Death rate extrapolations for USA for Flu: 63,729 per year, 5,310 per month, 1,225 per week, 174 per day, 7 per hour, 0 per minute, 0 per second. Note: this extrapolation calculation uses the deaths statistic: 63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia (NVSR Sep 2001); estimated 20,000 deaths from flu (NIAID)
Source: http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/f/flu/stats.htm

Swine Flu, US, 2009: 2 deaths
Source: Mainstream TV News Caster, May 5, 2009

Math:
2 swine flu deaths / 2450 total flu deaths = 0.08%
(1225 total flu deaths per week * 2 weeks)

I heard something on the mainstream news last nite that actually made sense. This recent crisis is more about fear than any sort of underlying economic problem... When prices are kept artificially high for years, people panic when they start to come down. that panic leads to "SELLSELLSELL!!" which leads to prices coming down even more, which leads to more "SELLSELLSELL!" If there were no bailout, eventually the panic would subside and things would stabilize at a sustainable level. The % of our GDP that is tied up in the financial sector would shrink, and the % of our GDP related to manufacturing, technology, etc would increase. The hundreds of billions in evaporated wealth due to the stock market crash would not magically reappear--it would be gone (not that it ever really had any right to exist in the first place), wages might come down a bit, values of savings would decrease, and that obviously would suck for a lot of people... But homes would be affordable. Energy would be affordable. Food would be affordable. And we could move forward in a slightly more sustainable fashion. Too bad, we're not moving in that direction... Not yet at least.

I've said this before... but in light of our nation's most recent exhibit of obvious control of government by central banks, I'm going to say it again, and say it loud:

Everyone knows that money makes the world go round... So what makes the money go round?!?!
 
Very very few individuals know how money is created, much less how it came to be this way. There isn't one class taught in any of our public schools that explains it. Even in our institutions of higher learning in degree tracts such as economics, business and finance, etc., the simple and fundamental truths about how today's monetary system operates or how it originated is not explained. There's almost no way to get access to this information via the regular channels. One must seek the answer to this question themselves. 

The video below is about as accurate, simple and concise as you can get. I highly recommend it.

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While we wait for this new version of the hyperinflation--I mean Bailout Bill to pass the House on Friday... Will you just look at that nice, sustained positive trend in the US dollar index! It's almost as if... the dollar gets stronger when we don't FLOOD THE WORLD WITH $700 BILLION OF THEM!! Imagine that...

I see a bailout as a blood transfusion for a patient that is bleeding to death. sure, it'll let the patient live longer, but why not stop the bleeding rather than just adding more blood?

The global economy is fucked not because we wouldn't pout 700 billion into the raging inferno to keep in burning, but because our politicians didn't have the balls in 1913, 1944, 1971, and don't have the balls now to stop the financial sector from adopting irresponsible and reckless practices as their common, everyday way of life. I don't see any bailout as a solution. I see it as more inflation... because the money is coming, essentially, from nowhere. No equal exchange of labor, just 700 billion from the central bank to continue to fuel the fire. as long as the fire continues burning, it's business as usual...

We have been operating on a completely unsustainable system since the dismantling of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971. Fiat currencies tend to do things like this (implode) when they are largely unregulated. But to actually fix it, what's needed is not more fiat money, but a serious amount of restraint, regulation, and hopefully an end to the commonplace irresponsible and reckless behavior of the financial sector.

Hopefully there will be a smaller bailout, because in that way the mainstream media is right--at this point we need it to survive in the short-term. But unless it's coupled with serious ass-kicking economic reform, it's just going to prolong the situation and make it even worse when the inevitable crash does come. A bailout without meaningful changes/reforms will set the stage for another bailout in a few years--this time by the IMF/World Bank.

But I don't think things are quite as bad as the Dow Jones reports would make them to be. People are still buying things (on credit even). Many companies are still profitable and still hiring. The financial sectors will feel a lot of hurt and they will pass it down through the rest of the economy and some innocent companies will likely go under... But companies that actually provide a useful service or produce a useful product will probably be OK. And the American people are quite resilient... We'll be OK too...

The Bailout Bill was overturned by Congress. Given my economic/political biases... I think this is pretty good news. A bailout is a short-term fix to the long-term problem of gross fiscal irresponsibility practiced by our financial sector. The derivatives market has turned Wall Street into Las Vegas. And guess what--we, the American people, are the house. And the house always wins... Things may get worse before they get better. But if we want real and lasting economic stability, we can never let the government and the federal reserve print money out of thin air (or use our tax dollars) to bail out big business and finance.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

--Thomas Jefferson

Perception is the basis of how human beings form their concept of reality. As our perceptions are sometimes incorrect, sometimes based on faulty information, sometimes formed without any real and direct experience at all, reality is not always reflective of truth... The difference between truth and reality is a matter of perception. I will, of course, use mass media and psychological warfare as an example...

Reality--Islamic fundamentalist terrorists hate your freedom and want to kill you and your family. Our government is policing and regulating large corporations for our protection. Democrats and Republicans represent the only two sides of every political argument, and when one of them wins, the other one loses. Reality TV? 'Nuff said.

Truth--Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are manufactured as a tool for political gains. Our government and large corporations are the same thing. They present a set of complicated and seemingly serious issues that pit the interests of one against the interests of others--but in truth they are symbiotic and one would die without the other. Democrats and Republicans are also the same thing. They are two arms of the politicorporate establishment that share one overarching agenda--the continuance and growth of the state-capitalist debt-slavery system. Reality TV is stupid.

It is much easier to perceive reality than truth. Reality is paraded in front of you all the time. Reality is force-fed. All your friends are doing it... Truth requires independent thought, research, and often results in ostracism... And so we live in reality--a place where truth is often lost--because it's easier.

It is sad that it requires major currency and natural resource manipulation to force the price of petroleum up enough to the point where large automobile companies can finally start to develop and deploy technology that could have and should have been developed in the 70s to bring electric cars to market. The chart to the right shows that as of 2005, transportation accounts for almost 67% of US petroleum usage. And the until very recently, the trend has been bigger cars, lower fuel economy. It is truly and deeply sad that the oil shock of the 70s didn't wake American up to the fact that we needed to start to move away from petroleum as a fuel source for our vehicles, and to convince the auto industry by sheer force of numbers that we wanted much better fuel economy, and alternatives to gasoline powered cars. Why such a thing required 30 more years of status-quo is beyond me, and truly sad.

But it does seem that the solution that should have been developed in the 70s and brought online in the 80s is being developed in the 00s and will be brought online in the 10s. And so yeah, it's sad that it took this long, but it's going to be OK in the long run. No, we're not going to change the global power structure. No, we're not going to topple the military industrial complex or the central banking cartel. But yes, we are going to have affordable zero-emissions vehicles that do not use petroleum. Here is the early news on offerings by several major auto manufacturers and some not so major ones: Chevy, Nissan, Th!nk, Tesla Motors, Volvo, Green Vehicles... It just makes so much sense... and it's coming. The cost of charging them will be WAY less than filling a gas tank. If you really give a shit, you can set up a solar or wind-powered recharging system for your electric car.

Within the next 5-10 years, you won't need to rely on oil, coal, etc to drive a car. Long long long overdue. But it's one big step in the right direction that this idea is being brought to market...

A graph of crude oil prices since 1946. Data gathered from the US DoE. If you think that changes in the price of oil are NOT created by political and economic tinkering and that they have ANYTHING to do with supply or demand... Think again. Yes, we use more than we discover. But no, the relationship between what we use vs what we produce does not change in proportion to the changes in price. Iran has recently started selling crude oil for Euros or Yen--truly bucking the Petrodollar for the first time--but the price of oil on NYMEX or IPE (where the vast majority of it is still sold) is closely proportional to the value of the dollar. And the dollar is TANKING. This is no accident. Ask your local friendly neighborhood globalist central banker all about it...

Looking for the right way to spend your "stimulus" check? Gold has gone down by about 10% lately. Buy low, remember? What better way to use the money that the Federal Government is "returning" to you than to buy precious metals that they cannot tax and that are immune to inflation? Or you could pretend you're an important politician and write "pay to the order of high priced prostitute" on the back of your check. Personally, I'm going to go for the gold... and silver.