We're fucked.

I've been scanning headlines, reading a story here and there, mostly about economics (because I couldn't give two shits about the pop culture icons, politicians, or people in general).  I've come to the conclusion that we're fucked.  Sideways.  With a bulldozer.

Has anybody read anything coming out of Cyprus?  They're planning on taxing all deposits.  Or maybe all savings.  Or maybe both.  That news broke Saturday night, through Twitter.  They'd buried it in the middle of over a hundred pages of legislation to be voted on this morning--were it not for Twitter, it'd've been a done deal before any protests could be made. 

Russia is not happy.  They're making that known.  They use Cypriot banks in much the same way American billionaires use offshore banks.  They had planned to funnel even more money in, through developing the natural gas and other natural resources in that area.  I would be willing to bet that, unless the European Union changes its stance, Russia is going to tell Cyprus to piss off, and rightly so.

Wanna know where I see the connection to us?  Here. 

About 1991*, my mother handed me the envelope of food stamps, and a grocery list including bread, milk, oleo, and hamburger meat.  I distinctly remember that the only hamburger meat at the grocery store was ground chuck, at about 80/20, and cost about $.98 per pound. 

Last week, ground chuck at Wal-Mart--where it's cheaper than at the grocery store--was closing in on $4 per pound. 

That's four times what it was twenty-two years ago.

Another example: six years ago, a pound of lentils at Wal-Mart cost about $.48.  Two years ago, the price jumped to $.98.  Two months ago, the price had crept up a little more, to $1.08.

Yet the government tells us that there isn't any inflation.  Because of the way it's figured.

Any idiot doing the grocery shopping for a household for a few years can tell you that we actually have double-digit percentages in inflation.

Why?

Two reasons: the Federal Reserve printing money like a counterfeiter driving down the value of a dollar, and the increases in the minimum wage at times when there've been major decreases in the value of minimum wage workers.

And the Federal Reserve, encouraged by the stock market going up, up, up--which, incidentally, is at least as much caused by the dollar being worth less as it is "consumer confidence," if it's not more due to the devalued dollar--is promising that they're going to be keeping the interest rates set below zero percent for the foreseeable future.

We are so fucked.

And the only thing I can advise is to make any major purchases or home improvements/repairs now, before people realize what's going on, and raise the prices of labor and material accordingly.

Because, quite literally, there is jack shit else we can do.  

*That was the only time I ever used food stamps.  Never again.