First on a sad note I have just realized that the speeding train to nowhere on which I appear to be a passenger and which I might add that I am anxious for to reach its destination is headed to a very unpleasant place.

Most if not all of my fellow passengers seem as anxious as me to get to where they are going, they look stressed, perplexed, angry and depressed at the delay and the apparent endlessness of the journey as the train jogs on and on and on.

The reason for my change of heart is that I have just had the realization that the last place I want to get to is the end, the thought of arrival is bad enough but those last few miles just may be arduous if not hazardous to any form of enjoyment or pleasure.

The reality of life in the journey analogy is that rather than a rush to a destination it should be perceived as a vacation that you never want to end rather than a means to an end that you just can’t wait to got done with.

Being a male who never came close to the borderline that defines average, which means that perhaps there is little difference between me and most other males I must say that the greatest pleasure I have had the good luck to behold is the feminine form. Nothing sordid, just the average woman, such a thing of beauty, yet we rush for trains and complain about the traffic and never ever behold the total and absolute unparalleled art forms that are our everyday existence.

How much I love children especially my granddaughter yet I was totally oblivious of my own four as they grew up and now that my kids have been replaced by four adults who have undertaken obsessive journeys of their own and appear to have taken on the “where am I and when will I get there” mantle that I so proudly wore for all those years of their childhood I am left to wonder how I was so stupid and why would such obviously intelligent people be lining up to follow in my stupid footsteps.

Did you know that someone wrote a book with one long sentence, I was trying to do that in the last paragraph.

Anyway, I sat down to write about the free market economy and I suppose that such an important subject deserves its own post but such is life in the fast lane and today being December 1, I need to get a sticker for my car so I write as my wife Anne jogs.

To the free market. Listen up I won’t be repeating this.

If there is an abundance of anything, coffee, potatoes, pork bellies, oil, the price goes down, if there is a shortage the price goes up.

This is how a market works, right.

There is however one exception-Housing.

Because houses are mostly bought using borrowed money when the economy falls and people are trying to unload their overpriced homes like hot potatoes creating a huge excess in inventory the price cannot fall below the mortgage amount, leaving them stuck holding hot potatoes.

This creates a dam type scenario in the supposedly free market and houses remain unsold.

Housing however is a prime driver of the economy and stagnation in the housing market causes other markets to stagnate, the economy slows people lose jobs and can no longer financially afford to serve the mortgage which caused them to be in the home in the first place and is holding them in it when prices start to drop.

And this my fellow travelers is the problem with the so called free market system that is the darling of capitalism.

If the commodity which underpins society and which is the greatest purchase in the life of most people and also their greatest investment vehicle is artificially restricted within the free market system by the imposition of a mortgage then the whole system is infected by a systematic seismic flaw.

When a system is designed to rise on shortage and fall on abundance and it works for everything except the one item everyone needs then the system is flawed if not broken.

Ireland despite the influx of 80 something billion from the EEC not to mention its friend England (who stole raped pillaged and plundered for 800 years) lies on the brink of economic oblivion because housing prices cannot correct because of the mortgage amounts attached to them.

If I decide I need to sell my record collection and list them on eBay then I have two choices, keep them or accept the best offer. With real estate you have two choices, keep it or sell it for the best offer that exceeds  the mortgage.

This is absolutely brilliant in a booming property market and everyone appears to be (a) a genius and (b) rich. However when property prices fall and housing prices are artificially held at inflated prices or put another way are not allowed to fall and correct to meet market demands everyone looks (a) stupid and is (b) broke.

The politicians in Ireland where always mostly stupid public house personalities, but to guarantee all bank assets goes beyond stupidity and borders on the realms of insanity.

What the good people of Ireland have in fact guaranteed is that no property shall be sold for less than the mortgage amount and if for some reason like foreclosure/repossession the selling price of a property is less than the mortgage amount then the state in the form of NAMA (national assets management agency) will step in and pay the lender the difference.

It might appear to the casual observer that Ireland’s problems are over now that our friends have come to our assistance but, and my dearest friends this is a very large but–there are a lot of houses in the motherland that need to be sold low whose path to market is being impeded by a very high mortgage.

A double dip is when you think that you have solved a problem only to find out that you where merely deluded. The economy is the economy stupid! It is perception that see what it wants and then dips when reality rains on the parade.

The problem for most of the world is that the system “capitalism” is flawed, the problem for Ireland is that its political leaders where stupid enough to guarantee all bank assets without limits.

NAMA may eventually do what England never could, bring Ireland to its knees.

Good morning girlfriends! Are you awake yet! Where you ever awake my sleeping beauties!

Just a little note to let y’all know that you and your children’s children are getting so screwed that it’s not funny.

To the chase—-

In mother Ireland which has been cleared of all shrubbery to make way for cattle there are no “bushes to hide behind” and being honest Ireland’s politicians make Pinocchio look honest, so they didn’t even try to hide their actions when the established “NAMA” the National Asset Management Agency.

The National Asset Management Agency or NAMA is a cross between a dustbin and an ATM machine. Basically a bank dumps a non performing assets which it has acquired through foreclosure or repossession into the dustbin “NAMA” and the dustbin/NAMA spits out enough cash to cover all the banks losses and expenses.

America being America the land of the free and all, proclaims liberty and justice for all under God. Well God must be rolling in his grave to think that he was crucified for this lot.

You see in the financial epicenter of capitalism, lying thieving cheats like Pinocchio wear a type or Burga to conceal their immense noses.

Did you know that we are in recovery, did you know that the banks are doing good, did you know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are de facto federal agencies owned and operated by the Federal Government of the United States of America.

Better yet did you know that the American word for NAMA is Fannie Mae.

The federal government of the United States of America is in fact the:

• largest owner of foreclosed homes in the history of earth
• the moving party in almost all eviction cases involving foreclosed homeowners in the US

All foreclosed homes  in the United States or repossessed homes in Ireland which are not worth what is owed on them are transferred to the State. The preceding statement is fact that should be fiction but in our sorry world it is reality that you, me and our children pay through the teeth for the ugly side of capitalist.

Imagine that Irish and American taxpayers are paying attorneys to foreclose on average working taxpaying people who are causalities of a financial meltdown that they had no hand act or part in creating.

And then the taxpayer funds the eviction of their fellow taxpayers and neighbors, and this is to underpin the fallacy “too big to fail” tell that one to the dinosaurs.

So I know that no one reads this blog except some spam bot in Russia. The sleeping masses nourished on drip fed rhetoric by a malignant media may deserve what they get but do unborn children deserve to be asked to pay the bill for robber barons just because they fund the election of our politicians.

I’m 3/4 ways through “Girl Interrupted” and a reality is starting to set in to my denseness that the real asylum is located outside the walls of  loony bin as Susanna Kaysen describes McLean Hospital in Belmont MA. 

I mean how can so many people behave like brain dead morons on life support and then describe themselves as normal. Is it normal to buy a 3G phone and expect it to work as described in AT&T’s ads, well no not if you listened to the last line “3G not available in all areas” 

Is it normal to expect a $55 dollar charge on a $4 overdraft for one week on a Citizen Bank checking account? It’s not like Citizen Bank is a bastion of morality and fiscal fortitude. Their parent company Bank of Scotland has left a footprint of destruction in their wake in every market they are/were involved in. Ah! but, don’t you just love the phrase ”ah! but”,  it means that the opposite to reality applies. 

So, ah! but, in the case of the venerable banking industry implies that in the minds of the idiots who administer our nations affairs that a little blimp here or there is no big deal because we have “Tarp” and we have “Nama” and God knows what in Iceland to calm the raging seas of the financial storm churned up by there financial wizards in their alchemic quest to make a financial killing. 

Don’t you just hate it when you listen to this great offer on sports radio and the last line is “some restrictions apply”. That means that if you have not been a good corporate clone then don’t bother asking. 

You do know that the credit reporting agencies are a threat. Mess up and your privileges will be shut down. It’s like in the mental hospital when you act out you lose your privileges. I wonder does Donald Trump or George Bush have a credit report, or are they only for the little people, to keep them in line like cattle walking nervously to the knife. 

In Ireland, mother Ireland soon to be renamed Nama Land they used to say terms and conditions apply which mean it’s a lie. 

Nama is Ireland’s version of Fannie Mae; it is a dump for so called toxic assets. Nama is threatening to destroy the fabric of society in cash poor Ireland, a country that as little as 25 years ago was described as a third world country. It might be that again. 

What exactly are toxic assets? Well when a bank is too big to fail it’s non performing assets (loans) are taken over by the state and paid for in cash for the total outstanding amount. The bank is fully compensated for its stupidity and for the mess it made of its business and the economy. The loss between the present value of the toxic asset and the outstanding loan amount is paid for by the plebs who work for a living. 

Recently a piece of land in Athlone which is a borderline nowhere in the center of nowhere which is what Ireland really is on the financial world stage was acquired by Nama for the outstanding mortgage balance. This land had a pre crash value of 31 million Euro and a present day value of 600,000 Euro. This represents a loss of over 30 million Euro for Nama which is code for the downtrodden people of Ireland. 

Makes you wonder though doesn’t it.  Is it possible that the term “terms and conditions apply” should apply to banks that where crazy enough to lend 31 million on a piece of land that was over 5,000% overvalued. We are not talking 10% or 20% over valued, no 5,000%, read my lips 5K% overvalued. 

The question that really needs to be asked when too big to fail is being bandied about like confetti is: Are the people of Ireland or America too big to fail or is it like Leona Hensley liked to believe, that the little people’s role in everyday life is as a resource to wealth. 

The everyday people are the system, they are the economy but the trouble is that the people who run the economy are not part of it. They are like a farmer administering a herd of cattle. If the herd gets foot and mouth and has to be put down the farmer isn’t also euthanized. In most cases the people who are the economy like the cattle suffer the brunt of their masters incompetence while the master is compensated for the losses he/she caused and the rich folk live happily ever after. Some fairy tale life turns out to be.

So the next time you feel like calling someone insane look at yourself politely lining up to pay homage at the gates of hell, like a steer staring down a knife and obediently doing you duty to ensure that your master has a full plate. 

Insanity my ass, society is the asylum.