Friday, October 14, 2011

Here's How You Got So Poor -- It Was Planned!

I put this up, because I believe it plainly lays out the "planned obsolescence" of Free Enterprise in the United States of America. Here, we can clearly see what is going on, and view a few of the means to the End that is "Planned". UnAmerican? You bet!

From the Whiskey and Gunpowder Newsletter
You Are Getting Poor, Very Poor
• The more they print, the poorer you will get. Just ask the middle class...
• A stagnant or declining economy with rising prices... Where have we seen that before?
• Especially if you keep adding to the money supply


Gary Gibson, Seattle, Washington... .

Americans are getting poorer. A New York Times article this week gives us some numbers on just how much poorer:
"Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7%, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession -- from December 2007 to June 2009 -- household income fell 3.2%."
So median income fell twice as much after the recession ended. This is a cumulative drop of 9.8% since the official start of the recession in June 2007.

This is also "inflation adjusted." You have to keep in mind that real price inflation may not line up exactly with inflation figures Census Bureau officials might use. You know, the kind of official figures that leave out things like food and gas prices.

In any case, it's pretty dire when even The New York Times acknowledges that Americans have lost about 10% of their real incomes over four years. The article continues...
"One reason pay has stagnated is that many people who lost their jobs in the recession -- and remained out of work for months -- have taken pay cuts in order to be hired again. In a separate study, Henry S. Farber, an economics professor at Princeton, found that people who lost jobs in the recession and later found work again made an average of 17.5% less than they had in their old jobs.

"'As a labor economist, I do not think the recession has ended,' Mr. Farber said. 'Job losers are having more trouble than ever before finding full-time jobs.'

"Mr. Farber added that this downturn was 'fundamentally different' from most previous ones. Historically, other economists say, financial crises and debt-caused bubbles have led to deeper, more-protracted downturns."
We don't mean to sound prejudiced here, but it surprises us that a Princeton economist would sound so sensible. This talk about an official end to the recession has us scratching our heads, too. Incomes are falling, and the central bank-created misallocations haven't been allowed to work themselves out. As a result, unemployment remains disturbingly high.

Our newest editor, Michael Pento, agrees. "Incomes are falling on a real basis, and the American middle class is being wiped out," he says.

"The latest read on the employment condition of the U.S. offered little solace. Not only did the unemployment rate remain at a lofty 9.1%, but the number of persons marginally attached to the labor force shot up to 16.5%, from 16.1%. But the most discouraging news in this latest read on the American work force is that manufacturing employment changed little in September (-13,000) and has been, essentially, flat for the past two months."
Mr. Pento continues...
"Few new jobs, falling incomes and rising prices. This is what faces the middle class...

"The only thing holding the country together is the teaser interest rate we are paying on our national debt. Thanks to the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, we now pay just about 2% on our $10.1 trillion publicly traded debt. Once rates normalize -- as they must, due to inflation and massive supply issuance of Treasuries -- it will be game over."

As bad as things are now, they will get much worse. Because as Detlev Schlichter explains in today's feature article, paper money expansion is inevitable. Governments and central banks insist on a "flexible" money supply so they can stretch it. And stretch it they will, until the entire economic world breaks.

Whiskey & Gunpowder by Detlev Schlichter October 12, 2011 London, England, U.K.

The Second Crisis of Socialism

The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s, "if not ever," the governor of the Bank of England said last week, when he explained to an increasingly sceptical and weary public the bank's decision to print yet more fiat money and use it to buy yet more government bonds. I doubt that his words or his actions will do much to restore confidence. And they will not mean an end to this crisis.

What type of crisis is this?

This is a financial crisis, for sure. Its root causes are firmly located in money, credit, debt and banking. And I don't think that the governor was exaggerating when he speculated about its magnitude. This is the Big One.

As we all agree that this is not just another business cycle, the question is what are we dealing with here? How should we define this crisis, and in what context can it best be understood?

This crisis is systemic, not cyclical. It is a crisis of institutions. It is a crisis of policy. It is a crisis of our financial architecture.

When this crisis started in 2007 and intensified throughout 2008, it was often labelled a "crisis of capitalism." You don't hear that so often anymore. Granted, there are still the occasional lapses, sadly, even by economists, but the longer the crisis goes on and the longer the spotlight remains on money and banking, the more it dawns on the public just how much the present financial architecture is evidently defined not by the "invisible hand" of the market, but by the controlling hand of the state.

When yet another round of bank "recapitalization" is announced (presumably, at taxpayers' expense and, thus, driving home the point, once more, that the banks are above the fray of normal and fallible capitalist enterprise)...

... And when the salvation for our debt-laden economy is declared for the umpteenth time to be sought in yet more debt-funded government spending, or in yet another injection of more money created under state monopoly by the central bank and handed to the public as an apparent incentive to take on yet more debt, the public is beginning to wonder if policymakers have not lost the plot, and if we should not fear the "stimulus" more than the unchecked market.

Why are we in this mess?

"Undercapitalized banks" is code for banks that lent too much. How can banks have lent too much -- and, obviously, have done so for years, decades even, and have done so the world over in the most enduring and persistent credit binge in history -- when they are all under the control of the state central bank, which, in a paper money system, has the monopoly of printing (unlimited) bank reserves and administratively setting short-term interest rates and, thus, controlling lending conditions? Is this not properly called state failure, rather than market failure?

Please remember, the switch from apolitical, inflexible and hard commodity money to limitless paper money under state control was a political decision, not the result of market forces. And it only came into full bloom with the closing of the gold window by the politician Richard Nixon in 1971. Our financial system is the outcome of political design and popular macroeconomic theory. Both have now revealed to have been self-serving and flawed, not the result of spontaneous human cooperation on markets.

The move to fully elastic fiat money freed both the state and its proteges, the banks, from the golden fetters of inelastic commodity money. Without the straightjacket of a gold standard, the state obtained unrestricted control over the printing press and could engage in "managing" the economy, saving the banks, avoiding or shortening recessions and determining borrowing conditions -- and setting them more generously, not least for itself.

After 40 years of government-controlled money, this is the result.

This crisis is the inevitable outcome of the dangerous belief that low interest rates, and investment and lasting prosperity, can be had via the shortcut of money printing -- and its twin sisters, artificially low lending rates and never-ending bank credit creation -- rather than the time-honoured hard way (and capitalist way) of saving and true capital formation.

This is not a crisis of capitalism. My good friend Brian Micklethwait coined a much better phrase for it: This is the second crisis of socialism. We are witnessing the demise of the paper money standard. 40 years after the global fiat money system was freed of its last link to gold, money everywhere became simply an unchecked territorial monopoly of the state. What we are now finding out is this: The state and the banks need a straightjacket, or they will sooner or later drag us all into a black hole.

Why is this system socialist?

There are two ways in which a monetary system can be organized: Either the market chooses what is money, or the state does.

The money of the free market, of capitalism, has always been commodity money that is outside of political control. Wherever the trading public was free to choose, it picked commodities of fairly inelastic supply as monetary assets. Almost all societies, throughout all cultures and civilizations, have come to use precious metals as money.

Commodity money is apolitical money. Nobody can create it at will and use it to fund himself or to manipulate the economy. Crucially, human cooperation via trade does not stop at political borders, and commodity money has always transcended such borders. If gold was money this side of the border, it was usually equally money on the other side, regardless of whose image was printed on it:

By contrast, complete paper money systems that have no link to an underlying commodity are always creations of politics. In such systems, money can be "printed" at essentially no cost and, thus, practically without limit. But not by everybody. Money printing is the privilege of the state and its central bank. Money, in this system, is entirely elastic. But it is political money and closely linked to political authority.

In a paper money world, if you cross a political border you have to swap your money for different money. All the efficiency of today's 24-hours-a-day, multi-trillion-dollar foreign exchange market, which so easily impresses the untrained observer to whom it may epitomize global capitalism itself, is nothing but the market's attempt to cope as best as possible with the inefficiency of monetary nationalism and monetary segregation that is the result of every national government wanting its own paper money under its own territorial political control.

To call this system capitalist means depriving the word "capitalism" of its meaning. In this brave new system of fully elastic fiat money, we put our financial affairs not in the hands of the unfettered market, but in the hands of the state, of politicians and central bankers. This system is properly called a socialist one, not a capitalist one. And this system has failed.

Who are the beneficiaries?

For decades, this system has benefited the state, the banks, the wider financial industry -- all of which have grown relative to any other section of society -- and those who have assets to be used as collateral for leveraging the balance sheet: real estate, equity portfolios, company stock options. The costs of this system have been spread across the broader public via inflation and the occasional taxpayer bailout. This has been socialism for the rich.

Just like the first crisis of socialism -- the collapse of the planned economies under Soviet guidance in 1989 -- this crisis, the crisis of government-controlled finance, will also see the overthrow of the present establishment. Although the party leadership is still telling us that they have things under control: Fear not, comrades, with some deficit spending and some astute money printing, tractor production will soon reach targets again.

And just like the collapsing socialist state, the state-paper-money bureaucracy, too, has its true believers. People like Adam Posen, the Bank of England's quantitative easing enthusiast, who maintains his childlike optimism for and unwavering faith in the power of the printing press. If £200 billion of newly printed money, cleverly placed by the apparatchiks into the coffers of the banks and government, have not solved the crisis, surely, the next £75 billion will. And why stop here? With another £175 billion or £275 billion or £375 billion, everybody in the U.K. should find a nicely paying job again. To people like Posen, the problem with the planned economy is not that it is planned, but that the plan wasn't bold enough.

Mervyn King, on the other hand, strikes me as a more Gorbachev-like figure, not a nonbeliever, but too sceptical and too smart to be a fully signed-up party member. There is a fascinating interview with him from September of last year that got little attention in financial market circles, presumably, because it was part of a BBC history program on Chinese paper money, rather than on today's monetary policy. The question asked was this: Are all paper money systems doomed to fail? King answers: No, he thinks, not all of them (although every single one has indeed failed), but he admits that the recent crisis has made him a bit more cautious in his assessment. Maybe the jury on whether paper money could be made to work at all was still out. Remarkable for a central banker, I thought.

Regards,

Detlev Schlichter

P.S. In my new book, Paper Money Collapse -- The Folly of Elastic Money and the Coming Monetary Breakdown (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) I show -- conclusively, I believe -- that systems of elastic money are always inferior to systems of inelastic money, and that elastic money systems cannot be made to be stable, that they must disrupt the market and lead to the accumulation of imbalances over time. They must end in economic disintegration and chaos. Paper money is not only suboptimal; it is unsustainable.

This crisis is simply the demise of the latest incarnation of a state fiat money system. Like the first crisis of socialism, this crisis, too, will affect the lives of many people, it will cause upheaval and it will dispossess an elite of its entrenched position of power and privilege. Like the first crisis of socialism, it is an opportunity for liberty.

But unlike the first crisis of socialism, there is, this time, no Berlin Wall that we can tear down, nor some muddy patch in the Hungarian countryside with a hole in the fence through which we can climb. Today's monetary socialism is global. And the collapse of this system will be global, too.

Obviously, the state has everything to lose, and state power has a habit of not accepting a loss of power lightly. Who knows? Maybe the state will nationalize the banks, introduce capital controls, confiscate private gold ownership or tax it heavily, ban Bitcoin and force every pension fund to buy more government bonds.

In that case, some may argue that we are not in the summer of 1989, but in the spring of 1968. It wouldn't change the endgame, just the timeline. But I still believe it is too late. We are closer to this system's Berlin Wall moment than many people think.

In the meantime, the debasement of paper money continues.

26 comments:

  1. just found a rare? book
    Alvin toffler from the 70s concerning banking and crashes globally. supports the above.
    what I found of interest especially now is his list of causes for crashes and at that time he said theyd recover,,they did by devious mens, he posited a series of global screwups that would need to be in motion for mega nasty scenario and minus on or two details.. its ALL happening right now.
    heres Europes latest crazy idea to save their sorry asses.
    ==
    -- In a sign that the elites have absolutely no idea what to really do about the Euro debacle, the latest concoction to save the Eurozone as we know it is to have the big 'emerging' economies of China and Brazil buy IMF bonds.

    -- The idea behind this is to boost the IMF's firepower in helping to bailout bankrupt European nations and banks. The Europeans don't have the resources to bail themselves out so they're recruiting the emerging economies to contribute.

    -- If this sounds insane, it is.

    -- The German constitutional court has made it clear... attempts to leverage the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will be thwarted. That leaves the EFSF insufficient moolah to plug all the holes in European sovereign finances.

    -- To get around this, the IMF is now talking about setting up its own SPV (special purpose vehicle) or just getting poor countries to buy IMF-issued bonds. Then the IMF could use the funds to contribute to the Eurozone bailout.

    -- It's all a charade of course. It's just a way of making it look like the poor emerging economies are not subsidising 'wealthy' Europe's failed welfare system. They're buying 'solid' IMF bonds, not Spanish or Italian obligations!

    -- You may be interested to know the head of the IMF, Frenchwoman Christine Lagarde, met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on the weekend. No doubt Sarkozy told her the French government was in no position to bailout its insolvent banks because in doing so, it would lose its prized AAA credit rating.

    -- We're sure he also made it clear the Germans weren't keen on contributing to a French bank rescue. So he's told her to get on the case and sort something out pronto. Enter the 'poor bailing out the rich' plan.

    -- This whole euroshow grows more farcical by the day. Yet the markets hold up in the hope that something will be worked out. They've got about three weeks to come up with a watertight plan. Apparently the G20 meeting in Cannes on the weekend of 4-5 November will be the big reveal.

    -- Perhaps the market thinks the end of current European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet's reign, in a few weeks' time, might be decisive. Mario Draghi, former Goldman Sachs banker and current head of Italy's central bank, will take over as new ECB head.
    -----------
    its from a Daily reckoning item I get sent:-)

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  2. Thanks Oz!

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  3. So what good is it when all you ever get is shit, and all you wanted was a little bit and the bus full of profits is burning by the roadside?
    \\][//

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  4. The situation is bullshit. The elites are burning up Trillions of cash, and paying themselves off. Is anyone noticing? Will we do something about it?

    I look at these flatulent nematodes who "make" policy, and I want to throw them all OUT! With investigations, arrests, and justice served.

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  5. Peeling away the veneer of legitimacy and revealing the deception:

    "Well first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency. There is no other agency of government that can overrule actions that we take."~Alan Greenspan

    YOU are a commodity.

    Perpetuity of Debt:

    Social Security pledges you as 'collateral' for the debt of the bankruptcy that took place in 1933.

    The Secretary of the Treasury is no longer a member of the federal government under this 'reorganization' plan - but is now chief intermediary between the Creditor and the bankrupt institution, The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INCORPORATED.

    >Note the "cusip" number in red on the reverse side of your SS card. This is the same mechanism used on all "securities" like stocks and bonds.<

    So the term "collateral damage" - as it turns out, has a dual meaning as well.

    "Take out the papers and the trash or you don't get no spending cash
    And when you finish doing that, bring in the dog and put out the cat...
    DON'T TALK BACK"
    \\][//

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  6. "I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the White House no matter who he is."~ Davy Crockett
    \\][//

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  7. http://www.rense.com/general94/AS.htm

    A lot of people believed that those demonstrations (nationwide) were what caused the end of the war in Vietnam, but they did not! What the demonstrations succeeded in doing was to cause Nixon to end the DRAFT; which subsequently ended the demonstrations: The WAR itself ended when we were driven out of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army. The US was militarily DEFEATED, AND THAT IS WHAT ENDED THE war ON VIETNAM.
    Because of the way that the Vietnam War ended, it took the Amerikan public over ten years to even acknowledge that this war even existed: But the FACT that we actually LOST THE WAR IN VIETNAM, has still not really penetrated the Amerikan psyche! It is for this reason and others, that the continuing 'demonstrations' are having so little impact on those topics which the pubic is still-demanding real-changes in and for the aggrieved public. Talk is not the answer. Free Speech requires ACTION if anything is to ever change. The crowds in New York should simply march through and occupy the New York Stock Exchange: to literally shut it down, in order to cause a real interruption in the "business as usual" that continues regardless of whatever might be happening in the demonstrations in the streets outside.~Kirwan

    Read the whole article - it makes sense in my view..
    \\][//

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  8. “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”~Oscar Wilde

    And so I repeat, with this invitation:

    INVITATION

    You are invited to the protest. Here you can experience the discomfort of the press of the crowd, but that magic feeling of camaraderie. You can jostle about with strangers and express yourself.

    You can take the chance of being corralled and kettled and netted, sprayed in the face with mace, tasered, tossed to the hard cement and hand cuffed, even shuttled to jail. You have the opportunity to experience the brutal police state first hand. And when it ends, as it must, as it always does, you can go home and say, “I was there – I did something – I spoke out against the machine.”

    It will be swell, great for your 'dissidents resume'. And of course the state will continue with its agenda.

    Do not worry, everything is under control.

    ________Have fun, good night...and good luck,
    \\][//

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  9. That's depressing...

    Can't exercising the Freedom Muscles build anything? Maybe its just an endorphin high like you're intimating? Drat! Doubledobama Drats!

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  10. Ah but it's not over 'till it's over Boomer...maybe that "muscle" in the streets will flex in the right movement at the right moment and go for it.

    "Damn the torpedoes" as it were...

    If they are simply offered a bone and fade away, like it the 70s....well
    There is a difference there as well - desperation will grow gnawingly as the crumble continues. You know how it is when you are a desperado. Nothing to loose...

    The state and the people are walking a highwire act - one will blink.
    \\[]//

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  11. And perhaps next years top surreality show will be 'Dancing With The Homeless'

    or 'Fragging The Stars'...

    "Cooking With Longpork"

    \\l?l//

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  12. Or -- "Reality is a Bitch!"

    Or -- "Survivor" America...

    Maybe -- "Lifestyles of those that were famous"

    Or -- "Prairie Home Abandoned"

    Or -- "CSI America" The Truth is in there somewhere...

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  13. Ha ha ha...Yea Boomer, we got scheduling sewn up...Call the networks, tell papa da new boyz bing in town to bring da walls down in style - holy bogeybears undress the nanny we got some meaty injections to make...

    Stone Pipe Reflections. Muse Connect 101.

    ~Hoobah the Bamboo Snake \\][//

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  14. The telling point is Sarkozy telling LaGarde anything. I've warned how high Psychosy is in the council. The G20 meeting in Cannes on the weekend of November 4 will result in the bomb on 11/11/11 as I predicted.

    Mario Draghi, former Goldman Sachs banker and current head of Italy's central bank, will take over as new ECB head.
    Proof in the pudding

    UN address sept 11
    Archbishop Mamberti reminded the UN audience that the Vatican has called for a reform of international financial structures, based on a model that sees the world as a “family of nations” and pays special attention to those in greatest need.

    We are being transformed

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  15. http://zippittydodah.blogspot.com/2011/10/extract-from-watchmaker-chronicles.html

    An excellent one.........
    \\][//

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  16. "There is no political solution to our troubled evolution. Have no faith in constitution there is no bloody revolution. We are spirits in the material world. Our so called leaders speak with words they try to jail ya. They subjugate the meek but it's the rhetoric of failure. We are spirits in the material world. Where does the answer lie living from day to day? If its something we can't buy there must be another way. We are spirits in the material world."

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBvdHXChNqY

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  17. Really GOOD! Thanks.

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  18. Is that all there is?

    Is that all there is my friend?

    Then let's be dancing.......
    \\ii//

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  19. **

    **

    **

    THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER
    FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

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  20. G3 is a concert tour organized by guitarist Joe Satriani featuring him alongside two other guitarists. Since its inception in 1996, G3 has toured most years and has featured many guitarists, including Steve Vai (Satriani's former student), Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Robert Fripp, Paul Gilbert, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker, Adrian Legg and many other special guests, including Tony MacAlpine, Johnny Hiland, Steve Lukather, Steve Morse, Keith More, Chris Duarte, Andy Timmons, Neal Schon, Gary Hoey, Brian May, Billy Gibbons, Johnny A, George Lynch, Patrick Rondat, Herman Li, Alejandro Silva, and Eric Sardinas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Thirty#Membership

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  21. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/perfidy.pdf

    The book Perfidy, written by playwright Ben Hecht in 1961, is the single most damning statement to date on the interchangeability of the British-Zionist cabal that ran Israel during its early years and the leadership of the Nazis.
    \\][//

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  22. Wow Guitar Valhalla...

    The book Perfidy, written by playwright Ben Hecht in 1961, is the single most damning statement to date on the interchangeability of the British-Zionist cabal that ran Israel during its early years and the leadership of the Nazis.

    http://www.hirhome.com/israel/perfidy.pdf

    \\][//

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  23. Oooooooooooops
    \\ii//

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  24. In my own time, governments have taken the plae of people. They have
    also taken the place of God. Governments speak for people, dream for them,
    and determine, absurdly, their lives and deaths.
    This new worship of government is one of the subjects in this book. It is
    a worship I lack. I have no reverence for the all-powerful bewildered face of
    Government. I see it as a lessening of the human being, and a final looting
    of his birthright—the survival of his young. I see it as an ogre with despair
    in its eyes.~Ben Hecht
    \\ll//

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  25. When you see the STORM TROOPERS arrive, you know the party is over and the war has begun...

    LONDON:

    But, the mood of the protest changed dramatically as riot police moved in to kettle the demonstrators.

    The police are now changing into full riot gear, suggesting they may be about to adopt more forceful tactics with the protesters, reports said.

    The use of the kettling tactic at the beginning of the event showed that police forces were given the order to crackdown on the protesters irrespective of the fact that they were out in a peaceful protest gathering.

    The UK government has been under strong criticism for its failure to respond adequately and appropriately to the August unrests.

    Now, it has mobilized all its forces to silence any dissident voices while lecturing other countries about human rights, free speech and terms as such.
    \\][//

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  26. aw shit! I guess the next boatload that aus cops will be pommies in chains, just like before..
    maybe JuLiar our pm should see if uk will do another- you take 80 of the unwanted illegals, and we'll take 4,000 deal like she tried with Malaysia recently.FFS if we dont accept the lower value why the hell? would we they expect us to feed house treat and find work for 4k of em when all our own people are bitching about lack of all the above services already?
    weve been told to expect another 10k jobs to go and lost close to that already..
    In australia you can also spell INCOMPETENT as?
    Labor
    the present unelected Govt.

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