Michael Panzer: "Scrap yards are the new pawn shops"

Michael Panzer is one gloomy dude.  So much so that he almost makes me appear to be upbeat on the economy in comparison.  While you might not like his facts (can you handle the truth or not?), you just can't argue with them as he reports that scrap yards are the new pawn shops.  What in essence is happening with these scrap metal criminals is the same thing that happened with global corporations: people decided that it was OK to piss away big money that belonged to someone else if it meant that they could make pennies on the pissed away dollars.

Seriously.  If you look at many corporations, a lot of the moves made by the upper brass during the boom were clearly designed to make the profit numbers look better for a year or two or even a quarter or two so that the CEO and his cronies could make a few more millions in bonuses.  Too bad if the decisions meant long term problems for the corporations or perhaps even their eventual demise.   And so it is with the metals thieves.  They steal power lines and water pipes that they turn in for 4 measly dollars a lb while the infrastructure they are tearing down is worth 100x or even 1000x that amount. 

Unfortunately, it's no different with government.  Government starts wars so that it can bomb bridges that it will later borrow money to pay Halliburton et al. to repair (Dick Cheney is as much a traitor as is Alan Greenspan).  Government also paid people a few dollars to destroy perfectly good working used cars in the cash for clunkers program.  It wasn't enough that people turned the cars in and bought new ones.   Ohhhh, nooooo.  The government had to make sure the engines were completely ruined as part of the program (caution, loud video).  It was utter waste of economic value in order to get a few fake quarters of benefit for the auto industry in order to IPO GM again.  Scam, scam, scam.

In an unkind revelation of the truth, it so happens that the places which can least afford this kind of waste are the ones which are seeing the most of it.  The desperate, disenfranchised residents of these places are beginning to figure out that the establishment is not their friend.  Once this realization is made there are no further barriers to flip into predation mode.  Think about it.  Let's imagine something impossible sounding for a second.  Let's say you are a law abiding citizen and the cops kick your door down without a warrant and attempt to kill you in the middle of the night in front of your wife and child.  If you live (ummm, Guerena didn't), what is your mindset going to be from then on?  Play by the rules as stated by the state or do unto others before they do unto you?  And so it is with the recent economically disenfranchised.  Any target is fair game now.  Things that we would normally only associate with 3rd world countries are becoming daily practice in the USA.

It's only likely to get worse before it gets better.   Bernanke has been propping up the economy starting at the top.  Yes, his actions have postponed the massive middle class layoffs that must eventually come but only at the expense of letting the elite steal us blind as a nation.  The end result will be much worse economically than if the free market had just gotten on with the depression without the banker bailouts.  The bankers took all of the stimulus and paid themselves ridiculous bonuses for doing no economically useful work.  When the collapse arrives they will hoard that cash waiting for the deflationary crash to increase their buying power four fold. 

They are laughing now for having fleeced the sheeple so boldly but I actually feel sorry for them because they do not fully understand the anger that they have incited in the general population.  I'm talking Reeve Valkenheiser type anger towards moneymen.  Once the collapse hits then it will be open season on con men and bankers.  Perhaps I will be proven wrong but at this point I suspect that bankers and moneymen will have a very difficult time enjoying their stolen prosperity into old age. When you get a scammer like  Lloyd Blankfein smugly telling the people that Goldman Sachs is "doing God's work" one can only imagine the thought processes this set off in some of the less stable, less economically fortunate among us.