychotic episode spike, or some other sudden lapse from reality is conveyed.

One of the big hits among the Super Bowl commercials was a Dodge truck spot that hardly showed the product or the company logo. Instead it showed nostalgic pictures of a bucolic American farm life while the late Paul Harvey laid on the platitudes like a 40 ton John Deere liquid manure wagon.

 

"...And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said I need a caretaker- So God made a Farmer". This speech was delivered by Harvey in 1978 at the behest of his Agri-business sponsors to a convention of high school students that belonged the FFA (Future Farmers). Few if any of the 1000 or so boys who were there that day, and would be now be about 50 years old, likely have farms.

Harvey, who was one of the most glib radio talkers ever, went on and on about what ridiculous hours farmers work, making it sound like they did it because it was the 'godly' thing to do, or the American way. The only reason they needed to literally work themselves to death was the extremely low prices the five dominant corporations enforced on the farmers.

Intellectual knowledge is one thing, and emotional experience is another.  This is one reason why it's "a darned shame" when you hear a friend's story of having compared ticket prices on the plane with fellow passengers, finding out he or she paid a couple hundred bucks more than any of the others for the same deal -- and why it's "a murderously cutthroat breakdown in society" when you are the one stuck with that extra-jumbo-jet of a bill.

Those differences are the birth pangs of empathy, so mutter away, and to your heart's content. Welcome to humanity.  We are not ants or otherwise able to experience the hive mind, so we have to grow our awareness and empathy fresh, every day.  And yes, tending that particular garden can be a real drag at times.

You can unexpectedly explode an expelled spew of coffee over a sudden comeuppance or shock of news, or choke without warning on a bite of food, or have your tongue trip over a sip of soup and collapse.  The causes of the so-called spit-take can be many.  Roll around some of these possibilities in your mind's eye, while swirling around some pleasant liquid or other in your figurative -- or literal -- mouth:

"The economy has collapsed! And it's Obama's fault!" That's the rightwing reaction to the 0.1% shrinking of the GDP in the 4th quarter, never mind that the year overall was pretty good considering the Republican agenda. The reality is that the GDP is being depressed by the loss of exports to Europe because of their idiotic austerity measures, and the reduction in military spending as the endless war on terror is finally coming to an end. That, and the Mitt Romney crowd's practice of closing down high tech factories and shipping them to China, - also the 'job creators who run corporate America are driving down wages.

The 'New Normal' of global warming, super storm Sandy, also had a significant impact on the GDP. And ironically, Obamacare has cut the amount of money draining into the insurance company/corporate hospital industrial complex. This also reduces the Gross Domestic Product.

Consumer confidence is down simply because nobody knows how to plan for the future when their job could disappear tomorrow in order to further line the pockets of people who can't even begin to spend the money they're making now. Not that the rich don't try, the super rich spend more on their lifestyles in a few months than the bulk of the Republican voting base can hope to make in a lifetime. Of course, the consequence of this is that as an ever increasing portion of our economy is sold to China, the more the rich need to squeeze from what's left to maintain the lifestyles of the rich and famous.