From: Jim Quinn [mailto:quinnadvisors@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 6:09 AM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: New Article
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PREFACE TO THE ARTICLE
Notice a couple things. Quinn analyzes four previous bubbles in economic history. Look at each of the curves in the article -- they are nearly identical! Math draws the picture of the world. It models it better than any other system we have. The facts in these matters should convince you how far and away are the good times some say are just up ahead.
I think this is Quinn's best article yet. In it, he calls for civil disobedience - non-violent protest and disobedience to laws or government actions that are evil and could bring the country down. He states that citizens DO have options before it's too late. For example, stop paying taxes. The government would come to a grinding halt.
Get those tea bags ready. I think it's time for some civil disobedience. Your tea bag won't hurt anyone, but it will ignite action in you by its symbology of recalled revolutionaries who set America on her road to greatness as the icon of Liberty. Not one of us can afford to sit idly by and watch our country disintegrate before our eyes.
-Sharon
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HERE'S THE BEEF:
Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. He went to jail for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.”
Mohandas Gandhi
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.”
Martin Luther King
"The bailout of corrupt bankers by corrupt politicians with money printed and borrowed from future generations is a criminal act and must be overturned by civil disobedience on the part of Americans with a moral conscience. The government has stepped over the line and we must act before it is too late. The brilliant John Hussman describes what Geithner, Bernanke and Congress have done in the last two weeks:
“Ultimately, funding the bailout of lousy assets comes at the cost of debasing our currency and selling our good assets to foreigners. Make no mistake - we are selling off our future and the future of our children to prevent the bondholders of U.S. financial corporations from taking losses. We are using public funds to protect the bondholders of some of the most mismanaged companies in the history of capitalism, instead of allowing them to take losses that should have been their own. All our policy makers have done to date has been to squander public funds to protect the full interests of corporate bondholders.”
Fiscal Sanity Movement
It is now time for all Americans to force fiscal sanity upon our government through the use of civil disobedience. Our current fiscal path is unsustainable. The government’s solutions will extend the pain for decades in the best case or result in an abrupt collapse in the worst case. If Americans force a fiscal restructuring upon the world it will be extremely painful, but would result in a more balanced sustainable society going forward. In both cases, Americans will need to accept a reduction in their standard of living. This is the price that must be paid for thirty years of living above our means. Some passive resistance ideas regarding the fiscal sanity movement could be:
- Imagine that Americans refused to spend any money on discretionary items like electronic gadgets, furniture, and jewelry. With 70% of GDP dependent on consumer spending, this would result in the closing of thousands of unnecessary retail stores. We know that a sustainable level of spending is 62% of GDP, so let’s get there in two years rather than dragging it out over a decade.
- Imagine that Americans decided to withdraw every dime of their money from all the banks that have accepted TARP funds. There are 8,500 banks in the United States. Seventy banks have accepted TARP funds. Pull your money out of these banks and put it in your local banks or credit unions that didn’t bring down the financial system. This would ruin the Treasury’s latest $1 trillion scheme of hiding toxic assets.
- Imagine that Americans stopped using credit cards. The major purveyors of credit cards, Bank of America, Citicorp, American Express and Capital One would collapse under the weight of bad debt. Credit cards are a ponzi scheme dependent upon new credit issuance. Without charging 21% interest and collecting $25 late fees for being one day late, their businesses will implode.
- Imagine that every working American walked into work tomorrow and changed their W-4 to 20 exemptions. This would immediately remove $1.2 trillion of taxes from the grasp of politicians in Washington. You could bet that would get the attention of the political hacks in Washington.
- Imagine that no more young men and women volunteered for the military or re-enlisted. With an all volunteer military, the lack of cannon fodder would force a downscaling of the American military empire. The government doesn’t have the guts to reinstitute a draft.
- Imagine that Americans refused to buy new cars and choose to get by with the 240 million existing automobiles already in use. This would force the necessary bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler.
- Imagine that Americans refused to purchase any more 6,000 square foot McMansions. Maybe families of four could make do with a 2,000 square foot home. This would force down prices further and leave people with more discretionary income to save for their retirement.
- Imagine that no one voted in the next national elections in 2010. A voter strike would send the ultimate message to the two corrupt parties. Ron Paul describes why the two parties are worthless. “Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Influential forces, the media, the government, the privileged corporations and moneyed interests see to it that both party’s candidates are acceptable, regardless of the outcome, since they will still be in charge. The two parties and their candidates have no real disagreements on foreign policy, monetary policy, privacy issues, or the welfare state. They both are willing to abuse the Rule of Law and ignore constitutional restraint on Executive Powers.”
- Imagine a one day national strike coinciding with the largest March on Washington in the history of the Republic. This would surely change the dialogue in the country. The lightweight politicians in Washington DC would cave immediately.
It is not inconceivable that these civil disobedience measures would be met with violent countermeasures by those in power. They will do anything to retain their wealth, influence and power. Americans with a conscience will be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David Thoreau
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Cliff Notes vs. of the article
"The Chinese have a long-term plan to rule the world. They are buying up natural resources throughout the world. The walls are closing in on the U.S. The U.S. solution is to print more dollars, borrow from future generations, and tax their citizens more. Ben Bernanke has rolled the dice, but the fear is in his eyes, not our enemies’. We will shortly realize that our castles were built upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand. . . .
. . . Bubble, Bubble
"Never in the history of the world has a bubble burst halfway. Every bubble has collapsed to its starting point or below. The self serving pundits on CNBC and on Sunday talk shows continue to predict a stabilization of the housing market. They are wrong. The bubble is still deflating and will not end until home values are back to 2000 levels, if we’re lucky. Examples of bubbles that fully deflated include the tulip bubble of 1637 - 1638, the South Sea bubble of 1719 - 1722, the Nikkei bubble from 1983 until today, and the NASDAQ bubble from 1999 – 2003. The United States has three bubbles that are deflating simultaneously, compliments of the Federal Reserve, George Bush, and a criminally incompetent Congress. Housing, consumer spending, and U.S. total debt are all at different phases of bubble deflation. No matter what politicians attempt, these bubbles cannot be re-inflated. They will deflate fully.
“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
Henry David Thoreau
The South Sea Company was the AIG of the 1700’s. It was a British joint stock company, founded in 1711. The company was granted a monopoly to trade as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession. The company assumed the national debt England had incurred during the war. In 1719 the company proposed a scheme by which it would buy more than half the national debt of Britain (£30,981,712), again with new shares, and a promise to the government that the debt would be converted to a lower interest rate, 5% until 1727 and 4% per year thereafter. The purpose of this conversion was similar to allow a conversion of high-interest but difficult-to-trade debt into low-interest, readily marketable debt and shares of the South Sea Company. These are the games that declining empires play when they have overreached in their empire building. The plan sounds a lot like Timmy Geithner’s Good Bank Bad Bank scheme. Shuffling debt from one entity to another entity doesn’t get rid of it. It is just a scam paid for by taxpayers.
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
Henry David Thoreau
"The price of South Sea Company stock went up from £100 a share to almost £1,000 per share. Its success caused a country-wide investing frenzy by peasants, businessmen and lords. The price reached £1,000 in early August and the level of selling was such that the price started to fall, dropping back to £100 per share before the year was out, triggering bankruptcy among those who had bought on credit. The English Parliament reacted to the crisis exactly the way our current clueless bunch of moron Congressmen are reacting to the AIG debacle. The estates of the directors of the South Sea Company were confiscated and used to relieve the suffering of the victims, and the stock of the South Sea Company was divided between the Bank of England and East India Company. A resolution was proposed in parliament that bankers be tied up in sacks filled with snakes and tipped into the Thames River. I’m sure Barney Frank is preparing a similar resolution regarding AIG executives. No one can calculate the madness of men. . . .
". . .Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.”
Henry David Thoreau
"There are 75 million houses in America. Twenty four million don’t have a mortgage. Of those 51 million homeowners with a mortgage, approximately 15 million are underwater. According to Mr. Shilling, with the further decline in prices a given, 25 million homeowners will be underwater to the tune of $1 trillion. Anyone predicting a recovery by the end of 2009 is delusional.
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. “
Henry David Thoreau
"The last and most dramatic bubble is total U.S. debt. There is no doubt that it is unsustainable. It currently amounts to 340% of GDP. It would need to go back to 200% of GDP or below to retrace its bubble path. This would require $20 trillion of debt to be paid off or written off. The implications of this are staggering. The Federal Reserve and politicians running the country will fight the deflation of this bubble with all of their might. It won’t work. Bubbles always burst. This bubble bursting will change America forever. The American standard of living will decline significantly. Not many people are prepared for this wrenching future. The mantle of ruling the world will be passed to some other lucky country. The government is trying to keep all three bubbles from popping. Their solutions are dangerous and could result in a collapse of our economic system.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
“There's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies.”
Colonel Kilgore – Apocalypse Now
"The National Debt of the United States from the creation of the country in 1783 until 1986 was $2 trillion. The National Debt of the United States has increased by $2 trillion in the last 18 months from $9 trillion to $11 trillion. It has increased by $1 trillion in the last six months. The independent Congressional Budget Office, which has been overly optimistic over time, projects that the Obama budget plan will add $9.3 trillion to the National Debt by 2019. This will drive the National Debt as a percentage of GDP to levels above the peak years reached during World War II. The difference is that in 2019 the unfunded liabilities totaling $56 trillion for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will sweep over the country like a tsunami. If our government follows the path it has chosen, our country will be bankrupted.
"Many Americans who have lived by the rules are angry, frustrated, and appalled at what the government is doing. They feel helpless to change the course of the country. The housing, spending, and debt bubbles will burst completely, no matter what the government does. Following the current path will lead us into the Japanese model of a 25 year downturn, if we’re lucky. When I read many of the responses to my last article about ways to reclaim your life, I was struck that We The People actually hold all the cards. The government is at our mercy. Americans can change the course of the country through passive resistance. American consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy. No matter how much liquidity the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air, we do not have to spend the money. American citizens pay $1.2 trillion in Federal Income taxes per year. If they decided not to pay these taxes, the empire would come to a grinding halt. American citizens have more control then they know.
"I came across an essay by Henry David Thoreau called Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government), published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. The definition of civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, without resorting to physical violence.
“Resistance” also served as part of Thoreau’s metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be “a counter friction” – that is, a resistance – “to stop the machine.”
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Henry David Thoreau
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