VIGILANTISM

VIGILANTISM

For the last week we have witnessed the ugly head of vigilantism appearing all over this country. First through the media that in an incredible way (incredible???), has filled all over their channels with the News (???) about a young man shut to death by a man who stupidly followed him in a neighborhood with a watch program to detect criminal acts in such place resulting in the death of the young man. This act that is under investigation by the Florida criminal justice, is a tragic event by itself, a life is a life and we cannot condone an act where somebody lost it under the hands of anybody.

The bigger problem came when the media have taken “justice” in their hands and “investigated”, prosecuted and executed the apparent perpetrator of the violent act, a man named Zimmerman. The media decided that the Florida Justice Department was very slow, to say the least, or definitively corrupt in trying to protect the “murderer” who is now hiding in some place, afraid of being himself murdered by the vigilantism unchained by the media and other “people” as we have learned. This was exacerbated by the declaration  made y President Obama. 

The “other people” were on one side Spike Lee who in a twitter message to his more than 1/4 of a million followers gave the address where Zimmerman apparently lived. This simple act is pure vigilantism and without any knowledge in the laws, but with common sense, I may qualified it as a criminal act even worse than the one exercised by the media.

The “other people” are the New Black Panther party that is offering a reward to any one who killed Zimmerman.

The result of the first “people” Spike Lee was that the address was the wrong one and an elderly couple living in that address has to leave their home to a hotel for safety reasons. The fact that the address was wrong is only one more stupid act on the part of the entertainer who now has converted himself in an entertainer of potential criminals. The result of the second “people” the Black panthers is not surprising since they systematically are doing illegal things without any response from the US Justice department. By the way where is Mr. Holder in all these criminal acts?

The whole thing is very sad. First a young man was killed and the man who killed him is now been hunted by a bunch of stupid criminal people trying to have justice in their hands instigated by the irresponsible media that has been given a lot of attention of one of many thousands of the same acts committed every day all over the United States. Why so much ado about this event? Was it because the young man was a black one? Zimmerman apparently (not by the name) is from Hispanic origin and very likely is not (although not necessarily) related to racial motives. Still is very odd that one event made so much noise, as it happens once in a while. Would it be the same if a black man would kill a Hispanic young man in the same circumstances? I wonder. Usually the death of a Hispanic is not worth of any news, although for me (and should be for everybody) a life independently of the race should be sacred. What is happening to us? Are we more concerned with the political implications of the killing than to the life itself? This is sad.        

THE CHINESE ARE COMING II

THE CHINESE ARE COMING II

For what I am intending to do, it is necessary to understand what a TRILLION is. In this world we are living in, we hear the word trillion almost every day, and we never pay attention; I am almost certain that most people simply do not have the slightest idea what a trillion dollars is.

We have 60 sec in one minute,

60 minutes in one hour, therefore we have 3,600 sec in one hour.

24 hours in one day, therefore we have 3,600 x 24 = 86,400 sec in one day.

365 days in one year, therefore we have 86,400 x 365 = 31.536,000 sec in one year.

In 10,000 years we have 315,360,000,000 sec; in 30,000 years we have 0.94608 trillion sec. If we will be able to spend or count $1 every second, it will take more than 30,000 years to spend (or count) one trillion dollars.

Since we do not know what one trillion dollars is, we don’t care what 15.5 trillion dollars are. I can tell you: 15.5 trillion dollars is a BIG BIG PROBLEM. It is so big, that it does not have any solution right now. As a matter of fact, the problem is growing at a pace of many millions per minute.

The national debt, the debt that the federal government of the USA has as of March 3, 2012, is15.5 trillion dollars and growing; it is estimated that the entire US economy is going to grow as of December 2012 to 15.3 Trillion, and the debt is already 15.5 trillion and growing. These are real figures, and we have to face it.

What is happening as we talk is that the federal spending is 3.6 trillion, while the US federal tax revenue is 2.3 trillion with a federal budget deficit of 1.25 trillion for this year. The interest to pay the debt accounts for 46% of what the government receives. What I can see and is so obvious is that we have to stop spending what we do not have. Unfortunately there are two other awful facts, one is that the politicians do not want to stop the spending, and second, it is impossible for us to pay what we owe just to the Chinese: 5 trillion of the debt is in the hands of foreign countries and more than 1.5 of these 5 trillions are in the hands of China. We cannot pay to them and the Chinese know that. Both Countries are trapped in this debt, we cannot pay and they cannot get their money back.

What are the Chinese  going to do? Let’s see what France did in the 1960s. Back then, we the United States insisted in maintaining an overvalued dollar at $35/ gold ounce. For many decades the country accumulated a lot of gold that was used to support the dollar as the hard currency and standard currency of the world. Mr. DeGaulle decided that France was not going to accept this anymore and claimed the gold for 150 million dollars they had as foreign currency reserves. They took the gold and we got the dollars, that gold value is now 12 billion dollars. Many other countries did the same and  2/3  of the gold that cost too many decades to accumulate by the USA was gone. President Nixon in the 1970s decided to abandon the gold as the support for the Dollar. The dollar continued and still continues to be the standard currency for the world with all the advantages that this brings to the country. Now we support the dollar with a printing machine by the Federal Reserve, and in order to maintain our spending we are incurring in more and more debt dumping more and more dollars on those who (still) want to give us credit. This is based mainly in the fact that as we stated above the entire USA economy produces more than 15 trillion dollars per year the highest in the world, but this is under very difficult conditions and the economy is suffering to maintain this leadership. Now is different than the 1960s when the economy was very strong and we were able to overcome the currency war we faced then.  This new war is compound by the horrendous federal debt in the hands of the Chinese. What are they going to do, or what are they doing? And worse what are we doing other than spending and printing even more?

For one thing the Chinese are exporting by far more than what they are importing. Their foreign currency reserves in 1980 were 2.5 billion dollars now are 3.2 TRILLION dollars. With all that money they can do whatever they want, and they bought US debt, and they invested in the USA, but more important they are buying a lot of gold, because they want to have their currency the Yuan to be the standard currency of the world displacing the dollar. I can tell you this is not to be good for the USA. Besides of buying a lot of gold, they are the first producer of the metal in the world (300 tons/year), and although any company can go there and mine it, by law they have to sell all the gold to the Chinese government at the market price. In other words nothing leaves the country, and although they permit the Chinese people to buy gold, (even encourage them to do) not an ounce of gold leaves the country. In no time they are going to displace the dollar and we (all of us) are going to suffer deeply in our living standards.

We have hope for two things: first we are still the first and more potent economy in the world; this is due to the fact that despite the continually growing interference of the government in the economy, we are (still) a FREE MARKET, the means of production are mostly in the hands of the people; but if we continue to allow the government to put more and more obstacles (stupid taxes and regulations that slow and even stop production) like cup and trade regulation, or the Kyoto protocol, or stopping the exploration and drill for more oil in our country, or the stupidity of not allowing the construction of the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas, allowing then the Canadians to send their oil to the Chinese!! If we continue in this trend, then the first one is no longer a hope anymore. Another point here is the fact that fortunately the Chinese are not going to dump their USA debt because it will hurt them badly. The second hope is that November is close, I’d hope it will come sooner, and we will have the possibility to change the direction we have had; the new politicians I hope, will think and not act just ideologically, (this is so clear with the insistence of Mr. Chu, the Secretary of Energy of instead of trying to lower the oil prices that are hurting deeply to all the people, they want the gasoline prices to increase in order to push their “alternative energy sources” –SOLYNDRA comes to mind- since when the prices of gasoline are so high, then everybody is going to think like them, STOP THIS STUPID IDEOLOGICALLY MOTIVATED MANEUVERS, that by the way may cost them the election) put a stop on the non-productive spending, allow the FREE MARKET to work us out of this mess and bring all of us together again to fight this new war that is killing this great USA Republic. But be aware, if we don’t act decisively on November, the Chinese and many others are coming with a vengeance.