Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Silly damn meme

...is all over the blogs, so I did it to use up the rest of the evening after watching the Oregon Ducks put an ass-whupping* on the Oregon State Beavers, who foolishly thought they were going to the Rose Bowl.

*ass whupping defined as 65 points scored (most ever scored vs OSU), & 690+ yards of offense)

The meme:

1. Started your own blog…two of them
2. Slept under the stars…when hunting with Dad, that was routine
3. Played in a band…nope, music klutz
4. Visited Hawaii…several times on military duty
5. Watched a meteor shower…the Perseids in August, almost every year
6. Given more than you can afford to charity…not that dumb, no
7. Been to Disneyland…yep
8. Climbed a mountain…yep, Middle Sister in Oregon (Cascades) I'm in the official Summit Book
9. Held a praying mantis…have eaten live grasshoppers, does that count?
10. Sang a solo…and peeled the paint in the shower room
11. Bungee jumped…nope, not an adrenalin junkie
12. Visited Paris…several times in the 1950’s
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (from land)…lived at Banana River NAS, FL, yes
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch…dono where art begins from skillsets?
15. Adopted a child…nope
16. Had food poisoning…maybe about 6-8 times
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty…nope
18. Grown your own vegetables…yep
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France…yep
20. Slept on an overnight train, yep, SP “Owl”, NP “North Coast Limited” Amtrak “Starlight”
21. Had a pillow fight…SOP for kids of my generation, yes
22. Hitch hiked…across NC in 1972, from NAS Cherry Point to Winston-Salem
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill…no, but took a few mental health days..
24. Built a snow fort…and fought in them for hours
25. Held a lamb…does holding it roasted on a fork count?
26. Gone skinny dipping…more than once
27. Run a Marathon…nope, but lots of 10Ks
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice…nope
29. Seen a total eclipse…two of them
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset…every chance I get (many)
31. Hit a home run…in sandlot ball "work-up" many times
32. Been on a cruise…paid cruises AND  I cruise my own yacht
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person…nope
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors…one half of them, yes
35. Seen an Amish community…nope
36. Taught yourself a new language…no, but been taught two (Latin & French)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied…yes
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person…nope
39. Gone rock climbing…yes, drilling with SAR team
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David…yes
41. Sung karaoke…nope, folks get shot for singing as badly as I do
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt…yes
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant…nope
44. Visited Africa…passed through N. Africa in 1954 (Navy Base Port Leyautey)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight…yep, and you step in a lot of gooey stuff
46. Been transported in an ambulance…yep
47. Had your portrait painted…nope
48. Gone deep sea fishing…more than most
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person…yes
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris…yes
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling…snorkeling, yes
52. Kissed in the rain…and in the wind, and in the snow too
53. Played in the mud…as both juvenile and adult
54. Gone to a drive-in theater…lost my virginity in one in Columbia, MO
55. Been in a movie…most recent one, “The Hunted” (patrol boat crew)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China…nope
57. Started a business…nope
58. Taken a martial arts class…yep, USAF “Combatives”
59. Visited Russia…only in a nuclear war mission planning room
60. Served at a soup kitchen…no, but I am an excellent soup chef
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies…nope, but eaten too many of them
62. Gone whale watching…yep, as an added bennie of deep sea fishing
63. Got flowers for no reason…B.S., there’s ALWAYS a reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma…several gallons of it
65. Gone sky diving…nope, it’s stupid to jump out of a perfectly flyable aircraft
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp…nope
67. Bounced a check…more than once
68. Flown in a helicopter…nope, fixed wing only
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy…yep, and gave it to a nephew
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial…and played ice hockey a block away on the Reflecting Pool
71. Eaten Caviar…yes, and I like fish eggs
72. Pieced a quilt…nope, but admire those who do
73. Stood in Times Square…1956 was the last time
74. Toured the Everglades…yep, by B-52 at 200 feet AGL/325 KIAS
75. Been fired from a job…several times
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London…yep
77. Broken a bone…right wrist and elbow
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle…does a Harley at 85 count?
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person…yes, from a B-52 at low altitude
80. Published a book…written one and parts of several, but no
81. Visited the Vatican…yes…it was Peius XII in charge then
82. Bought a brand new car…1968 Plymouth Valiant, 1977 Peugeot 504D, 1984 Toyota Tercel
83. Walked in Jerusalem…nope
84. Had your picture in the newspaper…on 9-11-01, front page
85. Read the entire Bible…nope
86. Visited the White House…nope
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating…many times
88. Had chickenpox…yep
89. Saved someone’s life…yep, when I was 14
90. Sat on a jury…was President of a Court Martial Board, yes
91. Met someone famous…Senator Jack Kennedy, in 1958
92. Joined a book club…not unless using the Public Library counts
93. Lost a loved one…Mom, Dad, brother, 2 uncles, several aunts
94. Had a baby…ineligible
95. Seen the Alamo in person…yes, marched as a cadet in the Alamo Day Parade, 1967
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake…nope
97. Been involved in a law suit…several of them
98. Owned a cell phone…continuously since 1988
99. Been stung by a bee…yep, bumbler, ½” from Mr. Happy, almost crashed the truck
100. Read an entire book in one day…that’s the ONLY way to read science fiction, isn’t it?

I'm not tagging anyone with this.

Be thankful

...for what you have, while you have it.

Here's a meme: Be thankful in my comments!

Meme rules: As many items named as you want, in any order of importance. Can you handle those rules?

Here are mine:

• I'm thankful that I can pray to give thanks any damn way I like, without having to face any iconic city, standing up if I want to.
• I'm thankful that gentle men and women stand ready to put on rough ways and go forth to battle the forces of evil far away from my home, and also for the fact that they do it so well.
• I'm thankful for my opportunity, in my youthful past, to have been able to put on those rough ways myself, and to make that singular contribution to my Nation.
• I'm thankful to be able to continue to defend the spaces that I call my home, in my way, with weapons of my choosing, and to facilitate others to do the same in their homes.
• I'm thankful that I have a voice capable of advocating for good and against evil.
• I'm thankful for those who listen to my voice, some even saying that they are guided by it.
• I'm thankful to have had good doctors and skilled nurses during the critical illnesses in my life.
• I'm thankful that I'm still alive after 65 years, and have the hope of more years of useful life.
• I'm thankful for the bloggers I read every day, who continue to inform and educate me, wanting nothing but silly little blue underlined phrases of recognition in return.
• I'm thankful to have been the Great Discoverer of the fact that gunsmoke makes one hungry for roast turkey, and for a calm morning yesterday when I was sighting in a new battle rifle.
• I'm thankful that I have the good sense to stop this list before it becomes just maudlin babble, or has it already?

Your turn. Stop eating and remember to wash your hands before engaging the keyboard. Turkey drippings are DAMN sticky.

Two "Told Ya So" conclusions

First, in posts almost three and a half years ago, I opined that Natalee Holloway was likely kidnapped into prostitution from Aruba. Now, apparently, the prime suspect, Joran Van Der Sloot, seems to indicate that both he AND his father, a prosecutor/Judge on Aruba, had knowledge of the kidnapping involved.

One of the things that happens when you're an old cop is that you don't lose your accurate sense of suspicion. This proves it.

Second, one of my tested, reliable informants, the Rivrsis. heard a news article, unfortunately not remembering where, that made a definite and HIGH correlation between donations to political campaigns and which companies did/didn't get bailed out by the US gummint. The correlations is so good, apparently, that it's likely that probable cause exists to start an investigation and get subpoenas and search warrants going for what may very well amount to the richest sale of political influence in recorded history. Of course, the Rivrsis also pointed out that there's not much chance of a prosecution, since both the current and next administrations are involved in this apparent corruption up to their eyeballs.

Does Grand Larceny amount to Treason when the amounts are close to Four Trillion Dollars?

Generally, I'm not in favor of the very nasty game of "gotcha" that would ensue in our political system should we start prosecuting just-ended Administrations for acts of corruption. If this correlation can be proven though, it may be time to start such a prosecution with the Bush Administration.

But, it won't happen. Joe Biden is CitiGroup's "Man" in Congress, and has been for as long as the bank has existed, since he was instrumental in getting the Delaware money-pirates chartered. That makes the seal of silence almost perfect between the two Administrations.

Sic semper ignorati (that's us, folks).

The Pigeon Culture

We don't talk about this much, because at some time or other, we are all "pigeons", or suckers for someone else's con.

When it gets REAL bad, we even con ourselves. An example might be all those who just elected a man to be President of our nation who made little more than vague promises of "hope" and "change". Of course, we want "hope", it is a very positive emotion which helps us persevere through the bad times to get to the good times. Of course we want change: if our lives are not perfect we want to change them to be more so. This is easy to sell, or pitch, to people who either have little but want more, or people who have nothing and have been pre-sold with an idea of entitlement to something, anything, which they did not have to work for. My mother called these people "grasshoppers", after the famous parable of the grasshopper and the ant.

I have a suggestion for President-elect Obama. He could take a stand to try, in his first four years, to sell the idea that Americans need to stand on their own feet, and fight against the cons, and refuse to be pigeons. Were he to take up this crusade, he would be the most popular man to lead us since Reagan, and his eventual popularity might even eclipse Reagan. The only people who would reject a cultural paradigm of "stand for yourself first" would be the bums, the pimps and the hustlers. Those three underclasses in our society depend on pigeons for their very existence and support.

The bums beg from us, and not for food, either. There are enough charity food kitchens in our cities that no one need go hungry. They beg for money to buy substances of abuse, and we feed their sorry habits when we give them money.

The pimps control the whores as slaves. The whores are their pigeons and we are the whores' pigeons when we patronize them for the sex they sell. This has been going on for many millenia.

The hustlers try to separate the pigeons from their wealth. There are all sorts of hustlers, from the ghetto street-corner operator of the three-card monte game, to Wall Street barons who promise us wealth if we gamble on Amalgamated Widget having a bad quarter. Every hustler has to have a mark, or potential pigeon, and if that mark falls for the con, that mark is a pigeon.

I wonder if this is why wild pigeon and dove hunters refer to an actual bird flying overhead as "mark! (give angular reference)? But, I digress.

If Obama wanted to dedicate himself to the proposition that a society with fewer pigeons is a stronger society, he could start with the sharks who hawk "memberships" in "clubs" that no one needs to join. Music Clubs, Book-of-the-month Clubs, and the like. Why do we agree to let someone else select merchandise for us that we could just as easily select and buy ourselves, usually with less cost?

Music clubs especially gall me, because with modern MP-3 technology and song and album downloading, there is absolutely no selection you cannot find online. If you don't know how to do it, just wait until your 10-year old niece or nephew visits, and ask her or him to show you how.

You want to read the latest titles by your favorite authors? You won't save a dime by belonging to the book-of-the-month club, and in fact, unless that club has an agreement with your favorite authors, you won't see those books in the club's lists. The very minute a book is released, though, it is available at one of the online booksellers. Choose it and buy it yourself.

You get the idea. If I were to be Obama's "Stand for Yourself Czar", I would have the easiest teaching job in the country.

The thing that is so unique about the dependence of pigeons on hustlers is how easy is is for the pigeon to break the dependency.

"No thanks, I'll (do, build, buy, sell) that myself." When the hustler gets insistent, YOU get insistent, "What part of "NO!" do you fail to understand?"

It's SO easy NOT being a pigeon, even folks with little to no education can save themselves the expense and trouble of falling for these various cons.

I think that re-educating America to Stand for Yourself should be Obama's moral imperative.

Or does he represent the hustler side of the world's oldest relationship? 

Dare we hope for change?

...from the Obama Administration?

The Obama Administration is starting out on a very bad foot, if two articles I've read this morning are to be believed.

The first article, from Bloomberg and re-published yesterday in Western Rifle Shooters blog, details just how much money the Federal Government has detailed to boost credit, bail out companies, "save the economy", etc. The amount is startling, some $7.7 trillion pledged and $3.18 trillion already spent, according to Bloomberg, considered an impeccable source of financial data.

However, in this second article, from Yahoo! News, the Associated Press says that the Obama Administration says they are disturbed about a ONE Trillion dollar deficit in this year's financing of government operations.

Okay, Bloomberg says that the government has approved lending out $7.7 trillion, of which $3.18 trillion is already in the hands of the clients who applied for and got those loans, but the Obama Administration thinks that the deficit is only $1 trillion dollars? Is that because we were running a $2.18 trillion dollar surplus before the Federal Reserve and the Treasury started handing out money? I seem to recall that everyone was howling about a deficit approaching $500 billion dollars before all this largess was started.

Somebody's either lying, or the statistical system the government uses is woefully lacking in it's ability to report the expenditures of the Government on a timely basis. I'm guessing it's a little of both, leaning towards the first, because even if the Congressional Budget Office's stats are out of date, and the Treasury Department's as well, they could always spend a few dollars more and subscribe to Bloomberg's financial reporting service, which seems to be able to keep up just fine.

I can tell you just how this ridiculous disparity came to pass. The Bloomberg figure is correct. The figures Obama are using are not, and the reason is that the finance reporting rules allow the government considerable lag in reporting actual expense.

Now, publicly traded companies have to report their expense quarterly, so their figures are usually accurate within a few weeks of the end of each business quarter, so how come the Government gets to report old data as real when it is so far out of line with reality?

It's all about politics and incumbency. The figures for the expense of running the Government will not be made available until the new Congress, mostly re-elected incumbents, is well into it's next session, due to start the first week of January next year. Those Congress people wouldn't want to have had to stand for election and have to quote figures on the actual status of the red ink they are responsible for, would they? Of course not, so they allow the Government offices responsible for the data to have plenty of time "to make sure it's correct", I guess.

It makes for a good market for Bloomberg and the other financial reporting services, because the dot.gov sure as Hell isn't going to compete with them for timely and accurate dissemination of expense data.

It ESPECIALLY makes for a sorry start for the super-brainy new President, who either doesn't know or pretends he doesn't know that the Government's data is out of date.

It SPECIFICALLY makes for a sorry state of affairs for Associated Press, who DOES know better, to report what Obama seems "disturbed" about without giving the correct data which THEY could have gotten from Bloomberg. The AssPress seems to make a big deal out of the fact that somehow, additions to the National Debt aren't actual expenses.

Well, if I borrow money from MY creditors, THEY damn well make sure I am properly informed that I owe them the money back, with interest and a time-certain schedule to pay it back in. I fail to see how the Government can print (borrow) money, hand it out to banks, have them spend it and NOT consider that money an expense of the Government.

If President-elect Obama wants to become known as a thinking President, the FIRST thing he should do is end the fiscal charades of the Government, lies that are told on both sides of the political aisle. If he thinks we can't stand the shock of it all, he gives US no credit for being able to think, and that is the very worst mistake he can make.

CitiGroup bailout

Did anyone believe that this WASN'T going to happen?

...with Joe Biden on Citi's payroll as their main lobbyist in the Senate?

...and George Bush doing everything he can to get Obama's programs (pogroms?) off to a good start?

I was hoping that the Feds would come to their senses on this bailout crap, and maybe follow Paul Volcker's advice, but now it appears every Fortune 500 company whose business model sucks is going to be bailed out.

We will likely have to double the National Debt to do all this, maybe more.

The US Dollar will very soon cease to be the world's benchmark currency, since it will have to be devalued against most other currencies. This is already happening, since the US Dollar has just lost 2 cents against the Euro, Pound Sterling, Japanese Yen and Canadian dollar. I expect those numbers to continue on this trend.

This is the end of the "strong dollar policy" that made imports cheaper (esp. imported oil).  I guess it falls right in line with the protectionist thinking of the UAW, and other unions though, since a weak dollar will make imported autos much more expensive. Also TVs and all that cheapo Chinese stuff we dote on.

BTW, a weak dollar makes inflation MUCH more difficult to deal with.

Just ask Jimmah Cahtuh. If you can get him to tell you the truth.

Commie-Tastic

I have Comcast (to be referred to by it's correct name from here on out) as an ISP. You may have read the news about 3 months ago that ComCrap decided to put the brakes on high-bandwidth users.

Here's an interesting write-up of THAT annoying process.

My problem with them tonight is a bit different. I have put on a new hat with my yacht club, that of Newsletter Publisher. Once a month, I am going to write and publish the club's newsletter, some members receiving it by email and some by snail mail.

Day before yesterday, I formed a distribution list in Outlook and yesterday I decided to test it and ask for replies to confirm the addresses. I was quite intense about getting the mass email sent out, but overlooked the "subject" line, leaving it blank. One of the members who replied noted that empty subject lines could be detected as spam by those with tight antispam controls set up.

Tonight, I get an email from ComCrap's "Customer Security Assurance" division. This email informs me that I have been identified (doesn't say by who) as a spammer, and says that I have to click on a link to restore my full emailing privileges. I have no way of authenticating this email without doing a long and boring "whois" lookup, so I just go to their chat room and chat up a support person.

The chat was interesting, if primitive. I was using better chat software than ComCrap uses when I first started computing in the mid-80's. Theirs won't even word-wrap a sentence, and with this VERY chatty tech, there were some looooooong sentences. Never mind. I quickly established that yes, I was accused of spamming, and I then established that I could clear my good name with this chat service, but they tended to hem and haw a lot, so I played the trump card by asking them if their flagging my account was an attempt to force me to use their antivirus software suite. It is the horrible MacAfee, and I attempted to use it when ComCrap first started giving it away free to customers several years ago, but after three attempts to install it, the last time with the help of their support system, and never getting it to function in any manner than slowing my computer to a crawl, I gave up and went back to AVG Free, where I sit snugly to this day.

Right after I threw down the trump, I got a curt message that my account was restored. It may not be, since I haven't been able to send a message to my other account at Yahoo! Update: a second visit to the chat room was required, and this time they had me reset the outgoing port on my Outlook from 25 to 587, and that cleared up the block. I guess they blocked port 25 and can't really undo the block, so they had to have me reset the port to another one. I wonder why the original support tech didn't think of that?

This may push me over to Verizon Fios, which is now available in my town, but was only approved by the city gummint last week. The company still isn't sending out any fliers confirming the TV availability.

Any other abused ComCrap victims out there? Feel free to discuss, with the only limit being no terrorist threats against the company, please.

The 100 Monkeys Law (updated)

...says that if you give 100 monkeys each a computer, and teach them how to use the word processor, and they blither on with their nonsense, at some point, they will, collectively, have written a Shakespeare play.

I think the law applies to things other than literature. It might apply, for example, to running a nation.

It seems that the government of Zimbabwe, which, over the past few years has gotten exactly nothing right, seems to have made an edict that is a gem:

They banned Kofi Annan, Jimmah Cahtuh, and Graca Machel (a human-rights do-gooder) from entering their country for some sort of assessment to promote a "human rights mission".

I'll take it under advisement, but I'm leaning towards proposing a toast to President-for Life Robert Mugabe for taking this action.

CitiGroup, or how not to Manage Money

CitiGroup, even with the "sage" Joe Biden on it's payroll, doesn't seem to be able to rescue itself from the judgment of investors, who currently view it as a weak company ready to fail.

As I mentioned yesterday, the stock has lost 86% of it's market capitalization in the past 52 weeks, a rate of loss which is the worst of the (surviving) big banks and a rate which is almost double the overall loss of the entire Dow group of companies, on which the DJIA is based.

A little history is in order here.

CitiGroup used to be CitiBank, which was one of the first "Delaware Banks".

About 30 years ago, (about the same time as the political world foisted Joe Biden off on us, although I'm unsure of the connection), the State of Delaware, always on the lookout for ways to become more significant and have some impact beyond the sorry history of Three Mile Island or the small comfort of Dover Air Force Base, decided that what they needed to do was offer banks a place where they could charter and operate in a much-less regulated arena of business. Citi was one of the first to do this, and their business model depended on two strikingly different things (at the time) that traditional banks did not do.

Delaware banks offered almost anyone a credit card, and gave those persons large amounts of purchasing credit, and they charged huge interest for doing so. Other states still had usury laws which prohibited charging 20+% interest on credit cards (I think common credit card interest at the time was 4% for good customers and 10% for those without established credit histories). The credit limits Delaware banks offered was the biggie. 30 years ago, a $500 limit on a credit card was common, and not all of them allowed you to revolve, or carry over a balance from one month to the next. Citi granted much larger lines of credit, and all of their lines were revolving lines.

The country was yearning to get out of the stunted economy of the Jimmah Cahtuh years, so Citi's credit cards went over big, very big. In very short order, Federal banking rules were loosened just like Delaware's, so the Citibank business model became the norm. Uncle Joe Biden might have had something to do with THAT.

Enter the digital revolution, which the banks had lead commerce with, and which transformed banking. If you're my age, you remember the first ATMs, and how marvelous it was that you didn't have to stand in line at YOUR bank (had to be your bank in the bad old days) frequently to cash checks to get cash for incidentals. After ATMs, modern banks like Citi pioneered the idea of making lots of different payments by credit card. The idea that one could take a monthly payment that previously required receiving a bill, writing a check and mailing the check, and have all that changed to signing a single piece of paper giving the merchant the right to bill your credit card caught on like wildfire.

Then "airline miles" came into being, then "rewards" came out, and that brings us almost to the present, but NOT QUITE.

CitiBank helped pioneer another banking revolution, the transfer of a credit card (revolved) balance from one bank to another. That started a fierce competition between banks, who raided each other's credit card client lists with savage abandon, promising ever-lower repayment schemes, no interest (grace period) for the first 6 months, then a year, and then over a year. To credit abusers, this was the final dagger in their heart, the dagger that finally severed their financial aortas: they now had the ability to postpone paying off their balances almost indefinitely, by continually transferring the balances between cards to take advantage of the interest-free grace periods that the competing credit card companies offered. Unsecured personal credit soared in this nation and other advanced nations (banks in developing nations didn't TRUST their po' folks, so they didn't issue credit cards so easily).

But, hey, those were mostly boom times, after the Jimmah Cahtuh days, and the banks somehow managed to keep from writing off much of the abused credit. The average write-down 10 years ago (the last time I was involved in high finance was as a Board member of a Credit Union) was only about 3.5% of all balances. The loosest banks might have up to 5.0% of all balances, but they considered that the cost of doing business, and absorbed it.

Then, some Social Engineers in the Clinton Administration decided that if these loose credit rules were good for the credit card industry, they would be even more marvelous for the mortgage industry, so they ran loosening rules though Congress (which the idiot GOP agreed to), and the rest, as they say, is history.

And the nation's investors know now that the loose credit process must be reversed.

The nation is voting with their investor dollars for a much more conservative credit economy, even as a much more liberal government prepares to take charge of the nation and it's economy. When the banks have insufficient funds on hand to cover all that bad credit they issued, investors are pulling their money out of those banks. In our Capitalist system, the investors comprise the economy, and are the real CEOs. This collective mass of economic intelligence is telling banking smarties like Citi CEO Vikram Pandit how to run, and HOW NOT TO RUN their banks.

When the banking smarties like Pandit (who issues himself a third of a billion dollars from his bank in personal compensation each year) finally GET that message, there might be time to make a bold, new, CONSERVATIVE business plan for issuing credit, and then, and ONLY THEN, will our banking system pull back from the edge.

My WAG (Wild Assed Guess) is that it's too late for CitiGroup and Vikram Pandit. CitiGroup (NYSE symbol "C") is trading below $4/share now, and the elves who report the market are now referring to it a a "penny stock". The most optimistic of the elves don't think CitiGroup will ever sell above $7 again, so Citi's losses of capitalization are permanent. The company needs to be re-organized completely, but Pandit seems to be going down with his ship, and will not hear of selling off profitable parts of the company to raise cash, such as investment house Smith Barney. The Federal Reserve Bank doesn't seem to be in any great hurry to rescue Citi, either, nor does Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, who could make a big difference with the TARP funds, but is holding HIS water, too.

Sic Semper Tyrannis. Gold is going through the roof today, as investors have lost all hope and are fleeing to quality. Most importantly, investors are moving from Treasuries to gold. Loss of faith in the "Full Faith and Credit of the United States Government" is the last step before the final plunge.

...and the dark of the moon is only 6 days away.

The "D" Word is heard...

No, I'm not referring to Depression, although a trained economist (not I) who had access to current and accurate statistics might be able to declare that's where our economy is right now, I'm referring to Deflation.

Deflation is where the prices of goods, services and wages fall, relative to recent higher prices for the same items.

We know the price of fuel is falling. I can fill my tank now for $2/gallon, vice the $4.59 high of this summer. That's a 57% drop in the price of fuel, and it is going to get cheaper, because as I write, gasoline futures are below $1/gallon. Not much else is falling though, but it could, and action by the Fed to lower the rediscount rate to zero will probably kick off deflation by Inauguration Day if it hasn't been declared by then anyway. The Q4 stats will likely still show a minuscule inflation, less than  one percent, but those stats lag the economy by at least a month.

When wages fall, as the last part of a deflationary cycle, some folks usually get hurt, because of fixed expense. Your house is worth less, you are paying less for fuel, but those are the only decreases. Your mortgage or car payment isn't going to fall, your utility bills probably won't fall either, but your wages may be adjusted downwards.

Unless you have a Union Contract, in which case the Union will probably refuse to re-negotiate the wages, despite the Company getting less money for it's products. When that squeeze gets bad enough, the Company will fail, and then the wages get lowered to zero (or to the unemployment benefit, whatever THAT might be).

I listened to UAW President Gettlefinger today. He was completely unrepentant, took zero blame for the Union for any of the automakers' financial difficulties and never offered to renegotiate ANYTHING in the UAW's compensation package. He pretty much DEMANDED that Congress bail out the Big Three.

Well, between the CEOs of the Big Three all flying in from Detroit to DeeCee yesterday in their Learjets or Gulfstreams to beg from Congress, and today the UAW chief saying, "No Way, you WILL pay", I give even odds that one of them will have to declare Chapter 11 by New Year's Day. See your own bookie about odds for a shorter time frame to failure. Even Nancy Peloser started to get testy about the UAW side by quittin' time on the East Coast.

Let's look at today's common stock for the Big Three:

• Ford Motor Co....Traded UP to $1.39 at the close, 52-week high of 8.79
• General Motors...Traded UP to $2.88 at the close, 52-week high of 29.95
• Daimler-Chrysler.Traded DOWN to $6.54 at the close, 52-wk high of 10.71

So, in the above order, Ford has lost 84%, GM 90%, and Daimler-Chrysler 39%. Only Daimler-Chrysler has Beat The Street, which has lost 47% since April.

The banks are worse:

• Citigroup...Traded DOWN to $4.95, 52-week high of $35.29
• JP Morgan-Chase-WaMu, down to $23.20, 52-wk high of $50.63
• Bank of America, down to $11.25, 52-wk high of $47.00

Citi has lost 86%, JP Morgan 54% and B of A 76%.

Got the picture? Grim picture. The US of A has bled (on paper) tens of trillions of dollars (the US GDP is about $14.5 Trillion) in capitalization. The rest of the world is not far behind, either.

Which "D" will be declared first, Depression or Deflation? Does it matter to you? Maybe not, because ALL of our coping skills will be tested regardless.

Tomorrow could be an ugly, but epic day on the Street. Before you go to bed, watch to see how bad the Nikkei (Japan index) bleeds. If it loses more than 10%, then make it an all-nighter and watch CNBC straight through (except for the 2-hour infomercial break between midnight and 0200). If the European indexes break bad early in the AM (they start trading at 0400), then the NYSE will be on an express elevator to the Big D as soon as it opens at 0700 Pacific. Tomorrow's Friday, so nothing can be fixed until Monday, either.

For me, it's like watching a hanging, I guess. You just don't know who to root for.

And the dark of the moon is only a week away...