Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Profit shortfall makeup or government test of herd reaction?

Wal-Mart recently reported earnings that have been declared "a disaster" with bad implications on the economy according to retail expert Howard Davidowitz.  And these results are in spite of the record number of people who are spending money given to them by the government in the form of the EBT card. If you want to know what EBT stands for then look no further than the right wing complaints about "Transfer Payments".  EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer.  It is a transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers (or under-producers) in order to buy their liberal votes.  That's right, it's consumption by the poor paid for by the working class.  The working class isn't actually being asked to pay for this today, it's just going on the national debt which the working class will either have to pay off some day or default on some day, both of which will result in lower consumption by the working class.  Since consumption is fueled by labor, it is effectively a theft of labor by government from the working class so that it can "spread the money around" using Obamanomix in order to buy votes.  Theft of labor used to be called slavery.   Now I guess they've come up with new euphemisms for it.

OK, so very shortly after the poor earnings at Wal-Mart, the government “something for nothing” EBT card system went on the blink.  OK, I get it.  Sometimes technology fails.  Of course Wal-Mart did not want to cut off the EBT "lifeline" in case people couldn't feed their, wait for it, "chiiiillddrreeeeennnn".  I can see all of that.  But instead of placing some reasonable $50 or $100 limit on EBT purchases until the system could be repaired, Wal-Mart simply killed all the limits and let people go hog fvking wild.  People filled up carts piled high with any item they could lay hands on and ran to the checkout counter.  Then they called their deadbeat friends to do the same as they went back for a 2nd cart of fraudulently acquired goods.

It's impossible for any thinking person to believe the official story since the abuses were so blatant and were not controlled in any way by Wal-Mart.  This was clearly a planned event IMO.  It is unbelievable what carnage was allowed to occur during the "limit free EBT window".  I'm still trying to figure out for myself what the real goal of this all was.  Leading potential explanations in my opinion are:
  • just a way for Wal-Mart to goose profits in the short term (letting EBT holders FAAAARRRR overconsume for a short period of time within a prearranged agreement with the government to make WMT whole on the obvious fraudulent losses they will incur.  If this is the case then government and Wal-Mart conspired to defraud the American people in this matter.
  • a social experiment to see how long it would take in an unusual situation for all of the ants and roaches to come out of the woodwork and take advantage of the situation.  I suspect there is probably a social network of sorts, enabled by rapid communications on the cell phones, that helped so many EBT card holders figure out that the limits were off.  So they got up off their couches and abandoned their children in order "get theirs".  This EBT shutdown is like the lights going out or any other large infrastructure change.  It is used to play on human nature knowing that humans (and ants and wildebeests) all behave in predictable ways.
  • an attempt to cause a real crisis.  Either the government will come in and just pay for all of the items that Wal-Mart "sold" to these deadbeats or Wal-Mart will have to take a huge loss on it.  No way do the deadbeats have the cash to make good and no way did Wal-Mart knowingly give away all that money at a time when retail sales are collapsing in the US and abroad.  In this case, Wal-Mart will claim that while they could not determine EBT limits, they could determine who spent what.  And now that the system is back up, Joe and Jane deadbeat will have a huge negative balance that they will have to wait months for new EBT payments to come in and cover.  In the meanwhile, they are stuck with all the crap that they bought but did not actually need.  Remember, they cleaned out every shelf as a cockroach would clean the flesh from bones.  They are holding a bunch of merchandise that they can't eat and can't sell for 20 cents on the dollar.  Craig's list will be a-rocking in their area for the next 3 months as they try to flood all these non-necessary items into the market.  The question then becomes, having wasted their EBT cash, how will these morons eat for the next few months?


Personally, I think this was a mini bailout of  Walmart who will likely be made whole for this “glitch”.   Watch and see.  It will either be automatically transferred from EBT card accounts as those accounts receive new funding or it will be paid for by taxes in order to prop up walmart bad earnings and bad same store sales.  

Of course, it will come back to haunt Walmart because all this did was pull forward future sales.  EBT holders with no EBT cash will be unable to shop in the coming months.   The corruption is so deep you can cut it with a knife.  This is what it is always like at the end of the reign of an organized crime family.  Government is a huge wad of organized crime.  They will begin to get too greedy and they will make mistakes.  Some will get caught, the public will demand blood, some will roll over and give up their partners in crime in order to lighten their own sentence.  We ain’t seen bad yet, but it's coming.  Government knows this which is why it is militarizing our police departments, strategically placing free "surplus" MRAPs around the nation, etc.  They are getting ready to cause a major social panic and then come waltzing in to save us all.

Unfortunately for them, I think it will not work.  I think true, patriotic Americans in the millions are going to rise up against this in a way that has not been seen since the founding of this country.  I don't hope for it any more than I hope for tyrannical government to take over the country.  But I'm looking at comments on blogs, YouTube and articles which discuss economic and social issues and I have never, ever seen so many pissed off middle class working people screaming bloody murder, calling for armed revolt, attacking the integrity of Obama.  In many cases they are even making what could be considered illegal threats against his safety.  They are doing it in writing and knowingly NOT anonymous given recent NSA revelations about illegal spying on American citizens.  It's like people just don't care what the government says anymore because the government has stopped caring about the laws.  

For the record, I think it's beyond stupid to threaten the president or anyone else.

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