By David Glenn Cox
It has been a bad week for the tinted tyrant. He’s stuck a knife into the backs of the reddest reds. Casting away his supporters just as casually as throwing away a Big Mac wrapper. Asked what he’s going to do about inflation, the majestic mental midget offers, “It’s only beef prices that are high and we can fix that by bringing in beef from Argentina.” The only thing higher than beef prices is the tinted tyrant!
From Alabama to Colorado, beef ranchers are angry as hell. The only agricultural commodity in the entire country doing well besides weed and the bestial bastard is offering to cut their throats. The old Trump magic is working so well that after a forty-billion-dollar bailout, Argentina is no better off than before. Trump’s mop top protégé Mielie is falling precipitously in the polls in front of upcoming elections. Grandma always used to say, Act in haste and repent in recession.
Those of us who survived the 2008 financial collapse and those of us who have never fully recovered from it can smell the house on fire. In an attempt to short circuit the banking industry’s corrupt and greedy ways. Restrictions were placed on the large banks to limit the types of stupid and predatory lending that was allowed. In an effort to thwart those moves, the banks are engaged in sub-prime lending once again, only this time, once removed.
Instead of sub-prime mortgage lending, it’s sub-prime auto lending. The big banks lend to the secondary market following all the rules. Then the secondary credit market makes the sub-prime auto loans to under qualified buyers. Tricolor, the largest of these secondary lenders in the country, recently shut its doors. Gone! Fin! The end! And the paid financial liars on television called it a fluke and a one-off mistake. The losses are estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But now! But now, the word begins to seep out. It’s not just one bank, it’s five banks (so far)and counting. And the losses aren’t just in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but billions of dollars and maybe even more. Maybe even a trillion dollars!
Stop me if you’ve lived through this before and don’t tell anyone. The financial institutions, like a kid with a bad report card, are trying their best to keep a lid on it. You see, if word ever gets out that Mr. Magoo has done it again, financial confidence could be lost. This morning it was announced JP Morgan (The largest bank by assets) is seeking permission to allow borrowers to use Bitcoin and other crypto con money laundering schemes as collateral for news loans. That’s called desperately trying to bail out the pirate ship for all that its worth!
It is a flashing neon sign signaling the financial house is on fire. No new collateral, no new loans! But to suggest using a Ponzi scheme asset is sheer insanity. Why not use collectable baseball cards or lottery tickets as collateral? This ticket could be worth ten million dollars or maybe not. Well then, we can only lend you five million against it. Allowing a completely uninsured asset with a questionable reputation and a dark and murky unregulated device as collateral is an act of sheer desperation. Would the bank let YOU buy a house or a car without any insurance? Would they lend you money on your rich uncle’s promise to remember you in his will?
Crypto coins are nothing but legalized money laundering. The first bank of international drug dealing and assorted financial crimes. The dirty money goes in here and comes out clean like an automated car wash. It’s worth only what someone says it’s worth. As long as more money goes in than comes out, the assumed value rises. But on that sweet day in that blessed hour when more money begins to flow out than flow in. It will become worthless before five o’clock. It is a South Seas bubble, and it’s 1929, it’s 2008. It’s Lehman Brothers and the ghost of Bernie Madoff!
But as the wealth of the former American middle-class was hollowed out. Fewer and fewer qualified borrowers came through their doors. The poor dumb bastards still needed cars and car lots still needed customers. You make them drop their pants and rape them with over priced cars and loan shark interest rates and before long, they’d created a lucrative Ponzi scheme.
They make ten loans and two go bad. They make a thousand loans and 200 go bad. They’re still making money and everything is fine until. They make one hundred thousand loans and 30,000 go bad. Suddenly, they are losing money in buckets and the only way out is to make more bad loans. Only by making new bad loans can they cover up the losses from the old bad loans. Only now, they’re running out of fresh suckers.
I remember discussing the film “The Grapes of Wrath” with my father who had lived through the great depression. And as we talked about the Joads and the millions headed west on the mother road. He added with a chuckle. “You don’t think those cars were paid for, do you?” Everything old is new again!
So on paper they sold a $10,000 used car for $15,000. Then, when it comes back, they send it to the wholesale auction to recoup some of their money. Only they can’t find a parking space, the auction lot is already filled with repo cars. They run them through the auction and there are no bids. The dealers already have car lots filled with cars they can’t sell. So what is the actual real-world value of all of those formally new and used vehicles? It’s zero. Oh sure, on paper they’re worth lots, but in reality, they’re worthless. They can’t sell them and they can’t afford to take them all back.
The reality of this scandal is but a flea on a dog compared with the overpriced, inflated home values awaiting but a spark to cascade down again. It is really no more than appropriate symbolism, the tinted tyrant tearing down the White House.
“If you who own the things people must have could understand
this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate
causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx,
Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive.
But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes
you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.” – John Steinbeck
“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home–but not for housing. They are strong for labor–but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage–the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all–but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine–for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing–but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing–so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.” ― Harry S. Truman
Thank you for reading and supporting “This Carbon-Based Life” Capitalism is an illness. The more you have the sicker you become.
This Carbon Based Life 
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