Who Is Gary Johnson?

An intelligent, successful businessman. A non lawyer. A non Ivy League graduate of state college. A tri-athlete and marathoner. Translation=Hard Work. A former Governor who has used the biggest tool ever invented to combat statism. The veto. A libertarian.

An excellent choice for President. Not widely known.

Pay attention to what a man has actually done. Discount anything a man says he will do. Had we vetted Obama that way...he would not be in the White House wasting precious time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson

Leaving Las Vegas

Today I traveled to Vegas by way of convertible from Boise. I left the top down way too long and absolutely irradiated my face. Vegas it seems, is at the crossroads for my friends and family who live in Denver and my friends and family that live in Santa Barbara.

I used to travel to Vegas several times a year as a young man. I loved to play poker. I was here the day they tried to blow up Frank Rosenthal at the Stardust. (casino, the movie) I was staying just down the street at the Sahara. In 1987 I moved to Las Vegas. I had some success playing poker in Northern Nevada and I wanted to play in Vegas- where there are games everywhere- at all hours of the day or night. There is no shortage of action here.

I can't even begin to tell you what that was like. Quite honestly, I cannot describe myself as anything but naive and delusional. Ultimately, like virtually all gamblers- I went broke in 1988. I also landed in the hospital. The only good thing that happened to me in Vegas was that I met my future wife and of course, we were married here. We left family here when we moved to Idaho- and that prompted our frequent visits. Somewhere in the mid 1990's, The movie, "Leaving Las Vegas" was released.

I loved that movie because it was real. I have seen people do precisely what Cage's character came here to do. Whether drinking yourself to death was a conscious or unconscious decision doesn't seem to matter- the results are often the same. I knew three or four people who did that very thing. I met a guy, an old homicide cop from Chicago named Milt. An alcoholic named Bill Parks that I shared a hospital room with for two weeks and a very famous poker player named Bill Smith. I played with Bill a lot at the Gold Coast. Always smoking and drinking beer. Read this wikipedia piece which is very accurate. You'll laugh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Smith_%28poker_player%29 I'd throw in Stu Ungar but I didn't really know Stu although I played cards with him. They did a movie about Stu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Roller:_The_Stu_Ungar_Story  Stuey was a math whiz. Stu also loved cocaine. If you have any character flaws when you arrive here- this city is like a giant magnifying glass. It will help you find those flaws and magnify them. This city facilitates and exploits addiction like no other- and it can certainly help you kill yourself. Kind of like Dr. Kevorkian.

About ten years ago, I was playing in a poker game at the Mirage. This tall, lanky kid, sits next to me and soon we strike up a conversation. The kid is about the same age that I was when I moved to Las Vegas. He had asked me if I lived here. After I gave him my brief bio, he gets all giddy and tells me that he is moving to Las Vegas from Michigan just like I had done. He is excited. He tells me that he has saved up 10k and that he is going to play poker for a living. I sat there just kind of stunned. I wasn't sure what to say. Gullible and naive kids like I was and perhaps he was, have to live out our dreams. Would he have listened to me if I had tried to dissuade him? No of course not. Every gambler thinks that he is a little smarter, a little better, than the next guy. I was like that. I think this kid was too. I did the only thing that made sense. I wished him the very best.

On the way down today, I heard about the stock market slaughter and listened as gold rallied once again. Tonight I am staying at a nice hotel with no gaming. Quiet and serene. I played cards for about 30 minutes after dinner and made 50 bucks. That's a big score for me nowadays. I have about a pound of Noxzema on my burning man face and it's getting late. Tomorrow I will pick up some friends. On Friday, I'll be leaving Las Vegas once again. It gets easier all the time.

Puzzling Day-DJIA Up 400 and Change

Ok, the Fed says they are going to leave rates low for two years. Big deal. Who didn't know that?

In fact, if you want to know what the Fed is going to do- there is already a blueprint. It is called Japan. Japan has experienced 22 years of dead time. The call it the lost decade(s). Their debt to GDP is the highest in the world at 200%. Unlike us though, the people of Japan own most of the debt. We sold ours to China and the consortium of private and international bankers called the Fed.

So why the rally? Are we getting new jobs? Are we making new things? Has anything changed?  This was a typical dead cat bounce on no news. A short covering rally. The trend is down and it will stay down. I guess the only good news is that " We will not monetize the debt" Bernanke says there is no QE3. Yet.

Bet me he is full of shit. President Screw Off will be begging for QE3. Before the primaries. Bank on it.

Is Obama Smart?

Excellent piece from the Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904140604576495932704234052.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Historic Firsts

I am not sure how I missed this at the Doug Ross joint, but I did. It is a list of all of the wonderful things that President Obama has done for us.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/06/president-barack-obamas-complete-list.html

And Right On Time, Here Comes Another Bullshit Rescue Attempt

I find the markets fascinating. The tug of war is on. On the heels of black Monday, the banker class pushed the panic button.

Trust me when I say this. Bernanke is going to be "directed" to put a positive spin on our economic nightmare. Today, I fully expect him to hint at QE3 or any number of things to stop the flow of blood. This will not be what he actually believes. This will be him, selling us out, as per usual.

The confession that we are fucked? QE3. The ruling class have a choice right now. Let the damage they caused finally unwind- enter the penalty phase and get it over with (1) or try to gerrymander another bullshit rescue attempt and cause even further and more significant damage(2).

I believe they will pick door number (2) again, Monty. The ruling class is desperate. They have a lot to lose. The rest of us? Nada. The bankers want their bonuses, houses in the Hamptons. The politicians want to get re-elected. So it is, TPTB (the powers that be) and their lackeys, guys like Krugman and this MIT (Bernanke classmate) educated idiot, will get their way. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-09/rogoff-says-fed-likely-to-embark-on-qe3-act-decisively-to-aid-recovery.html

The cumulative effect of all of this money printing? More wealth distribution to the ruling class, more inflation and theft from the middle class, and when it is over, we are going to have the same shitty results. Keep repeating the same mistake, keep getting the same results. Ad infinitum.

QE3 is the confession. If QE3 begins, that is the signal to throw in the towel. At that point you should take everything you have and invest in gold, real estate outside our borders, Icelandic treasuries. The reality is- QE3 is like saying we only have one solution. We are going to print, print, and print our way to hyper-inflation. If you don't think a hyperinflation event can happen here, if you think Weimar, Germany or Zimbabwe is impossible or a wives' tale- watch closely. These bastards, and that desperate man in the White House, are just the right recipe.

Wow. I cannot believe this is happening. I gotta go buy more gold.

Thankfully, It's Time For The Bitter Harvest

This is about restorative justice. This is what happens when greedy and thieving men with power try to avoid the consequences of their actions. This is about hope and promise.

From 2002 to 2008, I witnessed some of the craziest shit I had ever seen. Kids buying houses with virtually no credit and the house doubling in value in two years. The young couples invariably did one of two things. They bought a larger or a second house (greed) or they took a loan out with that mythical equity- for toys. Motorcycles, campers, boats, that sort of thing. 

People were flipping houses. It was insane. The world was so saturated with credit that any idiot on the planet could get a home loan and did. I didn't fall for that easy credit. Not because I am smarter than anyone else- I have just always disliked banks. I had a 15 yr. first, no second. Calling banks a necessary evil would be accurate.

I would like to say one other thing. This is an absolute core belief of mine. In life when you make a serious mistake- you must pay a serious penalty. That's the rules. It goes like this. If you get drunk and decide to drive- you pay the price for getting caught or being in a crash. That might include incapacitation or death. When you cheat on your wife- the penalty is emotional and economic loss. Sometimes severe. When you over extend yourself on credit, you suffer economic loss. You lose your shit. That is what is supposed to happen. What no person in their right mind could imagine- is that the people making those economic mistakes would...(A) Escape the consequences (B) Socialize their mistakes and penalties by stealing (more) innocent peoples' money.

That is precisely what the fuck happened in the fall of '08. And the bankers and the politicians thought they were clever. They were gonna slap each other on the back, get away with the greatest grand theft of all time, and carve out some solution so that they could avoid the consequences and do it all over again. The ruling class violated my core belief by not taking responsibility and suffering the penalty. So it was- that these assholes lit a brushfire in my mind that has not stopped burning for three years. And make no mistake about my colorblind anger, Obama is one of those assholes.

I want justice. I will not be happy until every crooked banker, every crooked President, every crooked politician pays their penalty. And if that means we have to bankrupt this country, and everyone loses their asses, then so be it. Like most, I don't have anything to fear. I don't have anything left to lose. It's been three or four years in the making.

Please don't mistake my attitude or why I write. I don't want any more damage to come to the people who didn't make mistakes. But I have to accept the unfortunate reality that this system is designed to screw over the blameless. Plenty of innocent people have lost jobs, homes, health care. I take no glee in that. I didn't design the system- I simply recognize it. I would love nothing more than to isolate every party responsible and make them pay their penalty. But that is impossible now. They have socialized the loss and spread it among all of us.

I don't write because I need some ego validation- some opportunity to say "I told you so." I write because I want to start a brush fire in your mind. I want you to be just a little bit angry like I am. I want you to recognize that fear is the weapon that the ruling class uses to keep us in line and steal from us. It was fear, "the world is going to collapse" nonsense that Hank Paulson used to rob us of a trillion dollars. It is fear that the ruling class continues to use against us and steal our wealth by convincing us that if we do not turn over the national coffers, raise the debt ceiling, we shall all wind up in economic hell. Many of us are experiencing economic hell now. I see no sense in not inviting the banker class to come join us.

Don't mistake the core beliefs of a large place like ZeroHedge or a small place like Frankenstein Government. We are not depressed or pessimistic. We are simply tired of the crooks and their co-conspirators getting away with murder. Green shoots of justice are beginning to take hold in this country. Bank of America is on the verge of collapse. Our enabling President, the one that gave the architects of the collapse a "get out of jail free card" is starting to feel the pain. Standard and Poor's is beginning to tell the truth about our ridiculous debt. The dollar is dropping, gold is rising, downgrades are coming, states are broke, and the shit storm is just beginning. It's about time. Halle fucking lujah!

I don't have one ounce of sympathy for any person taking out a loan they couldn't afford or a bank that issued them. I don't have an ounce of sympathy for the bankers who bought those crappy mortgages or the rating agencies that called them "AAA" investments and ripped off the investing world. I do not have one ounce of sympathy for Wall St., Obama, or that dysfunctional Congress. If I had my way, I'd bounce all of them into the street on their collective asses or into a jail cell. Instead and realistically, I am watching the "green shoots" of justice develop. The yin and now the yang. In life, when you screw up- you gotta pay the penalty. All the ruling class has managed to do was avoid suffering the consequences for a little while. It's harvest time. Time to reap what we have sown. That's why I am happy. For those seeking justice, this is all we are going to get. Perhaps once this is finally over, we can plant a new crop. I hope so. That I think, is the nature of things.