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You can’t create a twenty-first century society based upon an educational system promoting the myth that you can be all you can be — by just showing up; enforced by an mediocre bureaucracy – which essentially just shows up; built on a twentieth century industrial model to create workers for factories — that no longer exist; and enforced by a geopolitical financial establishment — totally hedged against any risk.
— Jerry Bannon, The Wonder Springs Chronicle, 25 January 2012, Publisher and angry American citizen

By attempting to pick up where we left off last week and close out this brief series, this article runs significantly longer than I normally like, but I think the context helps provide a cogent framework to build toward a positive future economic path. Borrowing the outline, and placing it in a totally different context from what was presented in a Monday evening presentation I attended, the conclusion is: Make wine, not argument, and definitely not war.

When your first job after graduating from college is in military intelligence, the one universal law is to: Never believe anything you are told without verifying it from at least two other independent sources. Through experience, even in the more communications side of the spy craft, like the National Security Agency, contrasted with the real spooky dudes, you quickly learn that the real world does not operate as it is generally hyped and anything approaching the real truth is hard to come by.

This of course can quickly make you cynical, if not tempered with the most powerful force in the world — which is truth. Truth always comes with a cost and most of the time untruth grows not so much from its power, but from the naïve perception we do not possess the resources to dismantle the presuppositions of these lies.

One such untruth fostered through the media, especially at this time, is that we live in a global capitalist system of markets. This whole myth supports inductive extreme views that in order to move toward the shining city on the hill, we need either to restrain capitalism or unleash capitalism and markets will work their magic.

Neither view is able to grasp the reality that the industrial consumer age we experienced during much of the twentieth century is unsustainable, because all the productivity gains we have been able to achieve, especially in the last thirty years, have been offset with decreasing efficiencies and centralization.

Tags: capitalism, high marginal tax rates, Laffer Curve, Reagan Revolution, Glass-Steagall, debt, Alan Greenspan, GDP, globalism

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You can’t create a twenty-first century society based upon an educational system promoting the myth that you can be all you can be — by just showing up; enforced by an mediocre bureaucracy – which essentially just shows up; built on a twentieth century industrial model to create workers for factories — that no longer exist; and enforced by a geopolitical financial establishment — totally hedged against any risk.
— Jerry Bannon, The Wonder Springs Chronicle, 25 January 2012, Publisher and angry American citizen

On Monday we posted a homework assignment with two videos and two real articles on why America is no longer competitive in the real world. Besides the links we suggested this was going to be a unique week, when starting Saturday we had a major political upset in the South Carolina presidential primary and then last night the president’s State of the Union address. Not being all that into the current political spin, I wasn’t aware of Monday night’s eighteenth Republican candidates’ debate.

Just before the debate I made the mistake of watching the DVD of Waiting for Superman, the documentary about the failure of American education, which really is the cause and effect for the Wonder Springs’ homework post earlier Monday. NBC’s Brian Williams began the debate by again asking “baiting” questions of both Romney and Gingrich, to wit they actively entered the fray. This continued, while I did a little housekeeping. Fifteen minutes in and no change on the horizon, I decided there must be a better way to spend my time. A rapid surfing of the channels provided only commercials and nothing of equally redeeming social value, so I decided to go to bed; a very good decision.

Not so strangely Waiting for Superman proposed an education solution based upon this series title, increased productivity and a greater and more efficient utilization of both finances and other resources through decentralization. The problem with Superman however was that his goal in life was to have a college degree. Aren’t-weren’t the Occupy protests mostly based upon the futility of financially leveraged college degrees, based upon a progressive warm-fuzzy nonexistent utopia?

So departing from my previous script of looking at details related to greater efficiency and decentralization, this week we will wander into the desert of American education and beyond, things I am probably better versed anyway.

Tags: Waiting for Superman, education, SAFER Process, biofuels, research, Laffer Curve, high marginal tax rates

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This is econ 101: when a family is richer, its older workers demand higher wages to stay in work and its younger workers demand higher wages to take a first job. The dynamic contracts available jobs unless offset by an equal or greater rise in productivity.
— Edmund Phelps, Financial Times 11 January 2012, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics

Late in last week’s article I used an archaic word, which at the time I had not noticed. But shortly thereafter, I wondered if any American still understood what I was writing about and even if they had an inkling of its meaning, if they could at all grasp the implications of what that word, if really put into practice, would actually do to the economic muddle we now find ourselves. Dear readers that word we don’t hear anywhere anymore is: decentralization.

In my lifetime the United States of America, has become really the federal government unitasker of the world and its current and potential prosperity. There was some talk within the early days of the Tea Party and the talking points of Republican candidates for the presidency, about states rights; and of course Ron Paul and his libertarian base speak of smaller government and in favor of individual rights, sometimes bordering on anarchy. The word decentralization however is to be found nowhere in anybody’s conservative lexicon.

As far as Barack Obama, the liberal-progressive-left and the Democrat Party, it seems that they think there is no problem that more government spending will not cure, particularly if it originates within the federal government unitasker, an then forces the un-sovereign states to fund what the federal government doesn’t have the political will or the constitutional power to implement.

Furthermore, like all elitists of their persuasion, they believe that new wealth can be created, as do most Republicans, through tax incentives to crony capitalists, which through mergers and acquisitions, will provide the economic basis for the continuing growth of government programs, including entitlement programs and wealth redistribution.

Late Sunday we posted a short video from CNBC last Friday with Edmund Phelps, whose quotation above, from a recent article in the Financial Times, begins our discussion this week. In that video he speaks of the role of particularly southern European governments who sponsored wealth creation for their citizens through entitlement programs, yet through unintended consequences are linked to both a decline in national productivity as well as a significant cause of the euro crisis.

Tags: economics, Edmund Phelps, productivity, wealth, efficiency, USA, liquidity, Business Ecology, Great Depression, Collectivist Elitists, Laissez Faire Scoundrels

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If you want it done precisely your way, you better do it yourself!
— Ancient Chinese Proverb

Late last week I bought a new over the air TV antenna from Costco, no more cable or satellite television for me. Now just the twenty minutes of advertising per hour rather than paying around an additional hundred bucks a month for the privilege of watching hundreds of channels I care nothing about, and I suspect few supply much positive influence to change our nation or the world.

To celebrate I decided to watch the Saturday evening Republican Debates. This was debate number 15, or so I was told. They all seemed like decent, somewhat committed guys, but I didn’t see a national messiah amongst the crew. But just like the current incarnation of our president, it seems that they all still believe that the federal government is the source of the solutions to our current woes.

Over the past three years we have learned that Barack Obama was not the national messiah either. But in the first real job he ever had, it seems that he was amazed, just as much as most of his supporters, that achieving nirvana in this world was not an easy task. Falling back to a more realistic desire shown in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he also seems not to have either the talent, the ambition, or the constitutional ability to achieve that desire either.

When you look around the world, even though there seems currently a little temporary stability coming to the United States, we still seem incapable of even dealing with our universe of ever expanding debt; solutions are just as far away as they were a year ago; yet the current plight remains a juggernaut to a stable future.

What all this means is things are going to get worse, possibly much worse before they get significantly and sustainabiy better. In the context of last week’s article on The Normalcy of Deviance, this climax may probably come about not through a slow demise of prosperity but rather a global stupendous collapse. Could it be the Mayan’s got it right, long ago, for reasons they could not understand?

Tags: normalcy of deviance, Barack Obama, GDP, MADP, risk, debt, capitalism, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area

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If you don’t fundamentally change structure and culture, you are doomed to repeat history.
— Diane Vaughn, Columbia University; Author: The Challenger Launch Decision

We begin this year and this week with a quotation from Diane Vaughn that we used in our introduction to our September 7, 2011 article on Climax Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurial Pioneer Areas. Diane’s work was again brought to my attention by an article by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times that appeared late last year and widely reported in many sources about the potential for another Flash crash threatens to return with a vengeance. This refers to an episode that happened on May 6, 2010 when US equity markets froze because of unexpected high volumes.

In the flash crash article “Normalcy of Deviance” appears, referencing the Challenger spacecraft disaster and how NASA scientists and engineers truly believed that such an occurrence was impossible because they assumed they were essentially too good to allow the impossible to happen.

I spent some time looking for more information on the normalcy of deviance and found outside the Challenger incident and the flash crash reporting, “normalcy” and “deviance” were seldom if ever linked. I assume that means that “normal” is sort of by definition never “deviant.” Or perhaps more to the point, we just don’t have the guts to look for such a stupendous reality.

As we begin 2012, it occurs to me that our new normal is totally deviant from historical standards, at least for a half a century and perhaps a whole lot longer. For example never before in history, will the Mayan end of the world prophesy come into play at the winter solstice on December 21, 2012.

In that perspective, a potential equity flash crash is the least of our worries. Furthermore it doesn’t take long to come up with a whole list of potential economic catastrophes that could basically destroy the world we have all too long taken for granted. When you get right down to the basics, in the context of human history, for virtually all of our lifetimes, we have had it pretty squishy.

Tags: normalcy of deviance, economics, capitalism, Eurozone, USA, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, Grizzly USA

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If the author (John Darby — Early Dispensationalist Leader) would write in plain English his readers would probably discover that there is nothing very valuable in his remarks.

— Charles Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries, 84

Thankfully, at least according to the Mayan Calendar, this will all be over by December 21, 2012. The end of the world, or the end of the world as we know and have known it? There could be a big difference.

The end of the world as we have known it, really just takes both European leaders and Washington Federal politicians to continue kicking the financial debt can down the road. The major problem, as we continue to point out, is that the twenty-first century solutions to globalism’s reliance on itsy-bitsy no risk pieces of the action, on all the world’s financial transactions, has failed to sustain anything but more debt.

Today we will look at what we have defined as the Profane Covenant as the reason behind this failure. We would like to say that a few twists and turns and a few corrageous acts by political or financial leadership and the debt Titanic will miss the end of the world iceberg, but that just kicks the can back to the Mayan prophesy.

I don’t think I have ever quoted Pat Buchanan in all my years of doing these writings, but this week his pusillanimous comments about American Christians pretty much illustrates the timidity that is behind the current dominance of the Profane Covenant in not only this country, but also the whole of western culture.

The Bible describes three covenants; the oldest being the Profane, even though you probably have never heard it described in that way. The other two are the Abrahamic Covenant, also known as the Covenant of Grace and the Mosaic Covenant or the Covenant of God’s Law.

One way to describe the Profane Covenant, for it traces its roots back to the Garden of Eden, is the devil made me do it. All of historic orthodox Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, traces our profane source back to St. Augustine and total depravity, which literally we perform quite well all by ourselves.

Tags: Profane Covenant, Abrahamic Covenant, Mosaic Covenant, Mormons, Eurozone, Enlightenment, God

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Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “ This is what the LORD has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all people I will be glorified,’” And Aaron held his peace.
— Leviticus: 10:1-3 English Standard Version

Today is the first day of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. According to the Jewish calendar on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the first of eight candles were lit, just after sundown Tuesday evening. The celebration marks the rededication of the Second Temple during the Maccabean Revolt in the second century BCE, as well as the miracle of a small jar of consecrated oil, which burned for eight days in the Temple’s menorah, when the quantity was only sufficient for one day. The New Testament says in John 10: 22 that Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah).

On December 9, 2011 President Obama had a “Hanukkah Party” in the White House. As a Christian I find the President’s party pretty much in line with the “strange-profane-unauthorized fire in the Leviticus quotation above. I also realize that many historic White House Hanukkah celebrations would not be considered kosher in the Jewish sense, but for some reason I find this date and the whole lack of any sort of sanctification or glory given to God, to fit the party occasion properly. I also read a number of writers who thought that the President would not treat a Muslim religious observance with such inaptitude.

The great thing that separates we humans from all of the lower animals is that we are inventors, or creators if you will, and with our mental and physical inventive creations we are able to innovatively construct cultures. This week we will look at our totally unique human attribute, which drives our whole world’s economic engine this time of year. That creation is religion.

Tags: Hanukkah, Christmas, Barack Obama, religion, Christianity, God, grace, Jesus

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Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
— Polonius, Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75-77

Well shucky darn and slop the chickens!

It seems Friday’s long sought solution to the European debt crisis is just another in the series of now over used “kicking the can down the road, (until it is kicked off the cliff) metaphor is back. The whole shebang lasted over the weekend. Thankfully we have the French to praise for the five-day workweek, for God only knows what would have happened without that break.

But at least the Eurocrat elites are hard at work at their misadventure, the American federal government’s political class, both the President and the Congress, seem to like their adventure into the lazy-fairy world of the historic continental work ethic.

At Wonder Springs we have no hesitation to say that on both sides of the Atlantic, the elitists across the political and economic spectrums, seem immersed in trying to create a new and better Babylon, ignoring that Biblical story, as not even a myth, but a children’s boogie-man piece of fiction.

We are beginning another winter, like in the C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Wardrobe tale, “where it is always winter, but never Christmas” which is playing out in reality for far too many subjects, or serfs, or peasants, or lowly evolved talking animals. This is occurring within the grand scheme to make a world of prosperity, based upon a faux world of finance, completely divorced from nature and natural law.

So to cut this string of allegory and metaphor, we shall exit, stage right, with a Palin: How’s that hopey changey, thing workin’ out for ya!

Tags: finance, Babylon, jobs, C. S. Lewis, risk, Collectivist Elitists, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, Business Ecology

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Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang! — confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.
— Reinhart and Rogoff quoted in This Time is Different

I know the above quotation has to do with money and dollars, but money is really just a functional necessity of a somewhat artificial world of enterprise and finance. I suppose in reality we could eat dollars, but all they would really do is increase our daily fiber content, not much nutritional value there. We could also eat dirt, with much the same result. Furthermore both money and dirt are in some circles considered filthy, which is undoubtedly true in a biological context.

The point is both money and dirt are in theory used to grow something. Sadly in our economic world the over use of debt, through highly leveraged fractional reserve banking is in the process of bankrupting the world. In the case of real dirt, that same monetary leverage is leading to perhaps the final chapter in the Debt Supercycle and we may go truly hungry as that deleveraging occurs.

In the United States there are currently over three hundred million people, of that total less than one percent, perhaps two million are directly involved in providing the food we eat. (Since as of this writing we still do not have an permanent Internet connection, that estimate will have to do.) Yet if something goes wrong with what that small minority does; either through natural climate changes, or world economic changes — well over three hundred million people in this country are going to go hungry — and much of the rest of the world will face a severe famine.

We don’t like to think about dirt, after all it is dirty and we like to be clean. Yet the Bible says that were created out of the dust of the ground, and formed into a likeness of the living God. Even evolutionists believe that somehow, through great mega-faith, those dirty elements rearranged into some form of life.

Essentially we like to be dirt-free because we don’t want to accept our humble roots, hence we can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang! — confidence collapses . . . and a crisis hits.

Tags: dirt, agriculture, debt, cheap energy, water, Farm Bill, PREFER Ltd, SAFER Process

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She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.
— 1 Samuel 4:21, Daughter-in-law of Eli, Israel’s High Priest

The glory has departed – the whole world.

“What’s up Doc?” said Bugs Bunny.

“Bugs, sad to say, things ain’t that peachy keen, all over the globe, it has simply become Ichabod’s world!” replied Elmer Fudd.

Sadly, we are forced to live in a real world; the cartoon financial fantasies of the twentieth century have forced us to look at the twenty-first. To take off the rose colored glasses and not only look at a real three dimensional world, but for the first time, in a very long time, to question some of the assumptions that have guided our make-believe world of that epoch.

I realize that this rather a stark way to look at the world and the nation, especially this week when the nation celebrates its Thanksgiving Holiday. But when you seriously look at what is happening Ichabod seems like a just description. This week besides tomorrows thanksgiving feast, we are marketed the hype that this will be “Turkey Day and Professional Football,” the nation’s pseudo religion. That followed by Black Friday when it has become the practice of feeding the god of consumer gluttony.

Lest we forget today was the day when the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were supposed to begin to act like adults and make a true token gesture in beginning to reign in some of the federal government’s excessive spending, in a somewhat controlled environment.

The $1.2 trillion in savings, however was really way less than a token, the real work would have been to make those savings on an annual basis. A real functioning republic would have seen it within reason, to make those cut to one percent of GDP, so that we could have seriously begun to restructure and rethink the role of government, so that it represented the vast majority of our people; not those just on the conservative and liberal extremes of their political parties.

Tags: Ichabod, Thanksgiving, economics, finance, compound interest, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, Collectivist Elitists, Babylon

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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it has to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
— Henry David Thoreau, Author, Naturalist, Philosopher, 1817-1862

This week’s title reference to wildness is perhaps Thoreau’s most well known quotation: “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.” This quotation however does not come from his many books and essays published during his life but from a booklet called Walking published after his death in 1862. We have a PDF copy of Walking in our Resources Section. For context the wildness preservation reference occurs on page 13 of that document.

However Walden, Thoreau’s most famous book, is looked upon by many in the environmental movement as a natural Bible. While not a scientific survey, it is not uncommon for backpackers and hikers to pull out of their packs a copy of Walden to provide their daily devotions.

Free copies of Walden, in a number of formats are found at Project Gutenberg, as well on Amazon where a search for “Walden Thoreau” returns 2,801 results. Top on the list is a pre-order release, this week, of a new paperback that features a log cabin and a side fireplace, not at all similar to Thoreau’s 10 foot by 15 foot shingled cape cod structure.

Thoreau began his stay on Walden Pond on July 4, 1846 and continued there for just 2 years, 2 months and 2 days, at which time he moved back to the city to house sit for fellow Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is stated that it took Thoreau longer to write Walden than the time he actually spent living in the woods.

In that enlighten vision I thought that this introduction would serve as a great segue into my announcement that I too am in the process of leaving my hut in the woods, and returning somewhat to civilization. While I have made numerous excursions into the outside world during this time in the Boulder Creek Canyon of the Kettle River, it would not be difficult to say that my time would be double Thoreau’s stay; essentially 4 years, 4 months, and 4 days.

Tags: Thoreau, 2nd Great Awakening, fear, Christianity, Amoeba Theory, Native Americans

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On more than one occasion you have offended me, but in my qualities both as Christian and philosopher I have always forgiven you and only pitied you for your errors.
— Nicola Tesla, Inventor, Engineer, Philosopher, 1856-1943

Last week, October jobs numbers were reported. The net numbers were 100,000, a number below those required to keep up with population growth.

So where are all the jobs?

There really is a common sense reason for the lack of jobs. You won’t hear it from the politicians, the financial gurus, or the economists. Actually the chance of you reading it anywhere other than right here at the Wonder Springs Chronicle is slim to none!

Simply the reason there are no jobs is the fact that job creation throughout the history of mankind has been totally asset based. In a faux world, in which it is believed that universal debt financing is the basis for economic growth — is simply wrong.

Furthermore the simple reason the debt-myth-lie is continually broadcast ad nauseam is that “them that pitches this hype don’t know no better.” As an example the first rule of educating an industrial age specialist is to throw common sense out the window, because the world is too complex to be understood beyond the simple part we all play in the production of goods and services game. Hence we all need to specialize; that is the current universal jobs paradigm.

As we have continually pitched on these pages for at least a year and a half, jobs are created by startup, entrepreneurial enterprises. These startup job creators cannot afford to hire specialists, except as outside contractors. In a startup business, whether it is a copy shop, or farm, or repair business, or professional service you need people who are ready willing and able to perform a number of diverse tasks and do them all well.

All prosperous enterprise endeavors do not need an educational system that teaches potential employees to believe they deserve rewards for just showing up, but never finishing anything, who have absolutely no concept of true excellence, or the competitive nature of the real world, are not needed, and they only get in the way. This is even more reality in a startup.

Tags: Third Opening of the West, jobs, Nicola Tesla, startup jobs, Richard Nixon, compound interest, Greece, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, Industrial Age

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Those who think small subsistence farming is a great way to live; haven’t tried it. All individual farming and ranching is subsistence.
Twenty-first century rendition of a twentieth century proverb.

Last week at this time, equity markets around the world were elated because it was believed that finally European leaders were close to working out a deal that would save Greece from financial default and the whole world would again be on the wide superhighway to the continual Industrial Age global shining city on the consumptive hill.

What we have learned in the meantime is that the hill has turned out to be a mound of garbage and the deal that finally immerged was just another can kicked upon the heap.

There is no free lunch. But when we move to the world of agriculture, the reality is that our lunch is as close to free as possible. Because of government supports of industrialized agriculture in this country, we have so altered natural equilibriums of markets around the world, that when, not if, we finally deal with the end of this portion of the global debt supercycle, we will be forced to close the free lunch counter.

That only constant change, will eventually lead to opportunities to redefine farming and ranching into an opportunity that really can be a great way to live, because it will reshape rural life into something beyond industrial factory farms and ranches.

This year we have spent a great deal of time trying to draw a distinction between the twentieth century and the end of the Industrial Age and a twenty-first century Individual Age. We see the germinating seeds of these global changes in the Tea Party, the Arab Spring and the current Occupy movement in this country. What all these common natural human community functions demonstrate is a diversity of human needs and capacities beyond the Industrial model of humans as specialized production-consumptive machines.

As these changes move forward, a new reality will begin to emerge in which the dinosaurs, behemoths and leviathans of the Industrial Age will not be able to adapt to these opportunities, because even though they have access to capital, their inherited size, simplistic thinking, and the inability to adapt to the unintended consequences of their actions, will not allow them to utilize the energetic new efficiencies of flexible developmental scales and the opportunities these innovative changes create.

Tags: Industrial Age, Individual Age, agriculture, Greece, GDP, World War I

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“Three Acres and a Cow,” 1880s British Land Reform &1920s Distributionism
“Forty Acres and a Mule,” Emancipation of Southern Slaves, US Civil War
“One Hundred Sixty Acres and Independence,” American Homestead Act 1862-1976

Human beings are a risk adverse bunch. In fact this seeking of security is the real reason we seek to form bunches. Families, neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities, states and nations, as well as churches, synagogues, mosques, social clubs and lodges; the list is almost endless.

The physical issues however, flows from the reality of fallen man. We truly believe that there is safety in numbers, which is true to a point, that point being when the dignity of the individual is replaced with its loss. The more of that individual dignity we lose, the more we evolve into the so-called lesser animals.

In western culture, to make these communities workable, we first created a financial system called banking, in which we believed that a preexisting commodity called money could be managed in such a way as to increase security.

It took some enterprising Scots, enlightened by the Protestant work ethic, to give us a positive model for creating that global shining and secure city on a hill. That merger of banking and enterprise fueled the creation of capitalism, in which risk is controlled through the application of compound interest.

What happens however, if natural risk isn’t covered by the simple compound interest spread?

Simply put, human beings seek their security through other means; most commonly land, as described at the introduction. Since during the Age of Discovery and the open frontier all land was initially the property of the state, and hence land grants of varying orders, became the mechanism for development to take place, this is beyond the pale of capitalism and compound interest.

Tags: Third Opening of the West, capitalism, agriculture, Earl Butz, John Wesley Powell, Industrial Age, Individual Age, USA, water, distributism

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‘It's not a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity to have no dreams.'

Later in life, I would learn that this is, and should be, the mantra for the true CEO of SELF.

— Herman Cain, Quoting Dr. Mays, his Morehouse College President

Yes, yes, yes it is a play on words; using the German language. This week we will spend our time looking at Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Economic Plan. When progressives finally begin to take Mr. Cain seriously as a presidential candidate, they will begin speaking with both the German and the American meanings, Nein! Nein! Nein! — No! No! No!

One of those mainstream media news-commentaries from Monday found connections from Wisconsin to Virginia allegedly linking Cain’s campaign to the billionaire Koch brothers and their bankrolling of American’s for Prosperity for which Cain did some work. How about from Washington State, or Alaska to Florida, or Maine to California or Hawaii, Alabama to Wyoming, but two points just make a straight line, they do not make a journalistic linking continuum, except in simplistic Nein! Nein! Nein! — No! No! No!

The 9-9-9 Plan is the most profound taxing program in a century and a half; since reconstruction after the Civil War; since the rise of evolving social progressivism; since the demise of the nineteenth century definition of liberalism; I could go on.

Speaking about his plan on 8 August 2011 Herman stated, If ten percent is good enough for God, then nine percent should be just fine for the Federal Government.

But why should the evolving, progressive Collective Elitists lose what is left of their remaining sanity over a simple plan to revamp the Federal tax system in the United States?

Tags: Herman Cain, 9-9-9 Economic Plan, God, Grizzly USA, Believe in America, Mitt Romney, agriculture, military industrial complex, Environmental Imperialism, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, GDP

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The whole world is so greedy for bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.
— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, March 1948

Since our consumer world has begun to outwardly head into the ditch in 2007, there as been much said, pontificated, argued and discussed about the reasons for our current muddling economy and direction for the future. Little however, has been articulated regarding the need for economic competition and decentralization, especially federal government decentralization.

Presidential candidate Rick Perry in his book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington, indicates his focus on the national government, but seems to look at one of the trees but misses the centralization forest. This of course has been the Republican mantra for as long as I can remember as they, along with the Democrats, “progressively” centralize more and more power at the national level.

Agriculture, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Housing, Military, Social Security and Transportation are just a few of the centralized bureaucracies that drive the national agenda. With largesse, contrary to all the rhetoric to the contrary, and essentially by definition, begets a lack of competition.

Centralization however is really the way we humans choose to solve our community and cultural problems throughout recorded history. Since the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament until the passage of ObamaCare in the United States, to the Eurozone attempts to unify distinct nation states, into a financial precursor to another attempt to create the human Babylonian utopia, we believe we are significantly collectively smarter than we are individually.

Tags: Aldo Leopold, competition, decentralization, Natural Law, Collectivist Elitists, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, F A Hayek, Congress

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America’s ongoing jobs depression - which is what it deserves to be called - is the worst economic calamity to hit this nation since the Great Depression.

— Robert Reich, Clinton Administration Labor Secretary, economist

It seems that Reich’s comments are something every American, and probably most citizens of the developed world can unite upon. The problems we face seem to be agreeing on the means to combat, fix, or lessen the jobs problem.

The Chronicle has some of the smartest readers in the human universe. If you read these columns on a weekly basis you are going to have to work your way through two to three times the verbiage that accompanies the more popular pundits and commentators. Mainstream media doesn’t pay people to develop specific topics; it just takes up too much space that could be used for advertising revenue. This is becoming an even more important symbol in the Internet age, as click to external commercial sites become the major means of web support.

I have been told I am a smart guy, even a close personal friend of over a quarter of a century has said I need to print and distribute business cards that say: “Genius For Hire!” I would say in the total picture, I do have a few unusual gifts that are somewhat unique, that we touched upon last week, which I seem to be able to see or comprehend things in a way other people can’t see, or more likely don’t want to see. This is sort of a disharmony in which many people seem to be afraid to look for. Others have called it an obtuse way of looking at life.

This week we will begin to develop a theory that just sort of popped into my mind as we have watched the development of the bear stock market and the various pundits, commentators and analysts’ response to this developing reality.

Tags: evolution, Adam Smith, GDP, FED, Joseph Schumpeter, enterprise hydrologic cycle, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area

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“There are no… limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future. There isn't a risk of an apocalypse due to global warming or anything else. The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit, is a profound error and one that, were it ever to prove influential, would have staggering social costs.”

— Larry Summers, Former Director, White House Economic Council, While at the World Bank

Plop! Plop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh, what a relief it is!

We need to no longer fear taking financial fizzics, yet the world has not lost its belief that a couple of effervescent tablets is going to make the financial heartburn disappear. But before anything can be truly prescribed to what ails us all, we must look squarely at the reality of the current financial disease.

Our current bellyache is best outlined in the totality of Larry’s worldview above. In a world based solely on the universe of money, and since money, as defined in the twenty-first century, has no intrinsic values or limits, by accepting the economist’s financial metafizzical universe, growth is by definition unlimited.

Again by this definition, it leaves out the complexity of the human personality and the reality of natural law, especially the real physics of natural energetics.

So what happens when the real physics of the universe comes into conflict with the world’s financial elite fizzics? An old cranky, primitive duffer like me tends to think that natural physics is going to win, along with all the natural laws that accompany this form of reality. Furthermore, to quote the esteemed Mr. Summers, “were it (natural limit) to prove influential, would have staggering social costs.”

Tags: fizzics, GDP, Larry Summers, Keynesian, FED, fear, metis, Natural Law

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For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'
— Jesus, Luke 14:28-30, ESV

Why would anyone currently want to begin a startup enterprise that will create new jobs in the United States of America?

The president would say, “If Congress would pass the Jobs Act now!” that would be a reason.

Congressional Republicans would say, “If we would just cut taxes to give small businesses incentives to hire people!” that would be a reason.

Again, why would anyone currently want to begin a startup enterprise that will create new jobs in the United States of America?

Then there is the Federal Reserve and the Treasury that seem to believe as long the “world financial markets” have access to various faux-fiat-money instruments and that interest rates remain near zero for the indefinite future, the trader’s computer programs, will bring prosperity to those, dare we say Ponzi” schemes, and that will allow their at least monthly potential manipulations thereof, to trickle down to the folks and the entrepreneurs in a positive way.

For example, on Monday, Obama announced another progressive income tax adjustment of $1.5 trillion, to make sure any chance of Voodoo economics’ trickle down will be processed through the ever expanding, cancerous, bureaucratic, Federal dinosaur. Later today it is expected the FED Chairman Bernanke will offer, “Let’s twist again, like we did a half century ago.”

All this means that traditional historic banking, as practiced for centuries, no longer has a means to service their traditional customers; but that is just one of a number of intended consequence of readjusting Babylon to the wishes of the Babylonian elite.

Tags: Barack Obama, FED, startup jobs, Congress, entrepreneur, PREFER Ltd

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“Our present and future challenge is to provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to create sustainable new wealth within a climax economic ecosystem.”
— Jerry Bannon, Founder; The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Over the last couple of weeks we have entertained two Republican presidential debates and one American Jobs Act speech and the followup ideas on how to pay for it from president Obama. Before the first Republican debate Mitt Romney issued his Believe in America plan, which we will tackle shortly. In Europe the questions about the Euro and Greece and other sovereign debt continue to change with each passing day.

What we are really dealing with is an endgame of the twentieth century’s debt-leverage supercycle and a short term political future in which all leaders appear to be troglodytes attempting to resuscitate this past age of economic behemoths, dinosaurs and leviathans. However in the context of the two ages, their diversity could best be described as: Our Quantity of Life contrasted with Our Quality thereof. The goal of this week’s article is to frame the current twentieth century quantity of life concepts, within some potential quality of life solutions of the future.

To illustrate this contrast we shall thus begin with Mitt Romney’s Believe in America:

Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
Lord’s prayer: 66 words
Archimedes’ Principle: 67 words
Ten Commandments: 179 words
Gettysburg address: 286 words
US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words

(Thanks Cyril through Grant Williams)

Grizzly USA Plan: 398 words — two copies on one piece of paper
Mitt Romney’s Believe in America: 39,176 words — 160 pages (88 in PDF)

(Using the same word counting software)

What would the futuristic Grizzly USA Plan do that Believe in America would not?

Tags: Grizzly USA, Believe in America, Mitt Romney, agriculture, military industrial complex, Barack Obama, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, social security

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“If you don’t fundamentally change structure and culture, you are doomed to repeat history.”
— Diane Vaughn, Columbia University; Author: The Challenger Launch Decision

Humans sure are religious creations. We all believe in something, or someone, even if some people say they believe in nothing; nothing must have its corporate headquarters in Nowhere.

I bring this up because here on the west coast, late tomorrow afternoon, president Obama is finally giving his speech on saving the continuing to tank economy — just before the kickoff of the NFL season. I’m sure, just another teleprompter speech will be the talk around the water coolers and the coffee pots, as those who have real jobs, bolster up their courage to meet the hassles of the daily commute home. So remember to set your DVRs!

It has to be some religious issue for Barack Obama, like someway his words are going to recreate reality. Most leaders would leak a 5, 7, or 10, or 12 point plan with all sorts of backup data and then make a few well chosen remarks about the high points, and let the analysts and the pundits have their way with the details. But not this president, this speech has been hyped for a month; at least it seems that way. The “Hallelujah, Thank you Barack!” seems to have lost its revivalist luster.

Adding some economic context, everyone pretty much knows that the speech will be essentially about the New-New Deal Keynesian stimulus, which will not be called stimulus, that will provide a mechanism to rebuild twentieth century infrastructure, and to provide prevailing wage union jobs to bring it about, once all the regulatory hurdles are jumped and moats are crossed. But wait, that moat must be a wetland; so one could foresee a decade of moat crossing regulations that will need to be fill or fulfilled, before. . . — Wasn’t this supposed to be about creating jobs?

Rick Perry, the Republican party frontrunner, says and writes that he is FED UP! with the size of the Federal Government. Since growing federalism has been around for 150 years, and has become more “progressive” as time has elapsed, that sounds a whole lot like “hope in change” with just a slightly different religious spin.

Personally it seems that, “How’s that Hopey-Changey Thing Workin’ Out for Ya?” appears to be, “That same-ol’, same ol’ isn’t workin’ either!”

Tags: Barack Obama, Rick Perry, Grizzly USA, Business Ecology, Climax Ecosystem, GDP, Great Depression, Entrepreneurial Pioneer Area