If you're in a good mood just go somewhere else.

This is some fairly seriously depressing shit right here.

All of the following excerpts link to the full article, most of the charts link up to stuff as well.

 I have no confidence in paper money of any kind; or the promises of any and all governments and their employees. The relative safety of one kind of paper as against another is of no importance...What worries me most is the incredible prevalence of official lying, delusion, ignorance and dishonesty ... It's a whole gang of crooks in a system that encourages and rewards fraud ... It isn't just the fact that money is nothing but confidence.   Edelweiss Journal

"Here in Europe, the Greek government is helping itself to its citizens’ bank accounts; the Italian government is working with banks to freeze customers out of their accounts without warning. Spanish police are embroiled in a bloody struggle against bazooka-wielding workers who are protesting austerity measures. EU leaders in Brussels have announced their intention to impose capital controls as part of a ‘rescue plan’. This is today’s reality. It can happen here, it probably will happen here. And frankly, it’s all unfolding almost exactly as it has so many times before throughout history:

1. A nation rises to greatness and becomes wealthy based on sound principles and the hard work of initial generations.

2. Eventually, being wealthy becomes the natural expectation… an entitlement, rather than a goal to work hard for and achieve.

3. A nation begins living beyond its means to maintain the high life without the hard work, leveraging its credibility to trade tomorrow’s production for today’s consumption.

4. Living beyond its means eventually becomes unsustainable. Government begins to slowly, then staggeringly, devalue its currency.

5. The market (i.e. people) finally wake up to the fraud being perpetrated.

6. Financial repression usually follows– high taxes which steal from the productive, negative real interest rates which steal from the savers, etc.

7. Capital flight comes next. People take their money and run.

8. Governments implement capital controls, border controls, price and wage controls, and anything else they can do to maintain the status quo. People find out who the police are really there to protect and serve.

9. Capitulation (default) is the endgame; the system resets itself and begins anew.

"This is nothing new. From the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (2000 BC) to Medieval Venice to the familiar stories of Rome and the Ottoman Empire, the world is full of monuments to the past greatness of failed civilizations. We’re seeing the same pattern unfolding now. And sure, anything’s possible. Maybe the skies open up and the unicorns come out to play and the whole world manages to fix itself without skipping a beat. But let’s live in reality: there are consequences when nations go bankrupt. And nearly every western nation on the planet is insolvent. That is a fact.  Simon Black

Red is cities and counties, black is municiple utilities and other government entities.

America's transition into a welfare state continues, as May saw a new all time high number of American households, 22.3 million to be exact, enter technical poverty and collect foodstamps. At the individual level, 46.5 million Americans lived off foodstamps, a 222,157 increase in the month, or nearly three times the number of people who found jobs in June according to the BLS. Next month this too will be a record, as it is currently just 17,367 before the previous all time high set in December of 2011. The good news, and we use the term loosely, is that the average benefit per household rose from all time lows of $275.82 to $276.76. Surely, the bottom is in and just like housing, there is on blue skies ahead.

“If the bond ever starts falling in price, they unwind the carry trade…Then you get a message, ‘Do not pass go.’ Sell your bonds, unwind your overnight debt, your repo positions. And the system then begins to contract – exactly what happened in September and October of 2008. That was a minor trial run for the great unwind that is going to happen when the Treasury market is finally shattered with a lack of confidence because, on the margin, no one owns a Treasury bond: they just rent it on borrowed money. If the price starts falling, they’ll get out of that trade as fast as they got out of toxic CDOs ... 

“The Fed has destroyed the money market. It has destroyed the capital markets...And you can’t have capitalism if the capital markets are dead, if the capital markets are simply a branch office – branch casino – of the central bank. That’s essentially what we have today...They are monetary central planners who are attempting to use the crude instrument of interest-rate pegging and yield-curve manipulation and essentially buying debt that no one else would buy, in order to keep this whole system afloat. It’s Ponzi economics...

“There are 25 million households in America who couldn’t move if they wanted to, because their mortgages are under water. They cannot generate a down payment and the 5% or 6% broker fee that you need to move. So we’ve got 25 million households immobilized, paralyzed, and worried every day about when they are going to lose property, because of what the Fed did. It’s a terrible indictment...It’s policy. If we don’t do something about the Fed, if we don’t drive the Bernankes and the Dudleys and the Yellens and the rest of these lunatic money-printers out of the Federal Reserve and get it under the control of people who have at least a modicum of sanity, we are just going to bury everybody deeper...

“As a result of that you have a doomsday machine. As I was saying when the great margin call comes and they start selling the Treasury bond, they’ll take everything else with it. Real estate is priced off Treasuries. Mortgaged-backed securities are priced off Treasuries. Corporates are priced off Treasuries. Junk bonds are priced off Treasuries. Everything. The stock market will go into a panic...

“The only thing I think you can conclude is preservation is the only thing you are about as an investor. Forget about yield. Forget about return. Just keep yourself liquid and preserve your capital, because you can’t predict the day when, as I say, the great margin call in the sky comes down.“ – David Stockman, Former Director OMB under Reagan

"The state is a thug. Basically, it relies upon two things to elicit cooperation from people in order to ‘convince' them to surrender their rights and wealth. The first is the myth of legitimacy; this is the notion that an electoral process or a hereditary line-of-succession or 'fill in the blank' establishes an elite group who consist of politicians and those with political pull. These elite individuals somehow have the ‘right' to tell other individuals what to say and what to do with their own body. They live by a double standard. Theft is wrong except if done by them in the form of taxation. Killing innocent people is wrong except if done by them in the war against terrorism. 

Today the myth of legitimacy is being widely seen for what it is: a myth. Every day, fewer and fewer people believe in the legitimacy of the elites.  And without that myth, their actions are being seen for what they are: a vicious double standard that excuses theft and murder. This means the state has to increasingly use the second method by which it elicits your cooperation: raw force or the threat thereof. And a sure sign that the elites have lost legitimacy and know it is the fact that they are becoming more violent toward their own citizenry by the hour...

My purpose is the business of living ... by privatizing your own life, you make the state increasingly irrelevant, which is what politicians fear most. They are desperate to be part of our lives, to teach our children, to regulate our work, to read our messages and hear our phone calls, to dictate our medical choices ... And the most effective personal response when the State knocks at your door may well be to not answer even by the act of raising your fist." - Wendy McElroy, Whiskey & Gunpowder,

"The false premise which guides their decisions is that we can all grow wealthy by borrowing and consuming, instead of by producing and saving. People have been sold this lie for more than a generation. It is embedded in social DNA. In the current western economic system, you are rewarded for going into debt with all sorts of tax deductions. Save money, on the other hand, and you are punished through taxation and inflation. The incentives are all wrong; [unless the diabolical purpose is to enslave the masses] it’s no wonder that people have over-borrowed and overspent given that the system is so blatantly slanted to promote such behavior.

"Housing is one of the most interesting examples of bad incentives: tax policy in many countries encourages people to take out debilitating mortgages, and governments end up with a moral imperative to ensure home prices continue rising. This strikes me as truly bizarre. You’d think people would want housing costs to stay low and affordable, not rise. Nobody cheers when the price of healthcare goes up, even though they could just as easily profit by investing in any number of insurance companies. I don’t click my heels when the price of food goes up in the grocery store, even though we’ve been paid handsome sums from the bountiful harvests of our farm in central Chile. And let’s not forget how much turmoil ensues when gasoline prices get too high. Why should housing be any different? For the vast majority of people, a house isn’t wealth. It’s an expense. And wishing for this expense to increase is both foolish and destructive. Yet most politicians and central banksters in the west are frantically fanning the flames of broken housing markets, desperately trying to re-inflate prices.

"Here in Portugal, for example, housing prices have fallen dramatically. Housing has become affordable. Cheap, even. This is a good thing. Yet the bureaucrats keep trying to figure out ways to ‘prop up the housing market’ and distort prices, often through policy that is very unfriendly to homeowners. In the United States, the Federal Reserve keeps ratcheting down long-term interest rates and scooping up mortgage bonds in an attempt to re-inflate home prices.

"With so many Nobel Prize-winning economists backing these kinds of policies, it’s clear that the people in charge haven’t even begun to acknowledge the flaws in their intellectual framework. And if you can’t even admit that you have a problem, then you are light years away from solving it." - Simon Black,

Among those things that are interesting about this infographic is the source, HealthCareAdministration.com

Since (at least) 2005, Barclay’s has been manipulating LI(E)BOR, and their traders have been allegedly pocketing $40MM A DAY betting on interest rate derivatives. If the LIBOR, one of the most fundamental metrics of our banking system can be rigged, can you imagine what other elements of our financial system are a fraud?

Via: HealthcareAdministration.com

We are loving the "There May Be More Accomplices" part.

Yeah, like for example The FED and the Bank of England just for starters.

Then of course you get your usual suspects.

"Just as the 'terrorist threat was used to destroy the laws that protect US civil liberty, the financial crisis has resulted in the Federal Reserve moving far outside its charter and normal operating behavior. To sum up, what has happened is that irresponsible and thoughtless--in fact, ideological--deregulation of the financial sector has caused a financial crisis that can only be managed by fraud. Civil damages might be paid, but to halt the fraud itself would mean the collapse of the financial system. Those in charge of the system would prefer the collapse to come from outside, such as from a collapse in the value of the dollar that could be blamed on foreigners, because an outside cause gives them something to blame other than themselves." - Paul Craig Roberts

"Contrast the anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam era with how the government/media is now pulling out all the stops to create an ultra-patriotic, 'support our troops' mentality as they drive the nation to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond for their own globalist conflict-creation purposes. I assure you it isn’t that these politicians have had a change of heart or repented of their betrayals. They purposely used the discouraging no-win restrictions and the resulting combat deaths of Vietnam to destroy in the minds of Americans the long-held inclination to combat communist aggression. Decades later they would rally the former anti-war media into shills for government and turn Americans into knee-jerk unthinking patriots ignorantly lending support to a totally different kind of war for empire and domination. This recent effort was started by our government’s created terror incidents and by exaggerating the war on terror in order to justify continual intervention in other nations. They poured money into millions of yellow ribbons and 'Support our Troops' bumper stickers in order to make support for troops synonymous with the rightness of wars—which was no longer true. Media lackeys constantly put forth the government line that all this money and sacrifice was for the purpose of establishing democracy in the Middle East—which wasn’t their true purpose at all. We are still fed this line today and thousands of soldiers will yet die in the falsified war(s) on terror." -  Joel Skousen, World Affairs Brief, 07-20-12

"For every wealthy entrepreneur, there are countless hundreds to thousands of individuals that tried out a new idea and failed. They risked their own capital savings and lost it. Does society owe them for their losses? Why does society get the proceeds from the successful risk takers but doesn't owe a thing to the failed risk takers? Entrepreneurial profits are a kind of risk premium. 'Society' isn't taking that risk; the individual is. So, it is the individual that should receive the reward for the risk he or she alone took." - Marc Porlier, 07-20-12

"A six-figure income used to be a hard-earned sign of success, but due to skyrocketing costs and inflation, $100,000 doesn't have the cachet it once had. Crunching the numbers for standard inflation, it would take $172,000 in 2011 dollars to match a $100,000 salary in 1990. 'What would have cost you $100,000 in 1976 would cost you $381,000 today,' Mari Adam of Adam Financial Associates to Bankrate. '

"Washington has been at war since October, 2001, when President George W. Bush concocted an excuse to order the US invasion of Afghanistan. This war took a back seat when Bush concocted another excuse to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that went on without significant success for 8 years and has left Iraq in chaos with dozens more killed and wounded every day, a new strong man in place of the illegally executed former strongman, and the likelihood of the ongoing violence becoming civil war. Upon his election, President Obama foolishly sent more troops to Afghanistan and renewed the intensity of that war, now in its eleventh year, to no successful effect.

"These two wars have been expensive. According to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, when all costs are counted the Iraq invasion cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars. Ditto for the Afghan war. In other words, the two gratuitous wars doubled the US public debt. This is the reason there is no money for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the environment, and the social safety net. Americans got nothing out of the wars, but as the war debt will never be paid off, US citizens and their descendants will have to pay interest on $6,000 billion of war debt in perpetuity.

"Not content with these wars, the Bush/Obama regime is conducting military operations in violation of international law in Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa, organized the overthrow by armed conflict of the government in Libya, is currently working to overthrow the Syrian government, and continues to marshal military forces against Iran.

"Finding the Muslim adversaries Washington created insufficient for its energies and budget, Washington has encircled Russia with military bases and has begun the encirclement of China. Washington has announced that the bulk of its naval forces will be shifted to the Pacific over the next few years, and Washington is working to re-establish its naval base in the Philippines, construct a new one on a South Korean island, acquire a naval base in Viet Nam, and air and troop bases elsewhere in Asia. In Thailand Washington is attempting to purchase with the usual bribes an air base used in the Vietnam war. There is opposition as the country does not wish to be drawn into Washington’s orchestrated conflict with China. Downplaying the real reason for the airbase, Washington, according to Thai newspapers, told the Thai government that the base was needed for 'humanitarian missions.' This didn’t fly, so Washington had NASA ask for the air base in order to conduct 'weather experiments.' Whether this ruse is sufficient cover remains to be seen. US Marines have been sent to Australia and elsewhere in Asia.

"To corral China and Russia (and Iran) is a massive undertaking for a country that is financially busted. With wars and bankster bailouts, Bush and Obama have doubled the US national debt while failing to address the disintegration of the US economy and rising hardships of US citizens.  Paul Craig Roberts

"If we look at the global economy with unclouded eyes, we reach this conclusion: 'This whole thing is about leverage.' If leverage doesn't increase, the system implodes. But since collateral is disappearing from the global economy like sand castles in a rising tide, and disposable income has stagnated, there is no foundation for more leverage.

"As a result, the State/finance cartel has only one choice: increase leverage by whatever means are left. There are only two:

1. Allow banks to claim phantom assets as capital/reserves

2. Lower interest rates so stagnant income can leverage ever greater quantities of debt.

"The State/finance Empire and its army of academic toadies (economists) must cloak this reliance on leverage from the citizenry, lest they grasp the precariousness of the entire financial system...

"The easiest way to 'grow' is to increase leverage so more money/debt can be created. If a bank was constrained to only loaning the cash it held in deposits, that would severely limit the amount of money available in the system for purchasing villas in Spain, BMW autos manufactured in Germany, etc. If we magically enable 25-to-1 leverage, then every euro supports 25 euros in debt (mortgages, auto loans, etc.) The danger is obvious: if 1 of the 25 euros of debt goes bad, the lender has zero reserve. If 2 euros of debt go bad, the lender is insolvent.

"The only way to 'save' an over-leveraged system is to increase leverage and lower interest rates. If we claim phantom assets as real and increase leverage from 25-to-1 to 50-to-1, we have enabled a doubling of loans. All that wonderful new money will flow into the economy as spending, fueling 'growth.' This explains why the State/finance Empire in Europe keeps lowering reserve requirements for its insolvent banks. If the reserve requirement is 10%, then you need 100 million euros on deposit in cash to support 1 billion euros in loans. If you lower the reserve requirement to 1 euro, then the contents of a child's piggy bank supports 1 billion euros in debt. The other game is to claim phantom assets have market values that justify their substitution of cash...

"Any loan is fundamentally a claim on future income. Interest and principal will be paid out of future income.

"The key to keeping the leverage-based system afloat is to lower interest rates...once rates fall to near-zero, the leverage-income-into-more-debt machine runs off the cliff...

"...the bottom 90% leveraged their stagnant incomes into mountains of debt to compensate for their declining purchasing power. The Federal Reserve (a key player in the global State/finance Empire) has been publicly fretting over the dreaded 'debt divide,' which is Orwellian econo-speak for the bottom 90% running out of leverage. Like Wiley E. Coyote, the bottom 90% has run off the cliff and is now in looking down at the air beneath them...

"The same reliance on leverage has occurred in China, Japan, Europe and the U.S. The entire global economy's 'growth' was based on increasing leverage. That machine has soared off the cliff, and now the Empire's global army of toadies is desperately attempting to mask this reality by substituting phantom assets for actual capital. They can't do anything about lowering interest rates, though; that mechanism has already been maxed out as rates approach zero." - Charles Hugh Smith, www.OfTwoMinds.com

" Western democracy is an intellectually bankrupt concept in its current state. What we have today is regulatory democracy, an environment in which money power's corporate interests feed off the State and thus a mercantilist economy engulfs us all. Politicians are nothing more than talking mouthpieces for the elite, they are there to protect money power's interests – using force if necessary...Barack Obama said he would introduce real change when he was campaigning for the presidency. He said he would improve America's relations around the world and steward a foreign policy that would usher in peace. America would be a beacon once again to all...Obama has done nothing he said he would do to improve America's relations around the world – not that we ever actually believed he could anyway, he is just an actor..." Anthony Wilie, www.TheDailyBell.com

"Civilized people save and plan so as to take care of themselves and their families in the present and future. Fiscal conservatism and prudence is valued in a nondemocratic society, as are sound ethics. Democracy undoes the tendency for people to act cooperatively and responsibly. Politicians constantly look to appease voters with more benefits to care for them from cradle to grave, so as to win the next election. At the same time, the bureaucracy that hands out the benefits grows larger and larger and is unaccountable to anyone — especially voters...In order to distribute these benefits, the government must violate property rights. Government produces nothing; it must take from one group in order to give to another... Douglas French, The Daily Reckoning, 07-11-12 .

From Investor Business Daily which increasingly is becoming our morning newspaper of choice.

As always click on the chart for the entire piece.

Disability Ranks Outpace New Jobs In Obama Recovery

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

From J.P. Morgan via Zero Hedge.

Again, this one doesn't require much explanation.

Getting paid miserable wages? Don't fret - just buy the stock of your (hopefully public) employer, and hope and pray that this time is different, and that light at the end of the tunnel is the not the next latest and greatest (and likely last) stock market collapse, in the ultimate trade off of current pay for capital gains: 

13 quarters in and Labor Comepensation is still lower than where it was when the Great Financial Crisis began.

From one of our favorite sites Chartporn, who start off with some other site's rant about someone else's mislabeled and undated map of the historic locations of the various Indian tribes, and continues with some outstanding links for maps and sites that they deem to be better.

Including this one right here which will take you to the Atlas of Extinct Nations.

I spent an hour and a half wandering through all of it and into the places it took me rather than reading the chronically bleak crap I've been engaged in recently.

Outstanding stuff.

David McWilliams strikes again with another outstanding economics lesson for people who don't know from economics.

Our friend Reina in Montevideo just emailed condemning our North American bias.

Reina, when you're right your right, other people have droughts too.

From the Universty College London Department of Space and Climate Physics who also have a pretty cool site, just not as quite as cool as the site below ..... kidding.

Interesting what a high percentage of drought is going on north of the equator, both in terms of the total area and as a percentage of land mass.

I dunno ... just sayin.

From Drought Moniter who have a prety cool site if you're interested in drought.

This via our friend Gunna who's reading from a completely different pile of stuff than the rest of us.

Pretty much self explanatory.

I think the following is the single most interesting chart we've stumbled across in a long time.