Stay away from the soap-on-a-rope being sold by cable news.

----I'll give you ten "head jobs" for ten minutes' worth of freedom from the ghostly charms of neoliberal fantasy philosophy...----

I think that this is considerably more optimistic than the real situation.

The market of the near future...you nailed it, Stu. Funny how the satire of just-yesterday becomes the reality of almost-tomorrow. Well, not ha-ha funny.

Rated.

Mirror-like. "Futurey."




-Rated- ;)

...and you're a strange little dickens. Strange, but cute.

We will be prepared when they come.

Those Romney/Obama supporters gonna git ya, Stu. The "plan," such as it is: grinding poverty, interrupted every now and again by prison, for everyone under forty. Already there. Only the market for handjobs is actually depressed along with everything else--except between Wall Street and Washington.

RATED!

They're already calling the idea that the guy in Colorado was young and educated and long-term unemployed off limits. Bullshit. It's a big part of what happened, but all you're hearing about in the media is the same old crap about blaming guns or blaming his meds or some shit. Assholes. Leaving people with no future and no options and no way out is a bad recipe. Rated, with respect.

What's happened in America is that a certain percentage of older Americans--a certain part of the boomers with some disposable income and some value sunk into their homes--have been bought off, and are basically frozen in place politically and economically. They've taken a big hit on equity on their homes, big enough to let them know what's in store if things get any worse for them, and they're more dependent than ever before on the checks from annuities and pensions and other investments. As long as those keep coming, they're OK. Otherwise they'd be on food stamps tomorrow, because they know they won't be able to sell their homes in this market and even if they do...well, just take a look at skinnydave's "Home Suck Home" post and you'll see.

...So there's a lot of cynicism on their parts. This is the group of people who are still talking about the usual political A-versus-B bullshit like there's nothing going on--like the whole fucking world isn't coming apart and there aren't riots and revolution in a dozen countries around the world--and who still indulge in nonsense bullshit talk about moral hazard like it's 4 or 5 fucking years ago. Or maybe the nineties. Or the eighties...

Anyway, it's becoming obvious that this was part of some deal brokered by the White House with the banks. We'll give you trillions in 0% dollars through the Fed, so long as part of it, say 7 or 8% on their cap, not too much, goes into making sure that pensions get paid, and boring companies like John Hancock etc. remain viable and keep sending out those checks. There's a whole raft of institutions, off to the side, that somehow magically remain untouched by the crash, and certainly NOT because they somehow stayed out of the toxic crap, they DID participate through various routes. Now they're serving as something like a social disorder insurance policy...

And that explains the indifference to young people. As long as they can keep a critical mass of these boomers frozen in place, all the while keeping them on edge and feeding them with just enough from the Treasury/Fed/Wall Street syphon, then things won't tip over. Well, or so they "hope." You know, as in "Hope & Change," or rather chump change for everybody else.

And that also explains a lot of the "politics" of older folks who prattle on about "responsibility" and "manners" on OS. It is so very rude after all to call people on the cynical, nasty, selfish, no-future nature of their real motivation and how it overdetermines their soft, convenient, reformist position. Just Enough Change is good enough for them.

Watchin' empire come apart.....soooo good.

There is no end to the ruthlessness of old age towards the young. Give 'em hell, Stu, and never trust 'em. They're all worthless evil old cunts.
rate

commentary#...ahh you know - sounds like a bad deal. can i have immunity from that shite fantasy for good...?

cousinXray - i am considerably more unreal than you.

themanhattankid - funny is no longer in the cards anyway. liked your dimon skewering...

mrvoulezvous - tryin' to head off the prolepsis everywhere.

anonymous911 - you and me both, mate.

skinnydave - what we have now is a managed market decline...

sammaggee - there are limits being put on what one can and cannot say everywhere and it's all shite. the longterm plan is as advertised here. real stuff...get yerself stocked on whatever you need to respond. will add something to the post in a bit for your respect....

boko - looks like the goodie good-good ride for the oldsters might be heading for a hard landing. already has here with pensioners, and hard to believe it'll be propped up much longer over there with the twaddle the u.s. banks are based on...

daveymarx - always a noisy spectacle...

dr lee - haha, yourself included i assume. i'll watch my step.

added a bit for impact.

@BOKO : It looks like that boomer gravy train is about to come to a crashing end. CALPERS, the group that manages pensions for California teachers--not exactly a small bunch of older workers--wants to sue banks and investment advisors that told them it was OK to invest in junk, and the banks involved in the LIBOR fixing that cost them untold millions. So far those in the "know" in financial legal circles are saying tough luck, the loss is yours. It was also on Max:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgnqBOarHHw&feature=g-all-u

manhattan,

I agree, it's already beginning to come apart. Any consensus can only last as long as the system of which it's a part permits it, and in this wildly unstable, unplanned, and increasingly criminal system we have that means nothing lasts for long. The argument that "no, they would never do that," which a lot of boomers (at least those in this favored group) want to believe in, goes under the same heading as all the neo-Keynesian crap that says everything will eventually have to change in order to allow the consumer markets to move forward. In fact they're interconnected in some interesting ways, and equally wrong. This is a global financial ruling class, quite coherent now that the crisis is really raging all over, and they think they can control the situation just enough to get by, using police and creep security-state bullshit etc. They're nuts. But that doesn't mean they won't be able to pull it off for some time. They've already managed in Greece, Spain, Ireland, the poorest parts of the Midwest and West coast in the U.S. Just barely, but enough to keep the whole criminal enterprise humming. At least on their end. Of course, the real value required to fuel the machine has to come from somewhere--and that's why they WILL throw these people they've been partially protecting up to this point under the austerity bus. And no, I don't expect a revolution to emerge out of bunch of angry boomers. Those people are the least of the ruling elites' worries...

@boko: i see that nouriel roubini has finally joined the school of economic doomsayers. better late to the party than so late you gotta help clean up:

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/07/23/nouriel-roubinis-euro-zone-endgame-scenario/?mod=WSJBlog

...this man has made a career out of oh-yeah-I-told-ya-so's...when does somebody say, "shut up, nouriel, we were onto this shit two years back." or more. yeah.

stu: There are the "next-fifty-years guys," as you put it over at RW's blog, and then there are the "five-years-too-late" guys. Which do you suppose good ol' Nouri falls into?