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[Lynn Wigglesworth <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>]

That's an interesting commentary. I think he has a good grasp of how 
inflation works (but he didn't do the math on the "give the $700 billion 
to the people" scam).

The only argument I'd have with his view is about housing prices. I'm 
not sure why he thinks his friend should walk away from his house, 
unless he has an adjustable rate mortgage that's about to explode. What 
has changed? It's the same house and same mortgage (if it's not an ARM); 
he liked it 6 months ago when someone said it was worth $600,000, but 
not today because someone claims it's worth less? If people are going to 
move every couple of years and flip houses, yeah, they need the value to 
keep increasing. Changing houses every couple of years in this market is 
like buying and financing a new car every couple of years; you can't 
even pay off the loan on the first one with it's trade-in value. It's 
just plain stupid, but Americans gotta have their shiny new toys and 
their bigger and better houses.

I'm a very 'rooted' homebody, so it's hard for me to understand the need 
to move and upgrade all the time. If you have a fixed rate mortgage and 
don't plan to move, it doesn't really matter much what the market says 
your house is worth. My mortgage payment (if I can't pay it off by then) 
will be the same 10 years from now, no matter what the stock market or 
housing market does...heck, inflation makes my fixed mortgage 
comparatively cheaper.

Lynn Wigglesworth

bob ford wrote:
> I ran across this commentary today on another site, I don't know anything 
> about the author except that he has been visiting U.S. and posted this 
> message this a.m.  I'm an unsure of his conclussions, I just thought it was 
> interesting.  I went ahead and posted the entire commentary.....
> 
> 
> The Last Day
> Sam Mathid
> Sep 29, 2008
> 
> Last week, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke announced that taxpayers money 
> would be expropriated to bail out the bad loans of bankers. Despite the 
> appalling scale of greed, fraud and incompetence, that is the deal that is 
> being rammed through Congress as I write. I assume that outcome based on 
> Congress' long record of having the collective spine of a jellyfish.
> 
> The banks, by their actions, have ensured that many people who could not 
> afford houses were sucked into the market. When the last person was in, 
> housing prices started their inevitable tumble. Prices are falling hard, 
> and will continue to fall hard into the foreseeable future. Those who are 
> already underwater will soon be underwater a lot further. Those who are 
> marginal will soon be joining their ranks.
> 
> A friend approached me today. The dollar value on his house was $600,000 12 
> months ago. He had a $320,000 mortgage. Today his house is worth $300,000 
> and falling.
> 
> He has a perfect credit rating, and has never missed a full payment on his 
> house. His family is one of the many that the current structure is 
> penalizing in order to support those who bought houses that they could 
> never afford. He asked me what he should do. My advice was to walk. There 
> is no moral responsibility for him to continue to pay people who have 
> shafted him in such a manner.
> 
> Why would anyone pay their mortgage when legislation is being drafted to 
> make non-payment acceptable? If responsible people who didn't over commit 
> are penalized for the actions of those people who did, then the rules of 
> the game are corrupt. If the rules of the game are corrupt then don't play 
> the game. If you do, then you end up as no better than a banker or a Wall 
> Street used CDO salesman.
> 
> Today in my in-box I found an email suggesting that instead of giving $700 
> billion to the cronies of Hank Paulson, that we should break it up and 
> distribute the money to every adult in America. The email claimed that 
> would be an amount in the region of $400,000 for every man and woman in 
> America. That won't happen of course and for one very good reason.
> 
> The current system has collapsed because of the inflation of the currency. 
> The beauty of inflation for the rich is that they are first at the spigot 
> when the money is released. They get it at full value and use it to send 
> asset prices up and off to the moon. It appears that the economy is 
> booming. It's not of course, but it looks that way to the true believers in 
> the bizarre world of Keynesian economics.
> 
> How much inflation has there been? From the signing of the Constitution 
> right up until landing a man on the moon the whole American experience, 
> every house, car, television, freeway, airplane, war... everything, cost 
> one trillion dollars. Then consider that the debt ceiling has been raised 2 
> 1/2 trillion dollars just this last 12 months. Do you see the value in 
> that? Of course not; that is because you didn't get it. The rich bankers 
> and their Wall Street friends that you are now being told you have to bail 
> out got the lot.
> 
> By the time that the money filters down to the poor suckers in the street, 
> the prices of goods have finally started to rise in line with the rate of 
> inflation of the currency. The pittance that trickles down to Joe and Suzy 
> is never enough to cover the higher prices caused by the full amount of 
> inflation. Inflation ALWAYS causes higher prices, but only after a delay. 
> The delay is always long enough that Joe and Suzy fail to make the 
> connection between cause and effect. The already rich elites get the money, 
> Joe and Suzy get lumbered with the bill via higher prices.
> 
> If Congress distributed the inflated currency to the tune of $400,000 to 
> every man and woman, then ON THE SAME DAY that the money arrived, a coke 
> would be $20- and it would cost $300- to fill the car with gas. Joe and 
> Suzy would instantly make the connection between inflation and higher 
> prices. In one day that would signal the end of the greatest and most 
> insidious scam that governments the world over play on 'their' citizens.
> 
> The inflation in America has been greater than anywhere else over a more 
> sustained period. That is why the pain of higher prices will be greater 
> here than anywhere, with the possible exception of Zimbabwe. Joe and Suzy 
> Lunchbox must never be allowed to understand the inflation scam. That is 
> why cheques for $400,000 are not going to arrive in anyone's mailbox.
> 
> The rising grocery and gas prices that Joe and Suzy are now paying are 
> simply the repayments due on the vast amounts already given to those first 
> in line at the spigots years ago. The repayments will go on for a long 
> time. Beyond the life span of anyone alive today. How high will prices have 
> to rise to accommodate the infusion of $700 billion in new dollar bills 
> (not counting the fact that it will end up as $7 trillion after our banks 
> work their fractional banking magic)? Impossible to know for sure, but my 
> guess is really scary.
> 
> The bankers and Wall Street investors have lost Joe and Suzy's money, now 
> they want passage of legislation to ensure that Joe and Suzy have to pay 
> them back. There can be little doubt that Congress will pass it. There will 
> be electoral rage at the decision with unforeseeable consequences in 
> November.
> 
> My wife went to the gas station in Clearwater, Florida yesterday. There was 
> no gas, so not being desperate she went home. Today she went out again and 
> found a gas station with a long queue. She queued. Whilst waiting she 
> chatted to another woman in the queue. This other woman informed my wife 
> that there was no gas between Ashville in N. Carolina and Charleston in S. 
> Carolina. She claimed that in Georgia people were fighting over gas it was 
> so short. Maybe that is not the whole story, maybe it is. Who knows what is 
> true in America anymore?
> 
> Things are falling apart very quickly in America. The downright lies, and 
> omissions and twisting of the truth, are being continued right up to the 
> end. There will be a great deal of bitterness if Joe and Suzy ever realize 
> the nature of the con trick that has been pulled on them. Never forget that 
> Joe is armed in this country, and oft times Suzy also.
> 
> Our children have been in school here, and tonight we went to the 
> Homecoming dinner. A drum band pounding out the rhythm whilst beautifully 
> gowned ladies with fantastic jewellery and sundry glitter walked around the 
> room. Men in beautiful and expensive suits accompanied them. We feasted and 
> drank and made conversation. On a giant screen, film of the High School 
> football team (quarter-back has the best stats in the whole US) was played. 
> People were light-hearted and merry and it was a great night in the 
> American tradition.
> 
> I could not help but have the thought intrude upon me that it was like an 
> 'end of America' party. Maybe it's the end of something that had become 
> rotten, and the re-birth of something far more decent. There are very hard 
> times coming. When TSHTF [the s*** hits the fan] remember that it is 
> Congress who is your enemy, not your neighbour.
> 
> None of the bankers and Wall Street crooks could have done what they did 
> without the support and backing of Congress legislation that not only 
> allowed such actions, but by the nature of government intervention in 
> markets, made it impossible to survive in those industries without becoming 
> corrupted by the legislation.
> 
> Whilst it does not excuse the lack of moral fibre of those who participated 
> in this greatest of ever frauds, it is good to remember that we all have 
> things in our youthful past that we are not proud of. Without a Congress 
> who completely ignored the Constitution there could never have been the 
> legislation that created this fraud. Without Congress, America would never 
> have reached this impoverished state. Without Congress, Americans would 
> already be living much better lives, with far fewer enemies in the world.
> 
> I shall be writing from overseas after tomorrow. I'll look from a distance 
> at the implosion of America. My family and I have loved living in America 
> these last nine months and are very sad to leave. I came to chronicle at 
> first hand the decline of this once great country. The people are 
> wonderful... warm, friendly, honest and hard working.
> 
> I have come to understand much about Americans in the last nine months, and 
> found nothing that I did not like (apart from the food and coffee), but I 
> am still a million miles away from understanding why you elect the 
> no-hopers that you do to your Congress. We all want to be able to come back 
> again one day. No matter how much my family and I will miss America, it 
> will not be as much as the world will miss America.
> 
> ***
> 
> The brilliant Professor Antal E. Fekete, economist and mathematician, is 
> conducting a seminar in Canberra, Australia from the 11th to the 14th 
> November this year. It is the ONLY seminar anywhere in the world where all 
> 
> 
> Sep 27, 2008
> Sam Mathid
> email: sammathid AT yahoo.com
> 
> © Sam Mathid 2006-2008
> 
> 
> 
>       
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