To listen to the Main Stream Media (Or, as Sarah Palin likes to call them, the "Lame Stream Media." One of her few moments of greatness... probably unintentional.), you'd think there's not much going on besides deciding the fate of gays in the military, and Elizabeth Edwards' death, and a trial centering around someone named Elizabeth Smart, whoever she is. But my heart is filled with something akin to foreboding... trepidation, maybe? Wrong! It's the fatalistic acceptance of an upper-deck spectator at the circus known as the Decline and Fall of the American Empire. But the stands at this show of tired metaphors are not even half-full, or even one-third. It's a bit lonely up here. (Hey, Richard! Wayne! Come sit by me!)
Yesterday I went into one of our local antique shops, where I sometimes venture for below-spot-price silver coins. I'd thought it my little secret, as there has always been plenty of silver dollars, halves, and smaller denominations to choose from. My last visit there, back in the summer, had yielded some great deals on silver halves. Now, however, it seems my secret is found out. There were no silver dollars to be had, and only a few halves. The prices were still below spot, but I left with only a silver half and a couple of silver dimes and some silver wartime nickels (my first purchase ever of the latter -- they used to turn up from time to time in my change, but they are very hard to come by in that manner any more). The nice lady behind the counter informed me that she'd never seen such demand for their coins.
The door to silver investment is slowly being closed, at least for me and mine. With my preferred Ebay dealer selling his common date silver dollars for $27-$28 and up, I am nearly priced out. I watch the silver market daily, and fret as the price climbs, knowing that I wasted too much time and money by not buying more silver while it was more affordable. Precious metals are one of the few safe investments for small potatoes investors like me, and with gold near $1400/oz., silver has been my only option. Now I may be forced to collect copper cents, which have a spot price of .03. Not exactly a good way to build a retirement fund, there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'll never get to retire, not in the sense my parents and grandparents knew it.
Oil prices are wobbling, though the direction they are trending is unmistakeable...
One other thing the MSM/LSM is talking about is the WikiLeaks saga, though they are talking about the wrong thing. In their coverage of Assange they show their utter complicity with TPTB (The Powers That Be). As has been mentioned elsewhere, any respectable journalist should be standing up and shouting in defense of Assange's right to a free press; but there is nary a whisper of such to be had from the likes of CNN, Faux News, and the rest. Instead they cower like the whimpering worms they are, seemingly afraid of what might happen if they stand up for themselves and their own professional integrity. They have traded the latter in for career security.
CNBC, of all places, in a rare fit of journalism revealed the depths to which the U.S. military-corporate machine is willing to go to to control the populace in the event of civil unrest, like what we are seeing in London (amid the bitter cold), and in Greece earlier this year. So, even if Joe Blow is mainly concerned with keeping his wife off his back about getting up the Christmas tree and lights, and how to finance the holiday, the gub-ment is seeing to it that the natives, should they become restless, will naetheless NOT impede Joe's ability to consume, consume, CONSUME.
Speaking of which, the Bush Tax Cuts will continue, and actually be expanded for All Americans. This is to encourage further Consuming, a way to part the Consumer from his Hard Earned Paper, which will grease the wheels of Commerce and thus please the Holy Economy, which is God. (Apologies for abusing the capital letters... I get off on that, a little.) However, as even my diminishing intellect was able to grasp, this is nothing more than further Quantitative Easing, in essence QE2.5, flooding the markets with "liquidity." Or, as I prefer to call it, "flexing our Weimar muscle" (DISCLAIMER: the latter is not a reference to any kind of Central European sex act).
My store sales are down, noticeably. I am worried. My customers are broke. Or, to quote the old Bo Diddley tune "Hey Man": "broke-ass." Nobody has any money, really, at least not among my clientele, who are, by and large, who you would call regular folks. And they are, the lot of them, largely clueless as to why they are broke-ass. I think they may feel an unease in their gut that something's not quite right, though they no doubt attribute the feeling to liberals, Julian Assange, or gas.
Everything and nothing, indeed. And my beer is warm, dang it.
How about a pretty picture? Okay, then. Here's "History of the D.C. Universe" by the incomparable Alex Ross.
Wassail. -- C.
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