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“I believe that there’s a plan for this world” - Sarah Palin

Now, you know…

…if *I* said that *I* believed that there was “a plan for this world”, y’all’d think I was crazy and assume that I was talking about some kinda New World Order bullshit, right?… right??

Well, I’m not gonna to talk about any Novus Ordo Seclorum bullshit…

I’m gonna talk about bank bailouts and why “day” is now “night”…

Oh, we got trouble, right here in River City. And that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “B” and that stands for “bailout”. Bank bailouts. Meaning: banks are getting bailed out by the government. The government only has one *real* source of cash… and that source is… you.

And by “you” I mean…

YOU! The tax-payer. HOLD ON! I just wrote the word “tax-payer” and I could feel you itching to click your mouse, but hear me out…

I’m specifically referring to the American tax-payer, (you know, the one that buys everything that makes the economy turn ’round?). The American tax-payer is so incredibly indebted to the rest of the world in purely financial terms, there’s really no mathematical way around the fact that North Americans spend more than they make.  You don’t need to understand the intricacies of the “subprime credit crisis” to understand that, statistically speaking, we’re all in a heap o’ shit.

If you work any amount of time in your day in order to pay off debt, you may want to put down the remote and think about “your” cash for a moment…

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns… those are just the big names… these are the banks that are getting direct government intervention with money that you have to sign on the dotted line for agreeing to “cover” or “pay” (in the form of tax), every April. You are your government’s “guarantee” to its “creditors” (i.e. – China) that your country can pay off its debt. With this in mind… how’s your job going? Are you getting ahead or falling behind?

“So What? I’m not American! HA!”

Yes, you are. At least… your bank account is. And at the end of the day… that’s *you*, Baby… that’s your own personal treasure chest and the *only* thing that really matters to the bean-counters in the Treasury Department. You buy stuff, you borrow to get it, you need it, you want it… they know that…(and by “they”, I mean Hank Paulson, Darth Cheney, Ben Bernanke and a host of other people you’ll never remember the names of). We’re all inextricably financially linked to the U.S. Dollar, and I’m gonna presume that if you’ve read this far, you’re willing to at least entertain the idea that my arguement may have a bit of substance to it.

Back to the plan…

Sarah Palin firmly believes that there’s a “plan” for the world and that it’s “God’s plan”. Of course, her critics (including me), roll their collective eyes at the Christian Republican Fundamentalist world view, but what if there really *was* a plan? What if she was *right* about there being a plan, but was wrong about “what” or “who” was doing the planning? Before you start looking at the picture of The Great Seal on the American Dollar bill that sits above these words and start thinking that I’m going off on a “9/11 Truth” tantrum…

Have you seen a gas pump today?!… Have you?!…

I can’t say that I know of any plan specifically (if I did, I’d be sitting in a boardroom, not blogging), *but* it does occur to me that when you have the price of oil dropping significantly, and the price of gas *rising* significantly, you have at least *one* plan in place that is of great benefit to those making money on the whole deal.

To be sure, the current price spike is being attributed to Hurricane “Certain Death” Ike, (Category 2), and the havoc that we’re all *assuming* it’s going to wreak on oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Now… I don’t know how much of our gas is refined from Gulf of Mexico oil, but considering the fact that we’re (Canada) a net *producer* of oil (and the U.S. is a net *importer* of oil), I’m still unclear as to how gasoline gets to this crazy price in this free-market capitalist society….

Wait a second…

Maybe the “plan” isn’t really “capitalist” or “free-market” at all… maybe (as evidenced by the nationalization of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac), just maybe… we’re living in a perverted scheme of “socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”. The bank CEO’s fuck up; taxpayers pay up. Call *that* a conspiracy theory…

A strong dollar??

We’ve been living in this mental bubble in Canada that we have a “strong dollar”. Even with the CA$ currently around $0.92 against the US$, we Canadians still believe that we have a dollar that is strong… I’m putting the question out there… “how can it be *strong* when it’s being measured against a volatile and weakening currency”?

How can your dollar be *strong* when it purchases less and less and less every day??

How can a dollar be considered *strong* when – overnight – you need *more* of them to buy the exact same stuff that you bought only yesterday??

Like I said… I don’t *know* what the “plan” is exactly… but I’m not gonna bother pretending that Sarah Palin actually has her “finger on the pulse”.