Cities shutting down. Got your horse ready?

Roll call of government infrastructure going to shit as of today:

Rhode Island is shutting down the state government for 12 days, hoping to save money. The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force to stay home a dozen days without pay.

Birmingham, Alabama, shut down 1/3 of it's government, including closing a prison last week. About 1,000 county workers already are on unpaid leave, state assistance may be needed to perform basic law enforcement tasks come September, and they're asking for help from the National Guard. The county seeks to avoid filing what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy ever.

Yesterday, Chicago started it's reduced services plan. There won't be regular garbage-pickup service Monday and there won't be any street sweeping. Most city offices are closed. That includes public libraries and City Hall.

California has been issuing IOU's instead of money. The vendors that got IOUs couldn't take them to the bank since the banks just laughed at them when they tried to use them. Then the state taxed them on the IOUs. Now many of them are in danger of going under and they have all banded together to sue CA for $620 million.
In what, monopoly money?

Philadelphia, PA is pulling for state approval for a city sales tax increase and changes to how it makes its pension payments.
If it doesn't happen, the city's back-up plan will see nearly 3,000 city workers lose their jobs, including 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters.
Recreational programs, libraries and city pools will be closed, trash pick-up would go to twice a month, and street lighting would also be reduced and 1,000 traffic lights would be switched to red flashers.
This is a very dangerous prospect when you consider that Philly cops are dropping like flies, despite a decline in murders and shootings overall. And have you ever seen Philly drivers? Oh boy.

Wake up, folks. This is not a recession. I repeat, this is not a recession.
Call it what you will, buy you'd better pay attention, and practice holding your own hand.

In related news, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who led the biggest expansion of the central bank’s power in its 95-year history (read: screwing us hard) to battle the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (read: that horse got tired of being screwed so hard and gave up the ghost), was nominated to a second term today by President Barack Obama.

Bernanke's nomination for a second four-year term starting Jan. 31 requires Senate approval, but as far as I'm concerned, that's pretty worthless at this point. Who do you think is watching that dead horse get gang-raped by the Fed? And yes, it does make them an accessory.

So, what are your plans for the New World Disorder?

Penny for your thoughts? $$

Reposted from http://www.urbansurvival.com

Once upon a time, people were very much in direct contact with how they were doing. Back in cave man (and cave woman) days, if you were very hungry, you weren't working very hard. On the other hand, if you were able to work little and eat well, that was a good thing. Your five senses told you how you were doing.

Then came tribal formation, and with it, the first taste of government. Other members of the tribe began to impose their assessment of how you were doing; laying it on you. If you didn't agree, and more particularly if you didn't conform, the tribe would take action against you.

This tradition continues today, except the 'tribal' decision-making is now embodied in government - which still claims (often) spurious rights to impose its will on how you should live.

Since in the modern world, we can't just wander off from the 'tribe' (world's too crowded for that) about all individuals can do is go join groups that will give them the kind of feedback and mirroring that they're really after. Which explains FaceBook and other social network successes.

People don't spend much time pondering such things, figuring they are probably obvious. But next time you click a web site, ask yourself this: "Is the web site providing me with useful/actionable information, or am I going there because I am basically a weak-willed sheep who needs to get reinforcement from others of a particular stripe in order to validate my lousy life?"

The crazy part is that living in a world where everything is being monetized (including as the Fed buying Treasuries proves, we're even now monetizing the monetizing), even your feelings are being bundled up and sold back to you.

Is this a great country and is technology cool, or what?

Halloween, Thanksturkey, and Xmas- cancelled by U.S. dollar collapse in October?

This is not the first person from whom I have heard rumblings of a U.S. dollar collapse coming at the end of October...

From:http://jsmineset.com/
Posted: Aug 14 2009 By: Jim Sinclair

Dear Comrades In Golden Arms,

85 days to go!

Today's incoming emails exceeded the 1200 mark, a great degree of which are asking me what is the motivation behind a countdown of days for the USDX.

There are various answers to this question of which TA is the least important.

The primary reason for this "out on the limb statement" is that the recent China/US financial Summit meeting in Washington which was requested by China, was not significantly pre-planned.

As I understand it there are two things wanted and one thing disapproved of.

The US financial leadership wants, but more so needs, Chinese buying of US Treasury offerings to remain at these levels but more so to increase to offset the wholly unavoidable increase in offering of US Federal Debt.

The Chinese wish to see the USA support the creation of a Super Sovereign Currency as an offset to dependence on the dollar for international settlements and national reserves.

The Chinese rightly feel that the greatest risk to their present dollar position's valuation is quantitative easing. or simply put, the monetization of one's own debt by the electronic creation of money for funding yourself.

I am informed that Chinese interests want to see both in 2009.

You will note that the QE program was extended until October, particularly the end of October. This is what Bernanke would like to see, hoping the Management of Perspective Economics will succeed. The Chairman as the academic he is really believes it is possible.

As market related, I know MOPE works only when it has the wind at its back such as from 1981 until 2001. After that it loses it strength until it evaporates into reality and the law of economics such as now.

Quantitative easing cannot be curtailed in 2009 or 2010. To curtail QE as the US Federal Deficit explodes would be to release interest rates to the marketplace that could easily take them to late 1979 early 1980s levels due to a currency event.

The USA cannot support a Super Sovereign Currency. To do so would be to disavow the US dollar as the universal reserve currency which the financial leadership of the USA still adheres to, seeing this period as only an aberration in the constant.

The USA, due to market considerations, cannot yield to Asia and China as spokesperson for the BRIC on the two criteria required to remain as purchasers of the US Treasury instruments, which is the only real support the dollar presently has.

I have given you two tools for timing as well as other resources like Martin Armstrong who was at one time nearly unknown in our crowd.

Tools of timing, some I have not shared with you, indicate a major potential turning point that could easily see a break below .7600 or .7200 coming in the final quarter of this year.

Add this all together and you get a November bull's eye for a loss of confidence in the US dollar internally as well as externally. That will end the misguided belief that MOPE, via its tool SPIN, defeats economic law.

Van Mises, Ricardo and Adam Smith have not been laid to rest by market manipulation. The wind is in the face of business now as a long-term trend. We are returning to basics and moving away from the fancy, complex and fraudulent.

All of this could have been fixed prior to the event of Lehman declaring bankruptcy. Now there are no PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS and NO PRACTICAL EXITS FROM CONSTANT QE.

Pandora's Box is open, only to be closed by markets as the downward spiral goes to its practical end, a return to commodity money.

We, here, will be proven correct in time and in price.

Respectfully yours,
Jim

Seperate outages halt stock exchanges in both NY and Warsaw... sniff... sniff... something smell fishy?

NYSE cancels orders pending due to system flaw
UPDATE 3-NYSE cancels orders pending due to system flaw

Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:32am IST

(Updates to include notice on canceled orders)

NEW YORK, Aug 13 (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange said on Thursday orders pending due to an earlier systems outage were canceled.

The exchange said earlier that four matching engines were affected by the outage and some customers did not receive acknowledgments for their orders.

The NYSE also said it will not issue reports on orders entered prior to the open and with a pending status, but it did not say if those orders were also canceled.

Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and some preferred Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shares were part of the hundreds of securities included in a list missing acknowledgments, the exchange said. It did not say if orders for all those securities were canceled. (Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Power outage delays stock trading in Warsaw
Associated Press
2009-08-13 06:15 PM

A power outage delayed the start of trading Thursday at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, chairman Ludwik Sobolewski said.

Trading usually begins at 9 a.m. (0700GMT) but was delayed for nearly three hours, when a backup system kicked into operation.

Sobolewski said trading was expected to end as usual at 4:30 p.m. (1430GMT).

He said the market's front-line systems should resume operation early next week. It was not immediately clear what caused the power outage.


DMG note:
Conspiracy theorists will note that the affected stocks include TARP heavy Bank of America (BAC.N) and some preferred Citigroup shares.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/another-glitch-strikes-the-new-york-stock-exchange-2009-8

Shantyown, USA and small town revitalization program thoughts...

Finally, somebody is actually trying to apply a natural social model to architecture, rather than create a new social structure and force it onto practice via architecture. (see below)

The best part about this is that the town is truly FOR the residents, with integrated support for small businesses owned and run BY the residents.

One thing I've noticed about all the "Main St. Revitalization" programs going on in small towns across the U.S., is that technically, the goal is not to support small businesses. It is to bring revenue to the TOWN.

Well, the small businesses are not really integrated with the town, its residents, or the social structure of these towns, and I think this is why it doesn't really work out as well as hoped in a lot of cases. Not only does the model rely on outside dollars to fund the under-utilized businesses (which is not necessarily sustainable), but those businesses are not really an integral part of the town's infrastructure. They are more of an aesthetic, nostalgic landmark, rather than a social or economic generator. Back when those Main St.'s were bustling, the social infrastructure was different, and instead of going to WalMart, you went down to Joe's store. His wife might make you a lemonade, you might talk about the fly ball his son hit the other day, and you would walk away knowing that your purchase was supporting a neighbor, who, in return, saw to it that you also got what you needed on a regular basis.

Ask yourself how you feel about "special ordering" something these days, and you might begin to see how our expectations have changed over time, with the increase in shopping "convenience".
In a lot of cases, what residents really want these days, is the convenience, instant gratification, and predictability of big box stores for the bulk of their purchases.
This includes grocery stores, which is a major point.

I believe that food is the most centrally unifying commonality in any community. If you allow a non-local entity to control or provide your food source, whether it be at the production or distribution level, then you are giving away a major source of self-sufficiency, solidarity, and sustainability for you community.

I just love the fact that this architectural plan includes markets! Somebody's paying attention.


From:
http://www.good.is/post/shantytown-usa/

Shantytown, U.S.A.

Just a short drive from the U.S.-Mexican border, a densely packed community will soon hum with activity. Homes will be jammed together, with any leftover space commandeered by taco stands, market stalls, and gathering places. It’ll be a far cry from the sanitized suburbs of southern California, but make no mistake: It will sit on the American side of the border.

Indeed, if the architect Teddy Cruz gets his way, the shantytowns of Tijuana, Mexico, will act as a blueprint of sorts for a new kind of urban development. “Architecture has been so distant from the politics and economics of development,” says Cruz. “We need to rethink the way we’ve been developing, and what we mean when we talk about housing, density, community, and neighborhood.”

Behind the precariousness of low-income communities, says Cruz, there is a sophisticated social collaboration: People share resources, make use of every last scrap, and look out for each other. Cruz is incorporating this resourcefulness into the planning of two new developments, in San Ysidro, a border-town community in southern San Diego, and in Hudson, New York. If they work as planned, these projects will become powerful case studies for a new approach to urban development that could be implemented across the country.

In collaboration with the nonprofit Casa Familiar, the San Ysidro development will include 30 housing units alongside spaces where residents can run small businesses. The model also accounts for sweat equity, allowing people who help with construction to gain rent credits for their work. Hudson, meanwhile, may not be a border community, but Cruz says the same conflicts are present—specifically, “a huge gap between rich and poor.” Cruz’s plan aims to vault the income gap with developments on several lots that are integrated into the city. The developments will include 60 housing units, playgrounds, a market, urban agriculture, and job-training facilities, all managed by a coalition of nonprofit groups.

Both projects require Cruz to go beyond the traditional role of an architect; rather than designing for a client, he is working with city governments to change the framework in which developments rise. “Beyond designing buildings, architects should design political and economic processes as well,” he says

FBI spied on TEA Party Americans

http://homelandsecurityus.com/?p=2659

19 April 2009: Even as average Americans were planning to get out in towns and cities to demonstrate against Big Government and Big Taxes, Federal Bureau of Intelligence Investigation (FBI) surveillance was being unleashed upon them. In fact, unsuspecting Tax Day TEA Party participants were being closely watched during the demonstration planning stages in a covert operation that began on or about March 23, 2009.

If you one of the estimated 750,000 Americans who attended one of about 600 TEA parties last week, you might have seen media cameras covering the event. Media cameras, however, were not the only cameras taking video at these events, something that has at least one current FBI agent concerned over the future of America. According to this agent - the same agent who provided the Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN) exclusively the unreleased photographs of the 11 missing Egyptian students who were the subject of a FBI BOLO in August 2006–placed his concerns for true patriots of the U.S. over his own career when he confided that covert surveillance was “planned and performed” at each of the TEA parties that took place last Tuesday.

“Listen to what I am saying,” stated the source during an interview with Doug Hagmann, founder (NEIN). “The Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Assessment that is receiving so much attention is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and the true patriotic citizens of this country are on the Titanic. This is what bothers me. But is goes far beyond that assessment. There have been very significant changes made over the last few years that redirect the focus and assets of the intelligence community internally. These changes have greatly accelerated under this administration, and the threats have been redefined to include those who used to be patriots. It’s not only chilling but absolutely insulting to God-fearing Americans.”

According to this unimpeachable source, a single-page confidential directive issued by the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC (FBIHQ) was sent to each of the 56 field offices located across the United States on or about March 23, 2009, instructing the Special Agents in Charge (SACs) of those offices to verify the date, time and location of each TEA Party within their region and supply that information to FBI headquarters in Washington. The source stated this correspondence termed the TEA parties “political demonstrations,” and added that the dissemination of the directive was very tightly controlled. “Not all agents were privy to this correspondence,” stated the source, who compared the dissemination to an older “Do Not File” classification.

In addition to obtaining or confirming the location and time of each “demonstration,” each field office was instructed to obtain or confirm the identity of the individual(s) involved in the actual planning and coordination of the event in each specific region, and include the local or regional Internet web site address, if any. The information collected by region was then reportedly sent to FBI Headquarters.

The source alleges that a second directive was issued on or about April 6, 2009 that reportedly instructed each SAC to coordinate and conduct, either at the field office level and/or with the appropriate resident agency, covert video surveillance and data collection of the participants of the TEA parties. Surveillance was to be performed from “discreet fixed or mobile positions” and was to be performed “independently and outside of the purview of local law enforcement.”

Although the level of detail collected from each operation is unclear, the information was reportedly submitted to Washington, where, “at the level of the National Security Branch (NSB), this information was to “include the office of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), and integrated with a restricted access database

, one that reportedly is accessible to only two agencies” [of the 14 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community, according to the source.

“The implications to the citizens of the U.S. are ominous. It seems that there is a hostile political agenda coming from Washington that characterizes the supporters of our constitutional freedoms as threats to our domestic security, which is totally absurd. The redirection, the refocusing of domestic threats from al Qaeda cells to ‘flag waving right-wingers’ is something that has gone from a murmur a few years ago to a roar today.”

Training government-issued cameras on ordinary citizens, many of whom brought their children to an estimated 600 Tax Day TEA Parties is a page torn out of George Orwell’s 1984 and makes the term “God Bless America” more meaningful than ever.

The Northeast Intelligence Network and Canada Free Press expect the government’s denial of the surveillance of the TEA Parties to go viral as soon as this story is posted.