Author: David S. White

The long
nightmare in Libya may have begun it’s final round Sunday night.  Ragtag Rebels in mismatched uniforms, racing
across the desert in pickup trucks mounted with rocket launchers and
anti-aircraft guns, stormed Tripoli, taking over Green Square (their
revolutionary Ground Zero) and re-naming it Martyr’s Square. Gadhafi’s son Saif has been arrested and may be
on his way to the Hague to face an international war crimes court – an
unconfirmed report says both sons have been captured.  And, tinhorn, two-bit dictators the world
over will sleep less well tonight, if they sleep at all.

The Astonishing
Arab Spring has claimed another brutal, resource-plundering, dictatorship . . .
if Libya can fall, can Syria be far behind? 
Is Iran as solid as it may appear?

There are time
periods in history when the world itself seems to be in upheaval – the late
1960’s is one that many still alive can relate to; another is just shy of the
mid-century mark of the 19thC when the barricades were manned in cities all across
Europe.  The WWI and post WWI era was
another, as was the post WWII time period, when the Marshall Plan saved Europe
from starvation, and/or communism, and McArthur and his military government
re-made the former empire of Japan into the constitutional democracy and US ally
that it is today.  But, the Arab Spring
this year came out of absolutely nowhere, like the desert Sirocco, the
Mediterranean wind blowing with the force of a hurricane that comes out of the
Sahara.  And the Arab world and Middle
East will never be the same again.

"Ev’rywhere I hear the sound of marching,
charging feet, boy
Cause summers here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy . . .

Hey! think the time is right for a palace
revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution

Cause in sleepy london town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man."

Rolling
Stones, "Street Fighting Man"  (1968) (reacting to unrest in the
streets of the US and Europe)

Nobody really
wants to be a prophet – not of bad news these days, anyway.  But, a disturbing pattern may be
emerging.  What do: 1) the Arab Spring
Uprisings; 2) the London (and formerly, Paris) Riots, and, 3) the newly
emerging phenomenon of Flash Mobs, all have in common?  You guessed right, the use of Social Media in
ways not previously envisioned.  Second
question: what is the first thing that governments turn off when fighting in
the streets begins?  That’s right: the Internet
and Social Media.

Tuesday brought news from the Fed that interest rates will
stay near zero until mid-2013, due to "considerably slower" growth than expected.  Accepting that growth will not come quickly
now, the Fed also commented: "[t]he committee now expects a somewhat slower
pace of recovery over the coming quarters," and "[t]he unemployment rate will
decline only gradually."  The Fed did not
act unanimously, as it usually does, however, and these comments, eagerly read
by the financial community like one would read tea leaves or the entrails of a
chicken, in times past, were the product of a 7-3 vote.  The three dissenters are concerned about
inflation rearing its head once again.

We
are running out of the usual tricks which have been employed in past recessions
and depressions to jump start a sick economy like applying those electrical
paddles to a patient whose heart has stopped it’s steady beating.  The Fed has decided to keep federal funds at
zero to one quarter percent, which is practically free money for those who
receive money directly from the Fed.

Last week
ended on a note never played before . . .  the US’ credit rating was
downgraded from AAA to AA+ for the first time in our history by S&P
last Friday.  Is Standard & Poors punishing the US for our intensive
media coverage of the Debt Ceiling Furor?  Or, does this mean something
more?

First, let us be mindful that major ratings agencies, like S&P, were
all too willing to give AAA ratings to those flim flam, mortgage-backed
syndications, containing tranches upon tranches (may that word, tranche, disappear back into the lexicon with all deliberate speed!) of
Lord Only Knows what NINJA (no income; no jobs; no assets) fraudulent
loans they could cram into offerings that the world financial world
became addicted to, and gobbled up in the first decade of the 21stC.
Estimates of how much in market value of these stinking time bombs are
still held worldwide by financial institutions and others, vary into the
10’s and even hundreds of Trillions; yes, dwarfing even our healthy
14-something Trillion of debt – amounts that the whole world’s GDP could
never pay back are involved.  

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announces deal to end FAA shutdown. The Washington Post article

Following the Debt Ceiling Bloodbath, Congress went home for the Summer recess, leaving the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA") unfunded and its employees working on a volunteer basis, without pay. 4,000 FAA employees are out of work (indefinitely furloughed), and those who are working, like critical airport safety inspectors (who are constantly checking airport runways, lighting and the many things that assure our safety in the air), are still working, but not drawing any paychecks. This will not change until after Labor Day, when Congress comes back.

Airport safety inspectors must travel to various airports as part of their employment responsibilities. From now until after Labor Day, these FAA employees who keep our skies safe for some 5,000+ commercial flights in the air over the US at any one time daily, have been asked to put their travel expenses on their own personal credit cards. You know, the same credit cards where major banks line up at the Fed Reserve window to get their money nearly free (actually, not free, at taxpayer expense), then lend it back to you via your pocket plastic, at rates which can approach and even exceed 30% per annum. Nice.

Lawyers who appear regularly in California’s various county Superior Courts, our trial courts, and who have enough grey hair, may remember the days in LA Superior Court (“LASC”) when we were issued ‘Beepers’ in Department 1 (the second floor courtroom which is large enough to play Arena Football) of the Central District Moss Courthouse.   We then waited for the buzzer to get called to trial.  Woe unto you if you had two beepers for two different cases waiting for trial, got beeped on one and appeared with your boxes of documents and witnesses, only to find that you had been beeped on the other case.  

You could only get beeper status after the case was approaching the hard, 5-year mandatory dismissal time limit, leaving the court system basically with no choice but to grudgingly find a courtroom to let the case go to trial.  Despite a smile and nod to the expression “justice delayed is justice denied,” the reality of overcrowded courts was what it was, and there was nothing we could do about it but ‘grin and bear it.’

Last week ended with Speaker Boehner "walking out" on
meetings with President Obama, signaling that we are no closer to solving the
rapidly escalating economic crisis of raising our country’s debt ceiling than
we were a while ago – and time is now officially running out.  Meanwhile Europe seems to have agreed upon a
bailout of Greece, and some help for others of the P.I.G.S. countries, although
Moody’s downgrading of Greece’s debt is a bad sign.

We shall all now have time to see whether the Euro really is
like having a first class ticket on the Titanic, as some have now said –
Germany is on the same Euro as the weakest of the EU members – when that plane
crashes, first class passengers as well as those crammed in the back by the
bathrooms and flight attendant kitchens, will all hit the same mountainside
within microseconds of one another.

The mountainside that the US is about to drive headlong into
at full speed on or about August 2 is a whole lot closer.  As this day of reckoning approaches ever
closer, we are now coming dangerously close to doing permanent and lasting
economic harm in ways that those who have irresponsibly said ‘Bring It On,’
when reminded that time has almost run out on the days of our nation’s good
credit rating, cannot even begin to imagine. 
How does 20% unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates, and adding
billions to our national debt for additional interest due to destroying our
nation’s AAA credit rating, all sound, for starters?!?

"The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, ‘Death to all those who would whimper and cry’
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky
Saying, ‘The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken’"

Jean-Luc Godard’s French Film
Classic "The Week End" (1967):
Plot Summary (if you have not had the pleasure of seeing this film): "A
supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending
nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French
bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer
preoccupations."

Angelinos, and those soon destined to visit the fair city of
Lost Angeles, are in for a rare experience this coming weekend.  The 405 will be closing Friday
night, July 15 to take down one bridge that crosses over the freeway and put up
another. Then, after one of the most insane traffic weekends ever anticipated
for the West Side of LA, it will magically re-open ‘early’ Monday morning, July
18 – in theory, anyway, if all goes well. 
If it does not re-open Monday morning July 18, as scheduled, well . . .
.  all hell will surely break loose here
in the City of Angels, and all bets for a happy ending will be off.

Even the famous Hitler rant from the movie Downfall was used effectively to express
the concern and frustration about this potentially cataclysmic event. (Warning:
Strong language ahead.)