shadowrifty's blog: "pictures"

bailout?? So now we are looking at paying the top 10 % 700 billion dollars....this is a very big number and some people don't have an idea of how much money that is. So to start i thought i might put it in perspective. if you work for minimum wage all year 40 hours a week you bring home 10,712. a single billion would pay for 93,353.25 (rounded to the nearest hundredth) minimum wage workers for a year. to put this into further prospective. according to bls.gov (bureau of labor statistics) there are approximately 1.9 million people working in the us at or below minimum wage. this bailout would pay for all their salaries (actually i rounded up to 2 million) for 32 years. One last approximation for you to consider. The war in Iraq has cost us less than this bailout will. the way this "bailout" is looking to be termed is just plain a bad idea. basically the mortgage backed securities that are running all our businesses into the ground are going to be bought by the us government, then supposedly these securities will be sold when everything stabilizes. Basically the government wants to open a company that wants to buy failing products and try to sell them off later. this is very close to writing yourself a check for a credit card that is overdue. there are good points and bad points to this. the good point is America's credit rating is pretty high. and our money is only really worth what everyone thinks it is. With nothing really backing our currency we can only compare our currencies buying power with that of other nations, and since other nation are going through very similar issues ( because we sold them the same bonds we sold here[ great America tactic "we eat shit you eat it too). the bad part is were bailing out people who had bad bisnuss practices and leaving the consumer out to dry. some people are now asking how will this bailout help the consumers who were taken by these mortgages? well the real answer is not much. The government is claiming they cant renegotiate the mortgage contracts because all the people who own the securities would need to agree and at this point tracking down all the pieces is going to be next to impossible. the problem being that if the government was to renegotiate the contracts without all stakeholders consent then they could be sued by the paper holders who did not give consent. Now the first thought that i had was the telco immunization that happened a few months back. The telco's broke the law by tapping wires without a warrant and the government said they could not be suide for this if they had a note from the government (quite a nice little loop there huh?) anyway why dont they do the same thing for mortgage contract renegotiation? but there is an even more interesting way to run this bailout. and it starts with the question, why doesn't the government just buy all the mortgages? well the reason is because the current idea of buying the securities will allow the us to buy the contracts at a discount, but the problem is without renegotiating the contracts the investment is still bad. but since the government doesn't need to make a profit, they just need to brake even on this deal there is a more simplistic solution. issue loans to pay off current mortgages that are in danger of foreclosing. then issue the new loan on better terms. terms that aren't meant to swing a profit but simply pay off themselves, and the infrastructure needed to issue them. This is not to say that some homes will be foreclosed on but lets break this down a bit more. So lets say you got into one of these bad loans. Your bank is going to foreclose on you and kick you out. One of the steps to the process would be to submit the foreclose to the us treasury. They review the case and decide you meet such and such guidelines. The treasury then issues you a new loan and pays off the bank of original issue. Now the mortgage on your home is on a reasonable payment plan and the bank has made a good investment since they got paid. This allows us to circumvent the original issue of too many hands on the securities for your mortgage, since those people got paid off and a new mortgage is issued. Now under the new terms the government could also issue securities for the better loans and have the costs covert on the back end if they want, or they could simply hold all the risk and pass the whole were a government not a business so we don't have to turn a profit savings on to the consumer by lowering their interest rate, or extending their loan to lower payments. now here is the real trick of it. if we do this for say a time frame of 3 years, the banks have extra insurance on their mortgage lending, knowing that if the house is foreclosed on it will more than likely be paid off by the government allows them to hand out more loans. which means more people can buy them, which means demand goes up, which means the sluggish housing sector currently anchoring down our economy can be lifted and the gears start moving again. this of course would be a much more simplistic solution with a bit more administrative overhead, and would not allow congress to write a blank check to the financial community, which although many say otherwise, allot of them wish to do to help stave off the financial sectors lobbyists.

So here is a copy and paste from fortune magazine. I was a little surprised by this and i think you might be too. We cant just keep waving this shit off and saying ahh fuck it there is nothing i can do, cuz if you dont protect you and yours from this shit we are headed down a pool fast. anyway enugh of that on to the article FORTUNE 500 Current Issue Subscribe to Fortune (Fortune Magazine) -- We made it through the bursting of the Internet bubble and now the bursting of the real estate bubble. Next we may be approaching the end of the most worrisome bubble of all: the standard-of-living bubble. That conclusion comes from the latest data on credit card debt. It's growing fast, but the problem is bigger than that - and to understand what it means, we have to take a few steps back. For the past several years, the average inflation-adjusted total pay of American workers hasn't been increasing. That means we haven't been building a foundation for increases in our living standard. You might be tempted to say that by definition our living standard couldn't have increased, but that's not quite right. Even with stagnant real incomes, we can always live a little better every year through borrowing and pretending that our living standard is still rising, just as it was for decades. So the Great Bull Market made us feel rich, and we felt justified in saving less and borrowing - and spending - more. After stocks collapsed, home prices took off, making us feel rich all over again. So we continued saving less and spending more, creating the illusion that our living standard was still rising. In 2005 our personal savings rate went negative, but even that didn't slow us down, because our homes were still appreciating - and rising home values meant that household net worths weren't declining. (Don't be fooled by that saving-rate spike in this year's second quarter; it was probably a one-time event resulting from the federal stimulus payments.) Of course, we don't hear those assurances anymore. Stocks are back where they were eight years ago, and home prices are where they were five years ago. But personal debt is much higher than ever before, and average pay is still going nowhere in real terms. So now how do we live as if our living standard is still rising? End of easy money That's where the credit card reports come in. Last year, just as the subprime crisis happened, credit card debt took off. The home-equity ATM had been shut down, so people turned to the last source of easy money they had left, the most expensive debt on the menu, credit card borrowing. Since credit card debt has been growing much faster than the economy - more than 8% in last year's third and fourth quarters and over 7% in May (the most recent month reported)- people are apparently using it as a substitute for income. Thus, for the past year or so we have still maintained the standard-of-living illusion. But a big crunch is coming - and here's why. Credit card debt, like mortgage debt, gets bundled, securitized, and sold off by banks. Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), one of America's largest credit card lenders, just reported that it lost $176 million in the second quarter through securitizing such debt. That happens when the buyers of those securities observe rising delinquency rates and rising interest rates, and decide the debt is worth less than Citi thought. More generally, the amount of credit card debt that is securitized nationwide has plunged by more than half in the past five months because it's getting riskier. That means credit card issuers will be charging customers higher interest rates, and since the banks can't offload as much of the debt as before, they'll have less money to lend to cardholders. The squeeze has already started, which is why Congress is in the process of passing the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, which would prevent issuers from changing rates and terms without warning, among many other provisions. But bottom line, the credit card money window is going to start closing - and soon. So now what? It's hard to see where consumers can turn next. Home prices seem highly unlikely to start rising again soon. Stocks? You never know, but the Great Bull Market looks like a once-in-a-lifetime event. Homes and stocks are households' biggest asset classes by far. There isn't much else to borrow against. It may be that the standard-of-living bubble finally has to deflate. Sustainable increases in living standards have to be earned, not borrowed, and that means performing ever higher value work that can't be outsourced. We haven't been meeting that challenge very well; doing so will probably require much more and better education for millions of Americans, which takes time and money. The result may feel like deprivation, but I don't see it that way. Who knows - we might even find that living within our means and saving a little money actually isn't so bad. original article here: http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/18/news/economy/Colvin_next_credit_crunch.fortune/index.htm?

Pay no attention to the man behind the iron curtain he is only there for your protection Please co-operate with the search procedure it is only there for your protection Please go to school, for without your co-operation we cannot indoctrinate you into a crumbling society based on mediocrity please spend your money on useless items that will only line the pockets of the ultra rich Please don't think for yourself we have already provided your thoughts pre-bottled Please remember there are no heroes anymore, and average citizens combining their forces have never and will never change the system Please keep inside the lines, outside the lines is chaos and you cannot control chaos Please watch the movies and listen to the songs pumped out like opiates to keep you death dumb and blind to the world around you Please do not remember the past for you will see our current mistakes Thank you for your co=operation. Without it we could not continue to exist in a society where the cost of health care is far beyond the reach of the average citizen, and nobody but the ultra rich will ever become wealthy.

Where is the cost of oil coming from? So people who are paid allot more than me, and are educated allot more than me have tried to tackle this question. Where is the proce coming from? How can we stop it? And who is making the money. So I tried to come at it from a simple premise from one of my favorite movie franchises. “Follow the rich white man” In this case we also have OPEC so follow the rich man will suffice. Many people have tried to tackle this from many different angles. Is it the speculators? Money grubbing investors who buy early harvests of oil and sell it later at higher market prices? Is it the oil conglomerates? OPEC and EXON pinching your cash in times of need. Is it the government taking huge amounts of taxes off every dollar you spend at the pump? It isn’t any of these things. So where is the expense? Demand. In one simple elegant word you can begin to possibly see, or maybe you can’t. So allow me to expunge on this topic. As the reports have it now the actual supply of oil has begun to curve off into a flat plain. You would see this when any limited resource has begun to be exploited to the fullest. This is happening in the wake of a huge demand surge from India and china (other economies too but the biggest ones are India and China.) What does this mean exactly? Well basically we (the US) are competing with mainly china for shipments of oil. Taking this into account there is only one way to drive down the price of oil (this is why the hippies win): STOP BUYING OIL. Yes you, the one reading this article. That is the only way your going to affect the price. Yes I realize the country will need oil, but do you need so much? Do you really need to drive an SUV that gets 12 miles to the gallon to the store 2 blocks away? Do you really need to commute on your own to work and back every day? Could you take the bus? Could you walk? Could you carpool? Most everyone will answer yes. Before anyone says anything about this allow me to pass along the fact that I don’t even own a car. Not because I’m a tree hugger or anything I’m just cheap and have a decent public transportation system in my city. So why now everyone asks? Well if we looked at the graph below, which shows global production VS global demand, we can see a trend. Now if you took this graph, took off the product and sat it down in front of an economist he would probably come to some pretty elementary conclusions. He would probably say the point in mid 2006 when supply began to plain out and the demand continued to rise, that’s the beginning of a price hike, and it wont stop until the supply levels off with the demand. see graph here He could throw out some other options but they don’t apply here. He could point out an increase in production would give way to a drop in price, but globally we have pretty much exploited all the places we can for oil. There are ways to increase supply but the increase would be marginal, and the cost would be greater than the benefit. The other option he would front is simple. Use something else. So there you have it. Any freshman in economics (if they even teach that class in high school anymore) could have said the same thing. We try to bog this problem down so we can point the blame somewhere, and not actually present a solution, but the solution is simple, we either need to start seriously looking at alternatives, or bomb the shit out of China so they don’t increase the demand. Now the reason we haven’t done the second is obvious. The reason we haven’t really done the first like we should…now for that you should follow the rich white man.

So some people asked me yesterday what they can do. I feel bad cuz I know how to write an essay and the last paragraph is supposed to be a call for action and I totally skipped that part. So today I will run down some resources for things that everyone can do, without changing their lives or anything like that. Hell you can do most of this stuff while you're surfing people profiles and mindlessly rating and friending people you don't know, lol. First a quick plug, anyone in Kansas should check this guy out, here here is a link to his comic, All right now on to the good stuff, first thing is educate yourself. You should take everything spoon fed to you, even by the news. Check the facts, check what people said, sometimes people over simplify things, sometimes people only present the facts that support their argument, sometimes (though rare in standard media) people straight up lie. google and wikipedia are your friends here, though if you read it on Wikipedia I would verify it with a second source, but it is usually more than 90% truthful. When I say educate yourself I mean on more than just fact checking, if you don't know how things work, then how can you evaluate solutions and come up with new ones. How can you vote without knowing how that vote is counting? Do you know how Superdelegates are chosen? or why they are around? Do you know how the presidential elections work? Do you know howoil prices are set? Do you know how the Supreme Court works? What about how a countries currency value is set? These are things everyone should have learned in school, but then common people would be empowered and who wants that. What else can you do? Well there is probably an action group for every problem out there. What are you passionate about? What do you care about? Some people might be interested in who is taking money from whom, and why. For you I would suggest checking these guys out. Some people want to work on solving the energy crisis we have in this country. For you a good place to start would be here. Want to talk about, and research the idea of national healthcare? Maybe you want to start over there. For those of you who do not like any of these groups, or have something else that you are interested in try checking out indexes for these groups. In 30 second I found a great list of this stuff on yahoo.There is also the other option, and this isn't for most people, Make one yourself. All you need is a place you can steal office supplies from and a website. Or perhaps bring back the classic style of grass roots groups and travel around your hood inviting people. The key is awareness is the first step but it isn't going to change anything. From awareness we must take action.

I think we have finally come to a point in history that all civilizations come to from time to time, where everybody looks around and people wonder…is this the end? With the falling stock prices of the orginizations that are the backbone for large parts of our economy, the middle class all but disappearing, the crumbling health situation, the lying and corruption of the government reaching a pinnacle to the point where the cover ups aren't even very well done anymore, the loss of our freedom to even speak to one another without somebody else listening. This is a natural place for any long lasting society to eventually come to, it happened in Greece and rome, it happened in china and Russia, and now.. it is really beginning full swing here. The only diffrnece this time around the historical pendulum is nobody seems to care, or notice. Now when I say nobody I mean people as a whole don't seem to care. Given we haven't quite reached the point of revolution yet, but it is getting there, and fast. This is the time when the young are to turn to the old, to find out about the past. How did you deal with the great depression? What can I do to protect myself? What did you see when Russia and china fell into these same paranoid governments, but people are just continueing on their own lives while the world begins to crumble around them. Now ill give as much as the next person that it is wholly possible for America to bounce back from these setbacks, and honestly we could continue along our way in 3-4 years putting this time behind us, but more often than not this does not happen. We are not bordering on the "depression" of the 70's where we experienced a bit of a market slowdown. What amazes me even more is instead of helping the people who need help we continue to push polocies that have led to this crisis. Congress is doing nothing to help people keep their homes, but we will bail out the orginizations whos terrible discions brought us to this point. Were not trying to fix the boat so holes don't form, were just plugging the holes with rags. In the short term this is fine and helps but in the long run those holes are still gonna leak and new ones will form. And I hate to play chicken little, and I am by no means saying the world will end, or the sky is falling, but im kind of concerned because nobody seems to care at all. Everyone is just continuing on like a horse with blinder galloping towards the ledge. I know everyone needs to live for today, im just sayin please take a look around today, and see what is going on. I will end my little rant with some lyrics from the Flobots song "No Handlebars", if you haven't seen the video stop by it is powerfull no matter which side of the fence you sit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs I can hand out a million vaccinations Or let'em all die in exasperation Have'em all healed of their lacerations Have'em all killed by assassination I can make anybody go to prison Just because I don't like'em and I can do anything with no permission I have it all under my command I can guide a missile by satellite By satellite By satellite and I can hit a target through a telescope Through a telescope Through a telescope and I can end the planet in a holocaust In a holocaust In a holocaust

So i have not one single family member. I realize i don't know anyone that well on here but not one....thats no good. Anyone wanna get to know me well enough to become my family?

I have been wandering around the site doing the normal thing. Rating, sending out anonymous friend requests, becoming the fan of random people. Totally drinking the anonymous, arbitrary, self gratification punch. When i fell across the picture of somebody i cant even remember the name of. It stopped me for a moment. Not because she was especially beautiful or because of the amount of skin she was showing. But because the picture seemed to radiate of her soul. It seemed to show a part of her that most on in this place would not stop to appreciate. I have decided to start and album of pictures that are of the same kind. Not glam poses are dudes trying to look rough, but true pictures into the soul. It is possible this will never even get a single photo but i am going to try my best. hopefully some connecting of real people to real people will acur instead of the random hoping from one profile to the next. lets stop having ant moments.