fnord

Brought to you by Peter, whose post Santa the Spy reminded me of yet another Ray Stevens classic:

(direct link to the vid on YouTube)

O’course, Lobo and I never filled the snolfs’ heads with the Santa myth ... and now that they’re old enough, they see the snooping, nannying connection between “Santa” and the state. They don’t care much for either one. :-D

Just sat down to enjoy my coffee—a little late this morning after a very pleasant, but long day with family yesterday, but I figure I’ll say more about that at some point, preferably with pictures as well—and made the misnake of perusing the Reuters headlines. So ... I’m gonna vent a little so that the chocolates I’ll be starting in just a few minutes don’t have a bitter taste to them.

I think pretty much everybody who’s given any attention to recent economic news knows where Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson worked before climbing into the govcart; similarly, they also know that his bail– financial fascism tsar is also from that company. The ties between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury go deeper than that, however. Keeping the cozy relationship in mind, and heralding the Brave New World unfolding before us, I humbly submit a more fitting name for the currency: the Sachson.

It seems fitting, in more ways than the obvious one.

Costa Rica:
Arenal Kayaks – kayaking tours and more; trusted individual with whom I have done business and been highly satisfied

USSA:
Cat’s Curiosities – Cat Farmer, Las Vegas; online bookstore and physical shop in NV; trusted individual whom I have met in person; have not done business with yet
Jill of Many Trades – Mama Liberty [email to myeft_coach at yahoo.com], Wyoming; offers EFT and other energy therapy coaching, either in person or via email and/or telephone; teaches several levels of handgun classes & is NRA certified instructor; retired nurse and knowledgeable herbalist; trusted individual whom I have met in person many times, and have done business with and been highly satisfied
Mailable Art – “A. Subset”, mobile; individual I have met in person, briefly; have not yet done business with
The Marksman’s Box – Gene McCarron, Wyoming; individual I have met in person, briefly; also vouched for by Mama Liberty; have not done business with yet
Restored Spirit Arts – jewelry, including custom made jewelry; trusted individual with whom I have done business and been very satisfied
Richardson and Bluhm – Warren Bluhm and B. W. Richardson; I have met both, and satisfactorily done business with both; highly trusted individuals
Navigating In the New World – book by Australian Shaun Saunders; individual whom I have known well for years but not yet met in person; highly trusted
J. Smith books – Jon [email to j-wyant at austin.rr.com], Fredericksburg, Texas; he’s also near completion of massage therapy training and will accept clients for cash, gold, silver, or barter, fees dependent upon session length and distance to come to you; trusted individual with whom I have successfully bartered
Sunni’s Caramels – me, WA (north of Seattle, south of Bellingham); homemade caramels, truffles, and other treats; special orders welcome; can make gluten-free chocolate cakes, cheesecakes, and regular cakes, pies, etc. for local pickup or delivery
Sunni’s Salon – Tom Ender and me; Amazon and other bookseller’s affiliate sales; Salon Payola guarantees a review; I will review books, music, movies for other sites for a fee [barter welcome]; I am also available as a ghostwriter or copy editor
Vera Verba – Sean Hastings and Paul Rosenberg; book publisher and seller (print and online, although the entire catalog is not currently available online); t-shirts also available; I have met Paul in person multiple times and have a great deal of trust in him; have not yet done business with VV

If you want to be included on this list, please send me an email [either my first name at this domain or sunni.snake at Gmail; sending to both is a good hedge against the email demons that have been intermittently bothering me] with “Agora” somewhere in the subject line. Please include a link to your web site, if you have one, or an eddress; your business(es), general location, especially if important to your work; payment form(s) accepted; and if I do not know you, two pro-freedom references I can contact to vouch for you.

That’s what I consider a more reality-oriented headline for the New York Times article, Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings. Some excerpts from throughout the article [links omitted, all emphasis mine]:

It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first. ....

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.” ....

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

“You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the economy, frozen.” Mr. Schumer said. “That hasn’t happened before. It’s a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing you do know is you can’t leave them frozen or the economy will just head south at a rapid rate.” ....

Lawmakers in both parties described the meeting in Ms. Pelosi’s office on Thursday night with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke as collaborative, and that they were prepared to put politics aside to address the needs of the American people. ....

But it was clear they continued to examine ways to make clear that the government was stepping up not just to help the major financial firms but also to protect the interests of American taxpayers and families by safeguarding their pensions and college savings, and by preventing any further drying up of consumer credit.

I would have hoped that part of that “stunned silence” included these bozos realizing—finally—that no group of individuals, no matter how bright nor how many degrees and pedigrees they bring to the table, can manage all the vast markets that comprise an economy. And really, can we even separate out “economies” that correspond to the imaginary lines on our maps in a meaningful way? With individuals and groups from all over the globe buying property and corporations in the USSA, and of course the importing and exporting that goes on constantly, and foreign investment/support in Treasury instruments and the FRN itself, where does the USSA economy end and another entity’s begin? But such a hope is always in vain, and thus it was revealed yet again that the hubris of the ruling class knows no bounds: more intervention will save us all!

The question is, how? How does one save the taxpayers by stealing even more of their wealth and redistributing it? How does it help them when that process props up the very companies that misrepresented their goods, allowed applicants to lie about assets and then didn’t even bother to check out the lies in approving mortgage loans far beyond their ability to repay? Since when do such crappy businesses deserve to even stay in business, let alone to receive even more corporate welfare? Oh, right: since crony capitalism became synonymous with “free markets” and passed off as what underpins the USSA economy.

I have never claimed to be an economics whiz, but I know enough to realize that shuffling paper around does not inherently add value—yet that was precisely what drove much of the last growth cycle. I also understand that one cannot indefinitely create credit out of thin air; there will be a reckoning when the “assets” that back it are found to be insufficient. And thus, I think that a Mr. Wolfgang Münchau was spot on when he pegged the current crisis as one of solvency, not liquidity—way back in March, no less. People all around the world understand the basics of budgeting and running a household, and successfully resist the temptation to overextend themselves. It is not terribly complicated, except in the heads of central bankers who cannot resist pushing the buttons and pulling the levers; nor in the minds of the politicians who make contradictory promises out of both sides of their mouth without a thought as to who will bear the costs (or how they will be borne).

No matter what action they take, it hurts, because it limits the freedom that markets must have to operate properly. Letting companies that were imprudent and/or unethical fail is the swiftest course out of the mess that’s coming, but we can already see that is not the course the central bankers and politicians will choose. It will be more intervention, more pain, and a very protracted correction that will be far worse than marking everything to market now and clearing the debris. Ma and Pa Main Street do not have lobbyists on the Hill, you know; but the investment bankers, real estate brokers, and other “market sectors” all do.

To all the commentators and “analysts” who are now bemoaning the end of the free market in this country, I can only ask: Where the fuck have you been? There has been no systemic free market here, ever. Even whatever black markets exist are pressured by rules and regulations and their promised punishments in the mainstream marketplace.

What can we do to minimize the coming pain? Being in this country, that’s a very tough question, as we will not be able to avoid the dollar crash that is gathering momentum already. But we can minimize the damage by finding and creating agorist networks, and using them to step outside of the crashing mainstream economic system as much as possible. I’ve been meaning, for far too long now, to create a list of pro-freedom businesses and entrepreneurs; I’ll do my best to get something up before the weekend is out, even if it’s very rudimentary. If you have an agorist business and want to be included on the list, let me know. Other ideas are of course welcome in the comments.

Systems rise, and systems fall. Through it all, enterprising individuals can be amazingly resilient, in part because they stay outside the system and can see and act on trends more nimbly. That kind of activity is what’s needed now, both for enhanced survival and for teaching others what a true, freed market is. The faster we escape from the dog–chasing–its–own–tail pseudo-solutions offered by the federal government, banksters, and others of that ilk, the better.

Many smart people look at the current turmoil in the investment/financial sphere and wrongly conclude, “That won’t affect my savings and investments. My bank is FDIC insured.” It may be; but it turns out, despite all the headlines about the FDIC fund drying up, that the truth is far, far worse: like Social Security, it doesn’t exist.

I found a very interesting story a few days ago, covering how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac execs abused their political connections and hybrid private–government status to hide fraud and extend their reach. I tried to find the story late last night, but got a message that “the page has expired” instead. I tried the Washington Post web site, as the text suggested, but my detailed searching came up blank. Thinking that highly unusual, I checked around some more this morning, and found my suspicions confirmed. A number of bloggers had commented on the story or posted a link to it; his post is dated 9/14/08. A bit more digging revealed that the story still existed on the MSNBC server, in a mobile format. Lest it be memory-holed there too, I have copied the story in its entirety here, because it contains very important information (although coming too late to do much good regarding the players involved) and because it is outrageous that such a revealing article has apparently been deemed unsafe for USSA readers to see. Expect similar shenanigans as more institutions get bail– nationalized, and the economic crises and political charades continue.

The text behind the curtain is as captured from the mobile page, but without page breaks and the accompanying image.

When I wrote in the introductory column to the most recent Sunni’s Salon that “we aren’t holding high hopes for a bumper crop of anything but lessons learned”, I wasn’t indulging in false modesty. And it is now official—as reports start to come in, even friends with self-professed brown thumbs are reaping their rewards. So, how does Sunni’s garden grow? Let’s go out to the patch to review the sorry state of affairs.

The chart behind the curtain will probably accomplish that. I snagged it from some econ blog I happened across. It’s kinda big and might mess up the formatting here for those of you with smaller screens, but I dare not shrink it further, as it’s barely legible as is.

This semi-rant has been building for some time, as I’ve wandered around the web and seen all manner of definitions and musings about what rights are and where they come from and how they should be identified, protected, enforced, etc. Fie to all, I say.

My, my, my. The bad news has been mounting fast for all the healthocrats protecting the USSA flock. Crows might become an endangered species soon. It could happen ... if all the nanny-ninnies were intellectually honest enough to admit that they’ve been wrong for decades.

Not that the greenies have a monopoly on hubris—many humans seem to have the idea that what they have created, or what they value, must be preserved as is for all time. But environmentalists showcase the concept so very well, not only in their actions but in the fact that their most formidable opponent is often nature itself.

For those who want a better sense of who the Sunni Snake is, I offer these random glimpses:
  When I read something that is patently bullshit, in good reptilian fashion I typically vent with a, "Ssssst!"
  Half Scandinavian. Didn't get the blonde and buxom genes, though.
  Got the stoicism, and stick-straight hair.
  Other half is yer general western European muttly mix.
  Because both of my parents died relatively young, I have an inordinate fear of following in their footsteps.
  That's really the only serious fear I have.
  Although I try to be very respectful of others' preferences, I'm a toucher, and can get quite unhappy fairly quickly if I'm unable to express my affection for someone physically.

  Yep, that's gotten me in trouble sometimes.
  Alcohol stokes my muse.
  Alcohol plus caffeine is even better. (Anyone got drink recipes that include both, but not sodas?)
  Southpaw!
  I have been a hard-core science nerd practically since coming out of diapers.
  Mushy romantic songs really get to me, even though I know better than to believe 'em.
  I also tend to score high on those test-your-geekiness quizzes all over the web.

  I don't put a lot of faith in those kinds of quizzes.
  Most "psychological" tests I've seen aren't worth much, either.
  Being pregnant was so enjoyable I regret not having more children.
  Once, I tried to pretend I wasn't smart in order to get guys to like me.
  It lasted maybe three days.
  Guys who mattered liked me anyway. (I'm sorry I didn't always recognize that you mattered then, though!)
  I don't have a favorite color. I do not intend to try to choose one.

  INTJ (highly borderline on all but "I"); Virgo; year of the ox.
  At my best (far as I can tell), 35-25-36; 119. At the height of pregnancy, around 165.
  Don't ask what they are now; I'm working on improving them.
  Besides, I care more how I look and what I can do than what any numbers say about my body.
  I love snow, and cold weather in general.
  The first time I saw real mountains was in Switzerland. I felt like I'd finally returned to a beloved home, and it was genuinely hard to leave them.
  Downhill skiing gets me incredibly randy.

  My body's thermostat seems to be set a notch higher than most people's. Thus my nickname "the hot-blooded snake".
  Whenever I hear or read the word "Aristotle", I get an image in my mind of dog testicles. That's happened since I was about ten years old. I don't know why!
  Somehow my brain scrambled learning green and orange. It still requires conscious thought to make sure I say the color I mean.
  I'd like to kiss my eighth-grade boyfriend just one more time.
  Rock; jazz; some metal; big band and swing; classical; blues. Not so much opera or country, but I have found some gems in those genres. Friends have given me an appreciation of new age, punk, and folk.
  The first album I saved up for was A Night at the Opera. It was severely scratched on one side, but I loved having it so much I didn't return it.
  My first fangirl obsession was the Bee Gees, starting with Jive Talkin'. I bought Main Course, then all their old syrupy stuff. I liked their disco stuff too, but not as much, mostly because it's a lot of Barry's falsetto, and I like Robin's quavery vocals better.

  I taught myself to play the flute, and through sheer determination, became pretty good at it. I also taught myself to play the oboe (with minimal private lessons), tootle passably on the clarinet and trumpet, and given enough time, can peck out some simple tunes on a piano by ear. I'm not good at sight-reading and improvisation, though.
  Unless I've had recent vocal instruction, I cannot carry a tune, even if it's inside a hermetically-sealed, lead-lined box with both of my hands wrapped tightly around it.
  That doesn't stop me from singing, sometimes quite enthusiastically.
  But I'm pretty self-conscious about it, so you'd hafta sneak up on me to hear how awful I am.
  One of my favorite pairs of shoes has been a very comfortable pair of gorgeous blue suede shoes. Bright, electric blue high heels that I often wore to my teaching job at a conservative, Catholic university with a black denim miniskirt or short black jumper with silver buttons.
  The administration at the school seemed to like me almost as much as the students did.
  Probably for different reasons, though.

  For many, many years I couldn't watch scary movies or read scary books. I didn't believe the stuff was real, but my imagination made it come so alive that I'd have nightmares for weeks.
  For a while I wanted to be the brunette version of Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In.
  But I also wanted to be a boy when I was young.
  Not having to wear shirts outside was the main reason.
  Well, that and the fact that I would have gotten toy cars and stuff to play with. Instead I had to wait for my younger brother to come along.
  The first deeply influential book I read was Jane Eyre. I could relate to a lot of it, and re-read it often for years. I give it a lot of credit for awakening the free-thinking individualist in me.
  I have no guilty pleasures. Guilt is an emotion I very rarely experience.

  My prim Norwegian grandmother taught me that it's okay to pee outside sometimes.
  Since I never thought I'd have children, I was almost totally unprepared for the undertaking when I got pregnant with my first snolf.
  Oh, yeah: SNake + wOLF = snolf. There's one of each flavor.
  Despite my lack of preparation, and in large part due to Lobo's patient, loving support (especially in the early years) and my own mother's fine example in many ways, being a mom is a gig I'm really enjoying.
  I love seafood, but not many in my family do, so I don't get to eat it nearly as much as I'd like.
  Identifying "favorites" is something I totally suck at. My favorites change as I learn more, and try different things.
  The song that best captures my approach to living is Rush's Available Light.

  I'll gladly admit it when I'm wrong, but I'll only do it when I'm convinced I really am wrong. That seems to really piss off some people.
  Thrill-seeking is fun, but I'm not stupid about it.
  I'm not as sanguine as I used to be about starting to look older.
  But I'm pleased to see more silver in my hair ... even though my hair also seems to be getting a bit wavy too.
  It's a tossup whether I'm happiest outside -- hiking, camping, shooting -- or whipping up something in a nicely-equipped kitchen with great music playing.
  The only person I've ever wanted to be, other than myself, is Marie Curie. Still fantasize about being a science goddess sometimes.
  The thing I dislike most about myself is my lack of mechanical aptitude. Being good with cooking tools doesn't count.

I am quite undecided about this turn of events in the housing market. Banks’ mail jingles as borrowers walk is the headline on a commentary by James Saft. For anyone who hasn’t come across the phrase “jingle mail” yet, it describes the phenomenon of homeowners walking away from a home because the debt owed is greater than its current value—and so, they mail the keys to the lender. The unmistakable signal jingle mail sends is, “I’m done here. The house is yours.”—thus breaking the mortgage contract. Is that wrong? I’ve seen a fair bit of commentary arguing both ways; but none of it has been from a pro-freedom perspective.

The least I can do is be considerate and put it behind the curtain so y’all aren’t unwittingly exposed to my nutty ravings.