has nothing to do with the economy. I just am so fed up with their unbelievable hypocrisy I could scream.

because the government has tightly coupled everything into a Rube Goldberg engine of destruction....the ultimate Mouse Trap.

However, since it was done incompetently (thank goodness, competent corruption would be undefeatable), the machine is falling to pieces even before it's completed.

Hastert is a criminal, as far as I can tell. The means of prosecuting him is probably going to be deemed unconstitutional. If it isn't, life is going to be infinitely more dangerous for anyone with any cash whatsoever...

http://robertreich.org/post/120960773270

Washington has been rocked by the scandal of J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, indicted on charges of violating banking laws by paying $1.7 million (as part of a $3.5 million agreement) to conceal prior misconduct, which turns out to have been child molestation.

That scandal contains another one that’s received less attention: Hastert, who never made much money as a teacher or a congressman, could manage such payments because after retiring from Congress he became a high-paid lobbyist. This second scandal is perfectly legal but it’s a growing menace. In the 1970s, only 3 percent of retiring members of Congress went on to become Washington lobbyists. Now, half of all retiring senators and 42 percent of retiring representatives become lobbyists. This isn’t because more recent retirees have had fewer qualms. It’s because the financial rewards from lobbying have mushroomed, as big corporations and giant Wall Street banks have sunk fortunes into rigging the game to their advantage. In every election cycle since 2008, more money has gone into lobbying at the federal level than into political campaigns. And an increasing portion of that lobbying money has gone into the pockets of former members of Congress. In viewing campaign contributions as the major source of corruption we overlook the more insidious flow of direct, personal payments – much of which might be called “anticipatory bribery” because they enable office holders to cash in big after they’ve left office.

For years, former Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor was one of Wall Street’s strongest advocates – fighting for the bailout of the Street, to retain the Street’s tax advantages and subsidies, and to water down the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. Just two weeks after resigning from the House, Cantor joined the Wall Street investment bank of Moelis & Co., as vice chairman and managing director, starting with a $400,000 base salary, $400,000 initial cash bonus, and $1 million in stock. As Cantor explained, “I have known Ken (the bank’s CEO) for some time and … followed the growth and success of his firm.” Exactly. They had been doing business together so long that Cantor must have anticipated the bribe.

Anticipatory bribery undermines trust in government almost as much as direct bribery. At a minimum, it can create the appearance of corruption, and raise questions in the public’s mind about the motives of public officials. Was the Obama White House so easy on big Wall Street banks – never putting tough conditions on them for getting bailout money or prosecuting a single top Wall Street executive – because Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s treasury secretary, and Peter Orszag, his director of the Office of Management and Budget, anticipated lucrative jobs on the Street? (Geithner became president of the private-equity firm Warburg Pincus when he left the administration; Orszag became Citigroup’s vice chairman of corporate and investment banking.)

Another form of anticipatory bribery occurs when the payment comes in anticipation of a person holding office, and then delivering the favors. According to the New York Times, as Marco Rubio ascended the ranks of Republican politics, billionaire Norman Braman not only bankrolled his campaigns but subsidized Rubio’s personal finances. A case of anticipatory bribery? Certainly looks like it. In the Florida legislature, Rubio steered taxpayer funds to Braman’s favored causes, including an $80 million state grant to finance a genomics center at a private university and $5 million for cancer research at a Miami institute. “When Norman Braman brings (a proposal) to you,” Rubio said, “you take it seriously.”

Hillary and Bill Clinton have made more than $25 million for 104 speeches since the start of last year, according to disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission in mid May – of which she delivered 51, earning more than $11 million of the total. Now that she’s running for president, she’s stopped giving paid speeches. But her husband says he intends to continue. “I gotta pay our bills,” he told NBC News. Anticipatory bribery? Asked about his paid speeches, some of which pay $500,000 or more, Bill Clinton said, “People like to hear me speak.” That may be the reason for the hefty fees, but is it possible that some portion comes in anticipation his having the intimate ear of the next president?

We need some rules here.

• First, former government officials, including members of Congress, shouldn’t be able to lobby or take jobs in industries over which they had some oversight, for at least three years after leaving office.
  
  
• Second, anyone who runs for office should bear the burden of showing that whatever personal payments they received up to three years before were based on their economic worth, not anticipated political clout.
  
  
• Finally, once they declare, perhaps even their spouses should desist.
  

I AM SURE SHE WILL HAVE BERNIE'S BACK

http://wonkette.com/587298/sorry-losers-youre-stuck-with-elizabeth-warren-kicking-ass-in-the-senate

Elizabeth Warren, she is our goddess queen progressive posterlady legislative badass hero. We love her, and we’d love to see her be the boss of all the things: Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House, the banks, the schools, every government agency that has letters in its name, and your mom. But since we cannot elect Elizabeth Warren Czarina of The Universe, we are quite content to watch her kick ass, take names, and yell at various bad guys, in her polite and concise Harvard schoolmarm way, as the senior senator from Massachusetts and official extra-special message-crafter for the Democratic Party. And now the pathetic losers behind the “Run Warren Run” campaign have reluctantly agreed to settle for that too:

Warren has been asked a thousand times whether she might run for president in 2016, and she has said “no” each time. But some True Progressives refused to take no for an answer, which does not seem very True Progressive of them, does it? So they opened offices and printed posters and, LOL, collected signatures! — for petitions!!! — to bully Warren into running for president even though she said “no” again, didn’t you jerks hear her the first thousand times? Maybe or maybe not, but they figured if they DEMANDED she run, she’d eventually give in, lay back and think about the weather, or at least make them some sammiches...

I SEE NO REASON TO DISS THE DRAFT ELIZABETH FOLKS

In the few years Warren has served, she’s already managed to make income inequality such a major talking point that even Republicans are pretending to care about it. She’s become a WAY powerful force among her Democratic colleagues, like that time she convinced them to defeat President Obama’s nominee for Treasury undersecretary, Antonio Weiss, because he was too Wall Street for her liking. Not so easy for a senatorial newbie to rally opposition against her own party’s president, but she did it because she’s that good. Which is why Wall Street’s biggest banksters have threatened Democrats, to try to make her shut up, but she will NOT shut up, that is why the Senate is a most excellent place for her to keep not shutting up, why would anyone who is supposed to be a True Progressive not want that?

Read more at http://wonkette.com/587298/sorry-losers-youre-stuck-with-elizabeth-warren-kicking-ass-in-the-senate#vbIbkZVQgv8v5WaZ.99

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/03/us-usa-health-gapinsurance-idUSKBN0OJ1G220150603

Despite the promise of coverage through the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA), the number of people applying for non-compliant, short-term health insurance policies was up more than 100 percent in 2014, according to new data available from companies who broker these policies. This type of health insurance is exactly the kind that the ACA, known commonly as Obamacare, was supposed to upgrade. Short-term plans provide low-cost coverage for major medical events like hospital stays, with high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, and are subject to denial if applicants have pre-existing conditions. They do not offer the protections of Obamacare for preventive care or maternity coverage, for example.

The government does not count these gap plans as qualifying health insurance, so people who have them are subject to penalties for being uninsured.

Sign-ups at eHealth Inc to the short-term plans it offers through its website were up to 140,000 in 2014 from 60,000 in 2013, an increase of 134 percent, according to the company.

At another short-term carrier, Agile Health Insurance, a subsidiary of Health Insurance Innovations Inc, new policies were up 100 percent last year over the previous year, and are up again so far in 2015, according to Scott Lingle, the company's senior vice president of business development.

Accounting for much of the jump are individuals who somehow missed the open enrollment period for an Obamacare plan. More than 11.7 million consumers signed up for Obamacare coverage through Feb. 22, according to the government. People missed out mostly because of poor communication between consumers, the government and insurance companies, says Nate Purpura, eHealth's director of PR and Content. Those who missed the opportunity to sign up and did not have a qualifying event now have to wait until the next open enrollment period to try again, so they need an insurance plan to bridge the gap.

Both eHealth and Agile are also seeing new signups from retirees who are looking for a low-cost plan to tide them over until Medicare kicks in at 65. At eHealth, the 55 to 64 age group is now 9 percent of the market.

"If you shop for a 50-year-old on healthcare.gov, it is very expensive," says Agile's Lingle. "There are people who have looked at the prices and it makes more sense to buy short term."

The largest constituency is young, healthy people seeking low-cost catastrophic coverage. Those aged 18 to 34 account for 57 percent of eHealth's buyers. A typical policy could cost around $100 a month, depending on the state of residency and the features of the plan.

These customers include 19-year-old college student Kelly Thomas-Cutshaw, who had no insurance through family and her school did not offer group coverage. Thomas-Cutshaw did not qualify for a subsidy under the ACA because she did not have enough income, yet she could not get Medicaid in Oklahoma, where she goes to school, because she made too much and was not a permanent resident there.

Over the winter, Thomas-Cutshaw became ill, and now has a medical bill she says will take her four years to pay off. She decided she needed some plan in place in case she fell ill again.

When her short-term plan runs out in the fall, she is prepared to sign up for an ACA-compliant major medical plan.

"I can mostly afford to live, so that's nice," Thomas-Cutshaw said, thanks to a summer job she just landed. "It been a ridiculous and frustrating experience. I don't wish this on other people."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pushing-greece-out-could-be-europes-final-act-2015-06-05

European Union leaders continue to play a game of brinkmanship with the Greek government. Greece has met its creditors’ demands far more than halfway. Yet Germany and Greece’s other creditors continue to demand that the country sign on to a program that has proven to be a failure, and that few economists ever thought could, would, or should be implemented. The swing in Greece’s fiscal position from a large primary deficit to a surplus was almost unprecedented, but the demand that the country achieve a primary surplus of 4.5% of gross domestic product was unconscionable. Unfortunately, at the time that the “troika” — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund — first included this irresponsible demand in the international financial program for Greece, the country’s authorities had no choice but to accede to it.

The folly of continuing to pursue this program is particularly acute now, given the 25% decline in GDP that Greece has endured since the beginning of the crisis. The troika badly misjudged the macroeconomic effects of the program that they imposed. According to their published forecasts, they believed that, by cutting wages and accepting other austerity measures, Greek exports would increase and the economy would quickly return to growth. They also believed that the first debt restructuring would lead to debt sustainability. The troika’s forecasts have been wrong, and repeatedly so. And not by a little, but by an enormous amount. Greece’s voters were right to demand a change in course, and their government is right to refuse to sign on to a deeply flawed program.

Having said that, there is room for a deal: Greece has made clear its willingness to engage in continued reforms, and has welcomed Europe’s help in implementing some of them. A dose of reality on the part of Greece’s creditors — about what is achievable, and about the macroeconomic consequences of different fiscal and structural reforms — could provide the basis of an agreement that would be good not only for Greece, but for all of Europe.

Some in Europe, especially in Germany, seem nonchalant about a Greek exit from the eurozone. The market has, they claim, already “priced in” such a rupture. Some even suggest that it would be good for the monetary union. I believe that such views significantly underestimate both the current and future risks involved. A similar degree of complacency was evident in the United States before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The fragility of America’s banks had been known for a long time — at least since the bankruptcy of Bear Stearns the previous March. Yet, given the lack of transparency (owing in part to weak regulation), both markets and policy makers did not fully appreciate the linkages among financial institutions. Indeed, the world’s financial system is still feeling the aftershocks of the Lehman collapse. And banks remain non-transparent, and thus at risk. We still don’t know the full extent of linkages among financial institutions, including those arising from non-transparent derivatives and credit default swaps.

In Europe, we can already see some of the consequences of inadequate regulation and the flawed design of the eurozone itself. We know that the structure of the eurozone encourages divergence, not convergence: as capital and talented people leave crisis-hit economies, these countries become less able to repay their debts. As markets grasp that a vicious downward spiral is structurally embedded in the euro EURUSD, -0.1349% , the consequences for the next crisis become profound. And another crisis in inevitable: it is in the very nature of capitalism. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s confidence trick, in the form of his declaration in 2012 that the monetary authorities would do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro, has worked so far. But the knowledge that the euro is not a binding commitment among its members will make it far less likely to work the next time. Bond yields could spike, and no amount of reassurance by the ECB and Europe’s leaders would suffice to bring them down from stratospheric levels, because the world now knows that they will not do “whatever it takes.”

As the example of Greece has shown, they will do only what short-sighted electoral politics demands. The most important consequence, I fear, is the weakening of European solidarity. The euro was supposed to strengthen it. Instead, it has had the opposite effect. It is not in the interest of Europe — or the world — to have a country on Europe’s periphery alienated from its neighbors, especially now, when geopolitical instability is already so evident. The neighboring Middle East is in turmoil; the West is attempting to contain a newly aggressive Russia; and China, already the world’s largest source of savings, the largest trading country, and the largest overall economy (in terms of purchasing power parity), is confronting the West with new economic and strategic realities. This is no time for European disunion.

Europe’s leaders viewed themselves as visionaries when they created the euro. They thought they were looking beyond the short-term demands that usually preoccupy political leaders. Unfortunately, their understanding of economics fell short of their ambition; and the politics of the moment did not permit the creation of the institutional framework that might have enabled the euro to work as intended. Although the single currency was supposed to bring unprecedented prosperity, it is difficult to detect a significant positive effect for the eurozone as a whole in the period before the crisis. In the period since, the adverse effects have been enormous. The future of Europe and the euro now depends on whether the eurozone’s political leaders can combine a modicum of economic understanding with a visionary sense of, and concern for, European solidarity. We are likely to begin finding out the answer to that existential question in the next few weeks.

as often as possible.

Now stop going to the ends of the earth. There's a better way.

THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITAL IS WELL UNDERWAY--TAKE DETROIT AS THE POSTER CHILD FOR THAT!

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-era-of-breakdown.html

The fourth of the stages in the sequence of collapse we’ve been discussing is the era of breakdown. (For those who haven’t been keeping track, the first three phases are the eras of pretense, impact, and response; the final phase, which we’ll be discussing next week, is the era of dissolution.) The era of breakdown is the phase that gets most of the press, and thus inevitably no other stage has attracted anything like the crop of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and flat-out hokum as this one.

The era of breakdown is the point along the curve of collapse at which business as usual finally comes to an end. That’s where the confusion comes in. It’s one of the central articles of faith in pretty much every human society that business as usual functions as a bulwark against chaos, a defense against whatever problems the society might face. That’s exactly where the difficulty slips in, because in pretty much every human society, what counts as business as usual—the established institutions and familiar activities on which everyone relies day by day—is the most important cause of the problems the society faces, and the primary cause of collapse is thus quite simply that societies inevitably attempt to solve their problems by doing all the things that make their problems worse.

The phase of breakdown is the point at which this exercise in futility finally grinds to a halt. The three previous phases are all attempts to avoid breakdown: in the phase of pretense, by making believe that the problems don’t exist; in the phase of impact, by making believe that the problems will go away if only everyone doubles down on whatever’s causing them; and in the phase of response, by making believe that changing something other than the things that are causing the problems will fix the problems. Finally, after everything else has been tried, the institutions and activities that define business as usual either fall apart or are forcibly torn down, and then—and only then—it becomes possible for a society to do something about its problems.

It’s important not to mistake the possibility of constructive action for the inevitability of a solution. The collapse of business as usual in the breakdown phase doesn’t solve a society’s problems; it doesn’t even prevent those problems from being made worse by bad choices. It merely removes the primary obstacle to a solution, which is the wholly fictitious aura of inevitability that surrounds the core institutions and activities that are responsible for the problems. Once people in a society realize that no law of God or nature requires them to maintain a failed status quo, they can then choose to dismantle whatever fragments of business as usual haven’t yet fallen down of their own weight...That’s a more important action than it might seem at first glance. It doesn’t just put an end to the principal cause of the society’s problems. It also frees up resources that have been locked up in the struggle to keep business as usual going at all costs, and those newly freed resources very often make it possible for a society in crisis to transform itself drastically in a remarkably short period of time. Whether those transformations are for good or ill, or as usually happens, a mixture of the two, is another matter, and one I’ll address a little further on.

SPECIFICS FOLLOW: USA TODAY VS. DURING THE PREVIOUS DEPRESSION
FDR AND NAPOLEON
PEAK ENERGY
JUNK SCIENCE
AND MORE

A COMPREHENSIVE ORIENTATION TO THE PRESENT AND THE PROBABLE FUTURE--MUST READ!

http://energyskeptic.com/2014/dmitry-orlov-how-russians-survived-collapse/

ANOTHER LONG AND COMPREHENSIVE READ---KEY IDEA


"There is a lesson here: when faced with a collapsing economy, one should stop thinking of wealth in terms of money. Access to actual physical resources and assets, as well as intangibles such as connections and relationships, quickly becomes much more valuable than mere cash."


SO, THERE'S YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR THE WEEK, MONTH, YEAR.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/06/eurozone-greece-germany-gabriel-idUSL5N0YS0DZ20150606

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned Greece in a newspaper interview on Saturday there was no more wiggle room in negotiations on a cash-for-reforms deal. Asked if he was expecting an agreement soon, Gabriel told German daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten: "That depends solely on the Greek government. Europe has gone up to its limits."

Gabriel said that there was a mood in Germany now for letting the Greeks just leave the euro zone.

"But this would get very expensive for certain," he said, adding that Greece would remain a member state in the European Union no matter what happened. "So there would still be the need for aid."

Gabriel, who is economy minister and also head of Germany's Social Democrats, criticised Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

"His problem his that he's not willing to tackle the issues that need to be solved. He'd rather put them onto the shoulders of the European taxpayers. But this won't work."

Gerda Hasselfeldt, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative allies in Bavaria, told the German newspaper Passauer Neue Presse that Athens now had to come up with detailed reform proposals.

"The current programme must be implemented and it cannot be changed into something else on the quiet," Hasselfeldt said.

YES, THE GERMANS HAVE REACHED THEIR LIMITS....BUT THEN, THEIR THINKING HAS BEEN LIMITED, ALL ALONG. THEY ARE GOING TO FIND THAT THEY HAVE EXCEEDED OTHER PEOPLE'S LIMITS, AND THAT WILL NOT BE A GOOD THING FOR GERMANY.

A pounding rain last night beat up the peonies to shreds...but now the poppies are coming into bloom. They would have clashed horribly--magenta and naval orange. I really should plant more peonies...can't get enough of them. Maybe some white ones...when (if) they go on clearance....like I really need another hobby or another pot to plant!

All the fruit trees look very good, even the new cherry which is still in the pot due to a severe attack of indolence. The larger blueberry bushes have berries, and the gooseberry, too. Not bad, considering how little time I put into it.

I just don't get to feed my mind until the weekend, and it craves intellectual stimulation. Plus Saturday was taken up with recording a CD and going to the airport. Some genius decided to reduce the highway to one lane for 10 miles, making a 20 minute trip last an hour....and Sunday it rained a lot.

It's going to be 99% humidity all day, even when it isn't raining (shortly). We seem to be getting the last licks from the hurricane in the Pacific, down by Mexico. Usually Michigan got the blowback from the Atlantic hurricanes...guess it doesn't matter where the storm is, we get wet and windblown.

Hope you all have a survivable week (I won't ask for enjoyable) and start preparing for the economic collapse. Remember: assets and contacts and skills and knowledge....I'd love to get off the grid, but the condo people are such Luddites (and tight bastards).

Know any lonely bachelor farmer with an orchard on Lake Michigan?

I love the butt hanging off the lip, and of course...the whole thing.