http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/03/upscale.html#comments

"The unwind of "positions" now underway among the big bankz is the process of previously anticipated capital accumulation vanishing down a black hole. It will be gone forever."

Absolutely spot on Jim! Or you can take the same medicine Bloomberg's way:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHCnscodO1s0

However, I believe it is hopeless fantasy for us to believe this unwinding will go as well as Japan's. It will not and it will be the middle class and working stiffs that stoically suffer as their ever-weakening dollars, earned through so much toil, are worth less and less with each Wall Street bailout scheme. All while the value of the dollar is sacrificed at the pyre for the Hampton's crowds summer escapades in their Escalades.

I have conducted a fair bit of travel of late for work and child, driving mostly in a Honda Civic getting 35 mpg. The "weirdnesses" out there on there on the interstates and in the truck stops is very palatable. I mean diesel stuns truck drivers as it hovers around $4 a gallon. I am very empathetic and I can sense that the general population is starting to understand that we are increasingly screwed.

To me, the drivers of the massive SUV War Wagons careen down the road in an ever more wanton and reckless fashion. Pushing to the side a small, insignificant Honda which may defy their majesty and reduce their divinely given speed. Interestingly, at the great revealer or truck stops, rest areas and gas stations, it is usually rather small people (physically)that emerge from these monster vehicles. As I stand 6 foot 7" and weight in at 235, I unfold from my Honda to dwarf even their metallic war machines. There is a great deal of compensation going on I can tell. And America thrives on ruthless "Me First" competition after all so it plays right into short little people's ego needs.

As our dollar is sacrificed on the Pyre of Wall Street and our standards of living decay; I wonder when, if ever, Joe Sixpack and Nascar Nancy will wake up and smell the rotting food bank? Then, probably far too late for themselves, they will realize that Uncle Sam is a cracker that plays polo on the weekends and yachts with the banking boyz while his publicist expels pablum wrapped in Apple Pie, the US flag and our kids's overseas.

I read that 1 in 6 in West Virginia now need food stamps. Food banks and pantries are running bare and still the inflation rises. Inflation we all know the FED totally ignores (energy and food) so as to continue the Nascar fantasy and buy the Hamptons some more time.

Posted by: Riddick | March 31, 2008 at 10:48 AM