This picture bled into my feed reader today. Look at the headline:
Sex and Marriage by the Ayatollah. Women Are Just Slaves
The woman in the photo is Debra Harry, the singer from Blondie. The date of the photograph is near September 3, 1978, as that is the date that Marxist-Leninist terrorist rebels of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 825 killing 38. 13 survived the crash. However, the insurgents then hunted them down and shot them dead with machine guns.
Here we are 38 years late. Nothing has changed for these Mohammadans ("Muslims"). Contrast the proclamation of the Ayatollah with what Paul Kester wrote in his 1919 work titled Conservative Democracy.
Many don't get it. They don't understand the majority of Americans who comprise middle America.
Trump is more than repudiation of Obama. Trump is repudiation of internationalism in its widest extent — neo-conservatism of ex-Democrats in the Republican party; Bush senior's "kinder, gentler" America kowtowing to the "New World Order" of harmonized laws with the WTO and U.N; of Bill Clinton's NAFTA; of Obama's Mohammadan ("Muslim") appeasement (see: OBAMA. MR. SETBACK. THE GREAT APPEASER. OBAMA NEEDS TO WIN A NEW NOBEL PRIZE FOR APPEASEMENT).
Middle America isn't merely a USA of geography. It's a USA of like-minded people with alike life stories. And of late, all of their stories seem to be the same.
Should Trump take the nomination and should Trump win the presidency, the biggest surprise in the post-election analysis will the huge crossover of white women voters for Donald Trump.
Van Halen were ahead of the punditry class on this way back in 2012:
Uncle Danny, had a coal tattooHe fought for the unionsSome of us still do.On my shoulder is the numberOf the chapter he was in.That number is foreverLike the struggle here to win.
Pundits everywhere expected Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States without much of a contest against a Republican Party challenger. No one expected Hillary to be in a fight for her political life for her own party's nomination.
Bernie Sanders, the other candidate for the Democratic Party nominee is beginning to be taken seriously. Sanders now leads Clinton by 27 points in New Hampshire. Sanders is running in a dead heat with Clinton in Iowa.
Sanders is part of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party. Through eight years of Obama, the Socialist Democrats have emerged as the main force of the Democratic Party. This has been a long time in the making (think: Occupy Wall Street, #BlackLivesMatter).
Socialist Democrats have vied for control of the Democratic Party since the conservative coalition collapsed and much of the Deep South transformed into a Republican stronghold. That transformation began with Nixon's Southern Strategy and peaked with the Republican Revolution when the last of the conservative Democrats retired.
For a detailed description of the major party tenets, see below.
The trend in USA politics has been polarization. Obama is the leader of the leftist, Marxist-Socialist Democrats. They are the mainstream Democratic party these days. They wrested control of the party from New Democrats when Bill Clinton retired. There are few Blue Dog / New Democrats with any clout in the party. They are the conservative Democrats. They hardly exist within the party. The Blue Dog Coalition consists of 14 members.
Those of the myopic mainstream media assumed Hillary Clinton would follow Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton is not the heir to Obama. Bernie Sanders is the proper candidate to replace Obama in this natural progression of polarization.
Hillary Clinton is running for the wrong party. Hillary belongs with all of the other ex-conservative Democrats, the neoconservatives in the Republican Party who have joined ranks with the long-established internationalist-interventionist Rockefeller Republicans.
True American Conservatism is a special kind of conservatism. It's a Bill of Rights nationalism that strives for the benefits of all citizenry by establishing a general welfare.
Trump represents a new dimension in USA politics — working-class, Bill of Rights nationalism. Trump is changing the game in a game that has been changing for awhile. Trump is the true right-wing, conservative candidate. Trump is trying to preserve the USA as it was before the ongoing international drift of NATO-UN-NAFTA-WTO-TPP.
Third party candidates generally offer the alternative to the political establishment. Trump is that candidate already.
Trump is the true American Conservative in this race, already. Also, Trump is the third-party style alternative-to-the-establishment candidate already.
Authentic Conservatism doesn't mean moral prudery. Only dimwits associate church-going religion and chastity with conservatism.
Progressivism promotes specific welfare, and specific subsidy. Progressivism promotes open-borders internationalism. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and even Ted Cruz — these guys are left-wing, internationalist republicans who push for the interests of major shareholders in oligopolist transnational corporations. They're all anti-nationalists.
Likely, Trump will beat any candidate in this election. Considering that Sanders is the true heir to Obama, here is a good contrast between Obama idealism and Trump idealism.
Obama: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
"If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Trump: Close the borders. Build a wall. No more bad trade deals. I built a great company and you can to in a real America. I'm 100% for the Second Amendment. I'm an evangelical Christian. Let's make America great again.
Is there any wonder why Trump is winning?
————
Understanding the alignment in USA politics.
The Democratic Party is the left party, the party of socialism, the party of communitarianism (see: BEATING THE DRUMS FOR OBAMA TRIBALISM). The party still has vestiges of Blue Dog / conservative Democrats. The Democratic Party is an open-borders internationalist party but is against reciprocal free trade. Thus the party opposes NAFTA, CAFTA-DR and TPP. Yet, party favors supremacy of internationalist organizations with diminished sovereignty for the United States. This party appeals to welfare seekers and those of ethnicity, especially poorly-educated, low IQ ethnicity.
Main faces: Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama
The Democratic-Republican Party is an unofficial center-left party that one day likely will come into existence. Democratic-Republicans are a pro-big business internationalist party that favors heavily immigration as a means to suppress wages. This is a pro-Wall Street party. This is a pro-international interventionist party. They are major champions of the status quo. This party appeals to college-educated guilt-ridden, self-loathing liberals. This party appeals to lawyers, those who work in the medical establishment and mainstream government workers.
Main faces: Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz
The True American Party / The USA Party is an unofficial right party. It is the true conservative party for Americans. They are trying to restore Bill of Rights Individualism and the Protestant work ethic that shaped the USA from the founding of the USA until 1965. This party is pro-nationalist and anti-interventionist but with a strong military. This is a walk softly but carry a big stick party. This party appeals to mainstream, Main Street working-class Americans, no-college white Americans with at least Ellis Island ancestry if not earlier.
“In 1620, a small band of Pilgrims came to this continent — refugees who had fled persecution and violence in their native land. Nearly 400 years later, we remember their part in the American story, and we honor the men and women who helped them in their time of need.”
Self-funded, capitalist adventuring separatist Protestant Christians (left). Totalitarian Syrian muslims dependent on charity handouts to survive
However, the first Thanksgiving decreed by Congress was to celebrate a war victory. Congress decreed the first national day of Thanksgiving on Thursday, December 18, 1777, to commemorate the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga after the surrender of General John Burgoyne and 5,000 British troops in October 1777. In proclaiming the first national day of thanksgiving, Congress wrote,
“It is therefore recommended to the Legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES, to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for solemn THANKSGIVING and PRAISE; That at one Time and with one Voice the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor”
Unlike 10,000 Syrians engaging in exodus from the Middle East, there were only 102 Pilgrims. More so, the Pilgrims were self-funded, adventurers. The U.S. Congress is funding the Syrian exodus from Syria to the USA. More so, Congress gets its funding from borrowing and taxes you to pay its massive credit card.
The 10,000 Syrians engaging in exodus are mostly needed muslim beggars many of whom denounce Christian belief and who want to see the world fall to muslim Sharia law.
Obama is living proof that Americans need a constitutional amendment barring anyone from becoming president of the United States who has at least one immigrant parent.
Obama is disloyal to the core. Obama hates Americans, especially white protestant Christian Americans. White protestant Christian Americans comprise the lion's share of American population — 79.96% white, 51.3% protestant. It matters not if most choose not to attend a church or affiliate with any protestant church.
You can watch the deplorable, denigrating idiot, the leader of the free-world, lie about Americans and American history for his personal agenda and political gain on Thanksgiving.
At least as of this writing, Americans need only suffer 420 days with the rather disgusting, anti-American.
"Wal-Mart stock is tanking because if household income is $1,600 month and rents is $1,500 a month and if the price of ground beef has nearly doubled, milk and others up 30%, ya got nothing left. There is nothing left."
Me:
Current dollar prices are illusory. True food prices are falling, not rising.
Rent is rising because few built apartment houses during the residential realty boom and now few can afford mortgages on falling incomes. They need places to live. Population continues to grow.
When the prime working age increases faster than the spending rate on capital, wages fall. Wage rates are prices.
When wages fall, all prices fall. What are the source of other prices but wages?
Congress has accepted too many immigrants, legal and illegal. That has killed the return to capital and thus wages.
Me:
Current dollar prices are meaningless. What counts is how much stuff you can buy for an hour's worth of work.
Prices in true dollars are down, way down. Wages in true dollars are down even more.
How can you believe in higher prices on falling true credit. What do you think happens after a great inflation stops?
A giant banking bubble bursts. That is the crisis. What comes next is deflation.
Quantitative easing has papered over massive deflation. There are 69.8% more dollars in circulation today that June 2008. Since all prices are tallied in current dollars, prices in dollars will be higher.
That most don't understand these concepts is why most believe as you.
The facts of reality and everything men have known about commercial banking and economies for 165 years fails to fit your narrative that you want to believe, desperately, and are trying to defend.
It's because of people like you that central bankers can engage in deceits like quantitative easing. If the many understood commercial banking, none of this would be happening because none of it could be happening. They couldn't get away with it.
If everyone believed as you, accepting statistics from the agents of Congress, stats expressed in current dollars for GDP and food prices, then pro-Congress politicians along with their hand-maidens and agents must be right. If so, the rest of us must be wrong.
Yet, if so, all market participants would have complete information. There would be no movement in stock prices or anything else. No one could gain competitive advantage.
We would be stuck in a dreary world of static Dystopian perfection.
Allie:
You claim, "When wages fall, all prices fall. What are the source of other prices but wages?"
AND WHAT ARE THE SOURCE OF WAGES ? = JOBS
Me:
Never in the history of mankind have jobs been the sources wages. Returns to capital are the source of wages.
Wages are income and act like any kind of income. From the worker's perspective, wages are recurring sales in purchase and sales of cash or other bank credit for work done.
From the firm operator's perspective, work done by workers (employees) is capital (property put to production).
If firm operators lack income or credit supported by income, they can't buy capital (work done by employees) to put into a product.
Allie:
The more JOBS the higher WAGES.
Me:
Wow, what another fallacy you have expressed. First, it's a non-sequitur. Second, you haven't proved it.
Wages are a result of capital. Without capital and return to it, there are no wages.
Bare subsistence savages have no jobs and no wages precisely because no one has capital (property put to production) from which to gain returns and thus hire them to work at wages.
And for that reason, higher wages come from increasing returns to ever more capital.
Allie:
But ground beef is up!
Me:
Wage rates are prices. Wages have been falling, not rising.
Prices for everything else have been falling owing to efficiency gains and exacerbated, owing to falling wages. From whence prices exist except from wages?
You don't see these falling prices because you think in current dollars. As there are more dollars in circulation today than last month, last quarter, last year, last five years and so on, current dollar prices will seem higher, always. It's illusory.
How can you believe true food prices have been up on massive, increasing unemployment in America and Europe between 2008 and 2014? How does that magic work, exactly?
There have been no significant crop shortages owing to natural disasters and futures markets have provided for much grain storage.
————
Sadly, Allie believes as millions do.
Congress let in too many illegals and too many legal immigrants which swelled the ranks of the working age population. In so doing, returns to capital were impinged.
When collapse happened, extant capital bought on credit at much higher prices were crushed.
Exacerbating this, idiots at the Federal Reserve engaged in near-ZIRP, which further damaged returns to capital. That led to firm operators doing the only act they could do to restore the return to exact capital bought on higher prices — they laid off workers.
Firm operators decide always on this alone: Is there a dearth or abundance of workers.
If there is a shortage of workers and firm operators want to produce, they must augment workers with capital.
Americans can't have massive immigration in a WTO, free-trade agreement world.
Adding would-be workers kills the return to capital. Without increasing returns to capital, there is no reason to hire anyway.
If the Fed Res FOMC members decide based on data, then little reason exists for them to continue with their wrong-headed near zero interest rates policy. It's only been eight years of meddling by the Federal Reserve and by Congress to get the economy where it is now. Back when men debated whether or not to create the Federal Reserve, those in favor of creating the Federal Reserve claimed the Federal Reserve would shorten or even prevent altogether economic depressions. Their claims have yet to be backed by history as both the 1930s and the 2010s have proven them wrong.
Unfortunately, for these charts, key parts of the data needed for this calculation only go back to 2008. So it's hard to know if 6.2% is a good rate or a bad rate.
And the Strict Jobless Rate looks much better as well.
The number of Americans capable of work is falling.
And there are far fewer able-bodied in America sitting around doing nothing.
There are 3.7% fewer Americans being being supervised today than at the end of June, 2008.
Likely, there are millions of Americans who are not truly disabled, but merely legally disabled according to the generous rules decreed by Congress. Since the end of July, 2009, the number of supposed disabled has risen 17.5%. It seems so unlikely that before 2009, these Americans didn't know they were disabled.
News reporters never tell you what words define before they say them. Quite often, they don't know themselves what words mean. That doesn't stop them from talking though.
Many don't understand unemployment as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor. To help clear up any confusion caused by them, I have done this for you.
The Class of Worker
The BLS minions define persons in three ways based on their relationships to firms:
wage and salary workers — those who get paid by private firms or by government agencies
self-employed — those who sell work under contract
unpaid family workers — those who work for firms owned by their families
The Employed
The BLS minions define the employed as the count of those working who meet one of three tests:
those who did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week
those who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-operated firm
those who were absent from their regular jobs temporarily because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or personal reasons
The Unemployed
The BLS minions define the unemployed as the count of those not working who meet this test:
those without jobs
those who have have looked for work in the 4 weeks before they were surveyed
those available for work on the day of the survey
Added to those who meet the test are these:
those who were not working but who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been temporarily laid off
The Labor Force
The BLS minions define the labor force as the sum of the counts of those employed and those unemployed.
The First Ratios
Here are the ratios published by the BLS minions, which get talked about by news media talking heads.
The Employment-Population Ratio
Employed head count ÷ Civilian noninstitutional population
The Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force head count ÷ Civilian noninstitutional population
The Unemployment Rate
Unemployed head count ÷ Labor force
Not in the Labor Force
Those who fail to meet the BLS tests for the employed or the unemployed get categorized as those not in the labor force. In short, those who are not working nor who have sought work in the last four weeks are not in the labor force.
Of these defined as not in the labor force, there are some who get defined as discouraged workers. The discouraged worker are those who meet this test:
1) those who want work
2) those who are available for work
3) those who have looked for jobs within the last 12 months but not in the last four weeks
What the Unemployment Rate Truly Means
The unemployment rate doesn't tell how many don't have jobs but who would like to work. The prefix un is an means not. Employment means the state of being employed. The BLS concept of unemployment misses many who are not employed but who would like to be.
In truth, the unemployment rate is the measure of competition for jobs firms make available. Thus, in truth, it's the jobs competition rate.
When you think about it, employers could fire all those workers who are lazy or disgruntled and replace them with all active job seekers. The more active job seekers there are relative to the labor force (the sum of employed and active job seekers), the bigger the pool of immediate potential workers there is from which employers can draw to fulfill existing jobs.
Clearing Up The Mess Of The BLS
Ordinary words such as employed and unemployed as used by the minions of the BLS fail to match the meaning expected by most. Because of their mess, I have sorted out their data to give you a true picture of the economy.
First. It is unclear whether for those who meet the third test of being employed are being paid. Ask yourself what good is a job without pay? Can a person not being paid buy things with pay?
Those not on payroll ought not to be included as employed, even if their employers would put to them to work and pay them for it.
Second. The unemployment rate really mixes two unalike concepts — those who have jobs but who are laid off with those actively seeking work. Those who have jobs but who are laid off (Unemployed, Test #4) are more alike to those who those who were absent from their regular jobs temporarily because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or personal reasons and who are not being paid (Employed, Test #3). The latter two ought to be in its own category, perhaps called Idled Workers.
As the unemployed rate mixes active job seekers and those on temporary layoff, the rate fails to be useful as a descriptor of reality. If those workers on temporary layoff are not working but receiving a paycheck, they are not unemployed.
Merely they are not producing immediate work. Their pay gets apportioned to both work days and idle days.
The Jobless Rate, the True Unemployment Rate
Clearly, if someone could work and would work if offered a job regardless of having looked for work in last four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, six months and so on, that one is unemployed. That one might not be an active job seeker, but that one is truly not employed.
I give you two rates, the jobless rate and the strict jobless rate. Here is how I do it.
First, I calculate the count of True Free Americans taken from the count of civilian non-institutional population, 16 and older, less those those not in the labor force owing to disability, 16 and older. In spite of the potential of some disabled persons to work, they can't do so without changing their legal status.
Next, I calculate the Straightaway Working Potential, which is the sum of the unemployed and those not in the labor force who want a job now. The figure of those who want a job now comes from the BLS.
The BLS defines those who want a job now as the sum of those who searched for a job within the last 12 months, but not in the last four weeks, whether or not they held a job within that 12 months, added with those who have not searched in the last 12 months and added with those who have not searched since the end of their last job.
To calculate the Jobless Rate, I calculate the the ratio of the Straightaway Working Potential to True Free Americans. Also, calculate the Strict Jobless Rate. To do so, first, I calculate the Strict Straightaway Working Potential, which consists of a subset of those not in the labor force who want a job now — those who have searched in last 12 months or since the end of their last jobs when those jobs were held in past 12 months — added to the unemployed as counted by the BLS. Next, I take the ratio of the Strict Straightaway Working Potential to True Free Americans.
Readers of Bizarro Theater know that Americans have not had a money-based economy legally since Congress decreed that Federal Reserve banknotes are legal tender. That happened more than 100 years ago.
Bizarro Theater readers know that were it to exist, money would be coined metal by weight and fineness. BT readers know that were it to exist, money could exist without either banking or lawgivers such as Congress.
BT readers know that cash is bank credits with bearer negotibility circulating in perpetuity. BT readers know that cash requires banking to exist. Further, BT readers know that cash as legal tender requires both banking, lawgivers and their enforcement agents.
So when anyone talks about the velocity of money, if they weren't muddled in thought by their false beliefs, rightly, they would say velocity of circulation or velocity of the circulating media or something along those lines.
With the legal tender banknote system Americans live by today, velocity of circulation reveals the turnover of negotiable bank credit in the buying and selling of domestically-produced products through time. A rising velocity of circulation shows anyone that Americans are trading new property in the pursuit of profit with greater frequency. Likewise, a falling velocity of circulation shows that Americans are trading new property with less frequency.
In short, an increasing velocity of circulation shows a bettering economy and likely leading to better living for many Americans, if not most. Likewise, a decreasing velocity of circulation shows a worsening economy and life worse off for most Americans.
Hover over the bars for the actual numbers.
For those old enough, when they follow along the chart and reflect on their life, they will see the chart corresponds to reality. In spite of minor recessions here and there, Americans became ever richer after World War 2 through the 1970s. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, Americans moved to the suburbs, bought houses easily, had two cars in the garage while, had one primary income earner and could easily pay medical bills as well as easily pay for higher education for their college-aged children.
Americans were the envy of the world.
During the late 1970s, American living became increasingly harder. To quell inflation, Fed Chairman Volker oversaw the rising of Fed Funds Rate which pushd the prime interest rate through the roof.
During the Reagan years, and more so during the middle years of his presidency, living improved for many but not all. Yet, optimism prevailed among many.
By the time, the self-professed, kinder and gentler George Bush, Sr., became president, owing to the policies he supported that Congress turned into law, Americans began to see their livelihoods fall. American life became fairly bleak through near to the end of the first term of Bill Clinton.
Around 1994, Americans began to experience a bettering economy. This bettering rose until the peak of the Dot Com bubble, which hit in 1999. After sputtering during the early George Bush, Jr., years, Fed Res chairman Greenspan goosed the economy. Doing so led to the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the biggest banking credit bubble in the history of mankind.
The Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation combined with reckless mortgage-backed securities peddled by the U.S. Congress itself through its GSE agents, Americans lived through a massive bubble, a false prosperity. That false living came to an end by Q4 2007.
Since Q4 2007, life for Americans has become progressively worse. Much of the damage has been done by the progressive Congress of Harry-Reid and Nancy Pelosi under Barack Obama, a man always who is willing to push more government upon Americans. As well, the Ben Bernanke-Janet Yellen Fed Res policy of near-zero interest rates has wrecked capitalism.
As our lawgivers are weak, mindless men, it's going to take much more pain from a much bigger disaster before smarter men ascend to power who put forth laws and action that restores prosperity to Americans by restoring capitalism, focusing on the protection of the individual and his property (right of ownership) while riding Americans of the failed doctrine of kinder, gentler, crony politics, near-socialism economics.
M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) traveler's checks of nonbank issuers; (3) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (4) other checkable deposits (OCDs), consisting of negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) and automatic transfer service (ATS) accounts at depository institutions, credit union share draft accounts, and demand deposits at thrift institutions. Seasonally adjusted M1 is constructed by summing currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits, and OCDs, each seasonally adjusted separately.
The adjusted M1 is M1 with the traveler's checks removed.
There is a scene in the movie True Lies where action-hero Arnie Schwarzenegger gets a shot sodium mannitol to force him to speak truth and answer questions. If I could ask Paul Krugman, Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and others like them one question with them being under the influence of sodium mannitol, I would ask each of them one question:
Yesterday's, pro-government workers at the Bureau of Economic Analysis promoted their fiction that "real" GDP is now growing at the annual rate of 3.7% when in truth, the economy shrank -1.5% (see: Q2 2015 GDP FIRST REVISION. THE FICTION OF 3.7% "REAL" ANNUAL GDP GROWTH), the story for individuals gets even worse.
Personal income shrank at the annual rate of -1.9% as measured in the second quarter
Of those who work for a living, the hardest hit have been shopkeepers, restaurateurs and other proprietors whose income ex-inventory and capital depreciation shrank at the rate of -2.3%. The next hardest hit have been wage-earning workers whose compensation shrank at the annual rate of -2.2%.
Of everything, unemployment insurance payouts have shrunk the fastest, falling at the annual rate of -8.1%.
Likely, for those who are lucky enough to stumble upon my work, there are some, maybe even many, who doubt my True Dollar™ method. Owing to cognitive dissonance, they feel the need to defend the lies they accept from politicians, agents of Congress, academics and news media talking heads.
That doesn't bother me whatsoever. My graphs do the ultimate talking. My graphs consistently line up with reality, the reality of everyone's experiences. Reality never lines up with the claims made by agents of Congress like those of the BEA and agents of the President along with the data and charts they present.
If you look at the Personal Rental Income, and if you thought about what happened after the peak of the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the biggest credit bubble in the history of mankind, you would expect rental income to go up as millions of Americans defaulted on their mortgages and reverted to living in rentals. My chart shows that exactly.
Sometimes, confusion hits many because they see that welfare doled by Congress has fallen. They would expect such welfare to have risen during tougher times. In current dollars, that welfare spending rose, but in True Dollars™, that spending fell. Why welfare collectees didn't notice because True Dollars™ prices for the things they buy, like food, have fallen at a faster rate.
If you look at the Unemployment Insurance Income chart, and if you thought about what happened after the peak of the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the biggest credit bubble in the history of mankind, you would expect unemployment income to go up as millions of Americans found themselves out of work. My chart shows that exactly. Now that claims have been exhausted, payouts for unemployment insurance have fallen precisely because there are few left who qualify to make claim for benefits. My chart shows that exactly as well.
These Medicare and Medicaid income charts match reality as well.
You should tell all your family, friends and co-workers about Bizarro Theater. You should stop listening to the silliness propagated by academicians, politicians and those who work in financial news media.
These minions deflate current GDP using a past inflated GDP. Ask yourself, how could that work, logically?
True GDP expressed in True Dollars™ tells an altogether different story. As you can see in the chart, True GDP is down -1.5% for the quarter and -4.4% year over year.
The only growth to be seen is growth in inventories. No one should want a growth in their inventories in a just-in-time world.
Mark my words. Black Friday is going to expose all of the phony numbers published by agencies of Congress, like the Commerce Department's BEA. In True Dollars™, total consumer credit relative to disposable personal income is too high. I shared the chart for that with you in THERE STILL IS NOT A RECOVERY SEVEN YEARS LATER. HERE IS WHY, PARTLY.
Economists seem slack-jawed to explain why there has been little in the way of a recovery after seven years of Bernanke-Yellen near zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) along with the crazed sum of cash accretion owing to Bernanke's failed academic exercise of Quantitative Easing.
As can be seen in these charts, in True Dollars™, disposable personal income is way down. Likewise, wages and salaries are way down.
And it should be no surprise that consumer credit has fallen as all credit in the has fallen substantially. That great deflation is resultant of the first cause, the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the greatest credit bubble in the history of mankind.
Most academician eggheads in the field of economics believe that many Americans paid off their debts in what they call merely a "recession," as if it were an ordinary recession. So these eggheads wonder why Americans aren't now spending since also they believe a recovery has been underway since 2009.
And these two charts say thousands of words. While both incomes and credit have fallen, Americans have taken on ever more credit to maintain semblance of the lifestyle they once enjoyed during the boom phase of the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the greatest credit bubble in the history of mankind.
Consumer indebtedness has increased during the Greatest Depression. That should surprise no one. First Bernanke and then Yellen made borrowing cheaper than acquiring income. And as massive unemployment pushed wages downward, those with income falling at a slower than credit opted for credit to make up for their buying power shortfall.
Falling true incomes and rising true indebtedness is a recipe for disaster.
Many call the day after Thanksgiving in the USA, Black Friday,because it is the day retailers are supposed move from losses to beyond breakeven and thus enter black into their accounting ledgers rather than red for losses. Don't count on it this Christmas retail shopping season. I wonder if bears plan to short major retailers soon.
It doesn't seem likely that Americans can take on much more debt prudently.
I happen to live in a fairly well-to-do city, which happens to be home to a big biotech firm. Since the Banking Crisis of 2008 and the subsequent reckoning of the Greatest Depression, even my city has been touched. Seedy massage parlors popped up all over the main shopping boulevard like festering sores. Some have taken to living in illegal RV parks hidden behind fences on larger parcels.
With the Internet, like most everything else, the good and the bad stand before you. You must decide.
Sometimes the bad of the Internet is baneful stupidity spread by Financial End Times preachers. Spewing populist sermons from their blogger pulpits, these deliverance preachers promise to guide their flocks through Financial Armageddon. Such Financial End Times preachers are fond of fleecing their flocks with sales of their numerous books of revelation.
These Financial End Times preachers claim the financial apocalypse is always about to happen soon. They claim to have the gift of financial prophecy. For them, their Satan, their evil foe is the supposed Financial New World Order.
One of the more insidious sermons often preached is how "the debt is going to explode in our faces." These preachers breathe fiery sermons of brimstone and treacle, that devil-spawn bankers and corrupted law givers have engaged in such financial evils that a price must be paid to set things aright.
Reality of course is far different from superstition.
The Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation, the biggest credit bubble in the history of mankind led to peak GDP. After the Greenspan-Bernanke Great Inflation blew up, deflation started. We're only seeing signs now of banking deflation stopping.
First under Bernanke and then under Yellen, central bankers have masked that deflation with what they call Quantitative Easing. And that is the whole point of Quantitative Easing. Quantitative Easing makes everyone believe that prices they look upon with their eyes are at least the same as before if not slightly higher.
If you were to ask almost everyone you were to meet if prices of things are up or down in their supermarkets and elsewhere, they would tell you that prices are up. Of course, as all prices get quoted in dollars, dollar prices are up.
However, once you look at prices in True Dollars™, you would find that true prices are down for almost everything.
Credit isn't any different. Credit is up in current dollars. Since credit is the flip side of debt, debt is up in current dollars. Populist end times financial preachers point to current dollar charts of debt and have their flock believing locusts are about ready to swarm.
However, in True Dollars™, credit is down and thus so is debt, for everyone. So let's have a look.
Where do the women and men of Congress stand with their debt? Congress debt has fallen to true GDP peak-approaching 2007 levels.
What about the law givers of the various states and counties and municipalities?
What does the debt position of financial firms look like?
Where are the non-financial corporations?
Where are the non-financial businesses not incorporated?
And what about individuals, where do households stand these days on debt?
As you can see from the table below, that all parties of the economy have been reducing their true debt, their debt tallied in True Dollars™.
Unlike the populist financial end times preachers as well as those other superstition lot, the academia economist preachers, I give you to scientific reality. You won't find anywhere else on the Internet, my charts, all of which correspond to the reality everyone experiences daily.
Comments left upon web pages can reveal how what many believe. Today, for a story about Amazon's recent stock run up, which has given Amazon a market valuation higher than Walmat I came across these gems:
"Cheap people support Walmart to knock out small businesses. Cheap and lazy people support Amazon to knock out Walmart and their peers. People who would have worked for small business owners would have been small businesses owners themselves have become Walmart employees. Now Amazon is taking over with their robots. Some people are going away indefinitely."
And this one:
"Everyone talks about supporting their local economy claiming everyone should be willing to pay more to support local economy. Always they say they hate cheap, job-killing imports, but then they buy from Amazon.
"I patronize Amazon because I can get things there that I cannot find sold in my local stores. I agree however, that Walmart and Amazon are part of the trend to destroy local economies. In the old days, you would go to a half dozen local businesses to buy supplies, which today, you can buy at Staples. Profits stayed local, in local banks. Today, profits go straight to the big Wall Street banks which are not interested in the small piddling deals offered by local economies."
Alas, these comments reflect a slew of false beliefs. First, in the days of money — coined metal by weight and fineness — during the growing seasons of farming, money was shipped to the money centers, deposited with money center bankers, who then lent against those reserves to speculators of all kinds.
Local economies would grind to standstills during those times. When harvest time came, money would be recalled from money center banks. Only then would the local economy see activity.
In the days of horse-and-buggy, the blacksmith, the wainwright, farrier, saddler, wheelwright, each held monopoly in their respective towns.
As everyone else had little capital, there were few wages to be had. Most children were stuck on farms, wage-less. Plowmen had to bargain with these skilled monopolists who held bargaining power.
With the advent of the automobile and factory production methods, first tools and then machinery — both are capital — replaced handmaking. Because of profits on that capital, wages could be paid.
Boys and girls grew up and left farms for wages. Their living standards grew with gaining wages. Wherever capital sprung up, people's lives improved.
But wherever capital sprung up, the local economy monopolists — the blacksmith, the wainwright, farrier, saddler, wheelwright — lost hold of their bargaining power as their methods were replaced by machinery and partitioned methods.
Amazon and Wal-mart free up resources in local economies so that specialization can arise. Those who lose to Amazon and Wal-mart must find new ways to earn their living.
Everyone else who earns their living by another way get richer by spending less for the same products. Amazon and Wal-mart increase the profit for everyone else.
With more profit from the same effort, the beneficiaries of Amazon and Wal-mart now can spend their new found profit on same earnings in other ways, locally on new the products of new ventures, locally investing in those new ventures, or elsewhere.
It's odd how these Luddites fail to lament the rise of mechanized farm equipment, which led to the displacement of millions of Americans from working as farmers. Would they rather have Americans walking behind horse and plow, living at bare subsistence with meager earnings.
If Americans still lived that way, we wouldn't have the Internet, television, wireless smart phones and millions of other products. Living would resemble American life in the 1700s.
Today in Forbes, I read Tear Down This Reagan by Bill Whalen , a worker on the payroll of the Hoover Institution. In this work, Whalen describes the ugly underneath politics over a statue of former U.S. president and California governor Ronald Reagan. It seems a recalled California Supreme Court judge Cruz Reynoso has a grudge against Reagan.
Worshiping statues chiseled from stone or forged from bronze is the stuff of superstition. Rejecting the gods of one people to be replaced by the gods one favors is the stuff of savages. And yet this is what Cruz Reynoso has urged Americans to do. We're living in the 21st century, right?
If only Americans from long ago through today would have embraced naming of cities, states, bridges, schools and so forth after beliefs Americans ought to hold sacred rather than naming everything after dead politicians and dead presidents, maybe America wouldn't be in such a state of retrogression. Today, then, rather than Lincoln High School, Americans would have Bill of Rights High School. Instead of the George Washington Bridge, Americans would have the Liberty Bridge. Instead of the Kennedy Space Center, we would have Americans Paid Taxes for this Indulgence Space Center.
Over the centuries, U.S. congresses and the state houses have created their own polytheistic religion. To indoctrinate all Americans into their religion they have conjured up prayers — the Pledge of Allegiance — and moments to their gods — Mt. Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial and so forth.
Naming things after dead law givers and putting up statues of them works as persuasion in a kind of propaganda. Everywhere you go, you get reminded that law givers were living gods in their times and that your prosperity, luck and life gets owed to these gods.
Americans need more statues like the State of Liberty and no statues of dead law givers. After all, liberty, the French word for the English word freedom, means the absence of law in the presence of law givers. Americans need to abandon their superstitious polytheistic religion.
We're living in the twenty-first century. The goal should be to have the least governance as needed rather than the relentless pursuit of the most governance as tolerable.
Of late, I have looked up more than a few biographical entries in Wikipedia in support of musicians to whom I have listened from YouTube. In entry after entry, I've come across the rather loathly expression, African-Americans.
All should be offended that many Americans foolishly still call some Americans by the highly inaccurate and insulting name, African-Americans.
Importation of slaves was decreed illegal effective January 1, 1808. By 1840, almost all slaves living north of the Ohio River had been freed. All born in the USA were Americans and not foreigners deserving of a hyphened moniker.
We're living in the 21st century. It shocks that in the 21st century, many still refer to some Americans as hyphenated Americans. Doing so implies a lesser status rendering all those hyphenated as being less than full Americans.
Is it any wonder that many grow up with prejudice? Americans are being taught to view millions of individuals as inferior, as if they need protection like spotted owls and other dying species.
After putting the data in True Dollars™, for new orders, the change from the previous month looks bad along with the change from the previous year as well as from five years ago. Only the change from the previous quarter looks good.
There are a few bright spots, though. It is from here that a basis of true recovery likely is forming.
The industries that are showing consistent bettering are construction materials, electric components, industrial machinery, material handling, ferrous metal foundries, iron and steel mills.
So back in 1972, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who now is the lone socialist American holding high office, wrote a bizarre work published by the Vermont Freeman. This has become news because the socialist Sanders seeks the Democratic Party nomination to run for the presidency of the USA.
Sanders began by revealing likely his own masturbation fantasy in the opening two sentences of his work, "A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied, a woman abused." After all, how would Sanders know what the majority of American male masturbators think about when they flog themselves?
Not to be outdone by himself, in only the third sentence of the work, Sanders wrote, "A woman enjoys intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously." No where in the work does Sanders cite any scientific studies that detail what women fantasize about during sex with their husbands or boyfriends.
Apologists for Sanders want all to believe Sanders was enslaved to a hippy, stream-of-consciousness writing episode, a sort of writing epilepsy. A guy named Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Sanders claims Sanders was stupid and thus produced a "dumb attempt at dark satire."
Clearly, the work isn't satire. The word satire entered into English in the late 1300s from the Middle French word satire meaning work intended to ridicule vice or folly.
There isn't anything in Sander's stream-of-consciousness fantasies that could be construed as satire. What vice did Sander's ridicule? Is masturbation a vice? Is having sexual fantasy a vice?
If not vice, whose folly did Sanders ridicule? Is it folly to have sexual fantasies?
And why does a senator of the United States Congress need a spokesman? Shouldn't senators be like Cicero, the famous Roman senator orator?
Briggs claims that, "When Bernie got into this race he understood there would be attempts to distract voters from the real issues." Bernie himself has distracted voters with his masturbatory fantasies.
Update:
On Sunday, Bernie himself said, "This is a piece of fiction that I wrote in 1972...you know, something like Fifty Shades of Grey." Bernie Sanders confessed to be a writer of erotic literature, a work filled with sadomasochistic imagery derived from his mind — masturbating to thoughts of bound and tortured submissive females and his hoping females want to be raped and not merely raped but gang raped for who knows how long, except Bernie himself.
From what source did Bernie draw to write, but from his own mind and his own thoughts? Did Bernie not first imagine thoughts of masturbating, binding and torturing kneeling women, before writing those thoughts to paper?
And even if Bernie were into BDSM, as long as he were involved with consenting adults, no one else should care. However, rape means a crime precisely because the victim has not consented to sex. It's quite twisted to believe that women want to be forced to have sex against their wills because women prefer being raped. It's even creepier to write about it in erotic literature hoping to bring others to arousal.
Yet, only 30.9% fantasize about sex with two men. Only 36.3% fantasize about being spanked or whipped for sexual pleasure. And only 28.9% fantasize about being forced to have sex.
In no fantasy about being dominated or being forced to have sex do women ever state they want to be raped by three guys. Having consensual sex with a stranger is a far cry from being brutally raped by three men at the same time. That is Bernie's fantasy!
All should be reminded that Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, is running for president for the USA. Perhaps Sanders ought to quit the senate, quit running for president and take up what could be his true calling, writing mediocre erotic literature.
For years, the foolish have parroted a thoroughly wrong story that Iggy Pop was a punk rocker and thus "the godfather" of punk rockers. Claiming Iggy Pop was a punk rocker is little more than historical revisionism in the annuals of rock and roll journalism.
James Osterberg (aka Iggy Pop) formed the also-ran Psychedelic Stooges(♫) in 1967 after seeing The Doors play at the University of Michigan. Joining Osterberg were brothers Ron (guitar) and Scott Asheton (drums) and Dave Alexander (bass).
Osterberg sought to be a Jim Morrison clone. After a year, the band signed a deal with Elektra, the same label as the band he idolized, The Doors.
The entire first recording by The Stooges, released in 1969, titled The Stooges, is little more than the work of clones in love with psychedelia long-form prog rock that many call acid rock. They tried hard to sound like Cream (No Fun, Real Cool Time) , The Doors (We Will Fall, Ann), Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett playing Interstellar Overdrive(♫) (I Wanna Be Your Dog, Not Right) or the Yardbirds (1969, Little Doll).
The entire second recording by The Stooges, Fun House released in 1970, is little more than yet another work of clones in love with psychedelia long-form prog rock. For this recording, The Stooges become a cover band of Steppenwolf (Down on the Street, Loose, TV Eye), The Doors (Dirt, Fun House) and Cream (1970). L.A. Blue is noise experimentation.
The Stooges were a bad also-ran who mimicked the prog rock sounds of Cream, The Doors, the later Yardbirds, Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett and Steppenwolf. The Stooges weren't reacting against progressive rock. Iggy and his bandmates embraced it! The Stooges were the anti-thesis of those who would become punk rockers.
After two lame L.P.s with little sales, and Iggy's bad heroin habit, Elektra execs dropped The Stooges in 1971. The Stooges became a bar band, adding James Williamson on guitar, kicking out drunk bassist Dave Alexander and adding bassist Jimmy Recca.
Those who were born around the birth of rock and roll (see: A COUPLE OF AMERICAN JEWS INVENTED ROCK AND ROLL IN 1952) and who were coming of age between 1970 and 1972 rejected the progressive rock sound and its demands of virtuosity. They longed to play the music they knew when that had between released before 1966.
Many took up instruments and began playing rock and roll again in defiance of the trend of progressive rock from the UK played by bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, as well as the soft rock pop mostly coming from Los Angeles (The Eagles, Linda Rondstadt, others).
Punk rockers arose in backlash against the overblown, pretentious, pompousness of prog rock musicians in what became the first great rock and roll revival. The revival tossed away the need for virtuousity and all of its entrapment — instruments from symphonic music along with music synthesizers, music derived from orchestral music and jazz as well as music written with complex meter, contrapuntal bass, and extended musical passages.
Punk rockers played rock and roll. Rock and roll is a kind of music. It consists of these elements:
• simple meter (4/4)
• ostinato (riff)
• 3 chords or 4 chords resolving on the tonic with the 4-chord pattern adding the submediant to the tonic, subdominant, and dominant
• electric guitar, electric bass, drums, and often vocal accompaniment, and sometimes upright piano
Punk rocker sang songs with lyrics reflected the reality of the times. They eschewed the fantasy of Utopian ideals of prog rock lyrics.
Punk rockers first appeared in New York City in 1972. Punk rockers created the great rock and roll revival. No band formed, signed and recorded before 1972 ever could be considered as being in the vanguard of the great rock and roll revival known as the New Wave and later by many as Punk Rock.
The band that kicked off the rock and roll revival were the New York Dolls. In 1972, New York Dolls became the must-see band in New York City.
New York Dolls were the first punk rockers. Everyone in NYC and the UK took their cues from New York Dolls.
Even Iggy Pop was hanging out in New York in 1972, watching the New York Dolls and learning from them as his handler and new friend David Bowie was doing. Like everyone else, in 1972, Bowie became swooped up into the New York Dolls gravity. Sable Starr, the infamous groupie and Iggy's girlfriend who came with Iggy, dumped Iggy and took up with Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls.
With his Mainman Productions firm, Bowie took on Iggy and Lou Reed and brought them to the UK to resurrect their failed careers. In 1972, while Iggy was in the UK with Bowie, the Dolls went to the UK and toured.
Time - In Quaaludes and red wine, demanding Billy Dolls and other friends of mine. Take your time.
In 1972, with David Bowie as producer, Iggy, Williamson and the Asheton brothers recorded a hard rock LP for Columbia, Raw Power, an LP that sounded nothing like the music that would come from the great rock and roll revival. Within a year after poor sales and public disinterest, the renamed Iggy and the Stooges were dropped by Columbia records execs.
In early 1973, after the death of Murcia, the Dolls signed with Mercury, recorded again all their material already having been recorded once before in 1972 and released their debut L.P. on July 27, 1973. New York Dolls went back to the UK, appeared on BBC 2 Top of the Pops (♫). The Dolls TV appearance truly launched the punk rocker movement in the UK.
The New York Dolls recorded 21 songs released on two records, the self-titled first release and the second release titled Too Much Too Soon. Of the 21 songs, David Johansen and Johnny Genzale (Johnny Thunders) co-wrote nine. Johansen with Sylvain Mizrahi (Sylvain Sylvain) wrote three, Johansen with Arthur Kane wrote one. Thunders alone wrote one and Johansen alone wrote one. In total, band members wrote 16 of 21 songs, which is a bit more than 72.2%.
As well, the band recorded but never released Endless Party (♫) written by David Johansen and Johnny Thunders. Later, Thunders recorded his own version of Endless Party (♫).
In total the band recorded 26 songs, of which one or more members wrote 17. Of the nine covers recorded (34.6%), not one cover was a song written by The Stooges or by Iggy and the Stooges.
The covers were written by pop song writers (Shuman, Pomus, Lieber, Stoller, Morton, Gamble, Huff), rhythm and blues guys (Dixon, Williamson II, Lieber, Stoller, Johnson and Smith) and rock and rollers (Berry, Diddley). The covers reveal an influence of pop music rooted in rhythm and blues. None of the songs songs reveal any influence of psychedelic prog rock favored by The Stooges.
Principal song writer Johnny Thunders went on to record these:
Thunders never mentioned Ron Asheton from The Stooges. And no one had yet heard of James Williamson by the time the New York Dolls recorded. Williamson didn't play with Iggy until the Raw Power recording, by which time, the New York Dolls had been long established.
Meanwhile, The Dictators (♫), guys from the borough of Queens, New York City, formed in 1973 while attending college in upstate New York (SUNY College at New Paltz). They began playing at The Coventry in Queens in 1974 and had a recording deal by 1975.
In 1977, The Dictators signed with Asylum and released their second LP Manifest Destiny (♫). The Dictators already established themselves in 1975 and were in the vanguard of the great rock and roll revival. Andy Shernoff founded The Dictators for that exact purpose.
"I saw the New York Dolls, me and Tommy and Dee Dee ... I saw Johnny Thunders in a club and I thought, 'Wow, this guy looks really cool.' I said to Tommy, "This guy looks too cool. He has to have something here." I went to see the band and I thought they were really good, really entertaining and I said, 'You know, I could do that too.'"
And there you go, Johnny Ramone in public on video said that Johnny Thunders and the New York Dolls inspired him to pick up the guitar and play rock and roll.
Johnny Ramone talking with Johnny Thunders
Not six minutes into the video, Johnny Ramone says,
"Oh, yeah, I would review everyone, you know, where our competition lied. You know, The Heartbreakers were the only other band I looked upon as, these guys are really good, but they were a bunch of junkies. So, I don't have to worry about them because their career is going to be short. You know.
That was the only other band I was concerned about.That was the next best band."
The Heartbreakers (♫) were founded by ex-New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders and ex-New York Dolls drummer Jerry Nolan. Thunders and Nolan started The Heartbreakers after the New York Dolls folded in 1975.
Later in the same interview, Johnny said the Beach Boys were his favorite followed by The Doors.
As far as the rest of The Ramones go, Joey Ramone in his later years, after The Ramones long had folded, can be seen saying he liked The Stooges. Dee Dee Ramone who wrote or co-wrote most of their songs cited The Beatles as his biggest influence.
The Ramones released 54 songs on their first four recordings, the ones that matter. They covered five songs:
Here is what those involved with the Sex Pistols had to say. "The Sex Pistols were identical to the New York Dolls ... and they were identical in terms of their actions." ~Malcolm McClaren, creator of The Sex Pistols
"I was trying to do with the Sex Pistols what I had failed with the New York Dolls" ~Malcolm McClaren, creator of The Sex Pistols
"I thought it was great [New York Dolls first recording], just the rawness of it. And y'know Thunders guitar was what I really dug at the time." ~ Steve Jones, guitarist of The Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols released their first song, Anarchy in the U.K. (♫) on November 26, 1976. Beginning early December 1976, along with Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers and The Clash, the Sex Pistols went on an ill-fated Anarchy Tour to promote the song.
Afterward, in the spring of 1977, the Sex Pistols went into a recording studio and produced the songs that would be included in their first and only L.P., Never Mind the Bollocks (♫), Here's the Sex Pistols. Anyone who gives a listen to the Sex Pistols song Liar (♫) and then listens to the New York Dolls song Puss N' Boots (♫) can hear how Jones stole from Thunders note-for-note.
Countless guitarists in recordings from 1976, 1977 and 1978, copied the licks of Johnny Thunders of New York Dolls and after the Dolls broke up in 1975, his playing with his band The Heartbreakers. As well countless others copied licks played by Ross Friedman (aka Ross the Boss, aka Ross Funicello) from the The Dictators.
None of the rock and roll revival guitarists copied his sound from either Ron Asheton or James Willamson . No band copied their sound from either The Stooges or from Iggy and The Stooges.
Those who claim The Stooges were the source from which punk rockers sprang must reveal to the world answers for these questions:
What song did the New York Dolls record that sounds derivative of The Stooges?
What song recorded by the New York Dolls has Johnny Thunders playing a run, lick or chord progression that he lifted from Ron Asheton?
On what song by The Ramones can we hear Johnny Ramone playing any guitar lick that sounds like what Ron Asheton played?
On what song by The Ramones can we hear Dee Dee Ramone play any bass line that sounds like what Dave Alexander played?
Liking someone and having listened to someone is far different from being influenced by someone. Being influenced means learning to copy the playing and then incorporating that playing into one's own material.
All known covers of The Stooges, a sure-fire way of telling "influence" happened after 1976, four years after the great rock and roll revival was in full swing. Here are the earliest covers of songs by The Stooges:
1970 (titled as I Feel Alright)by The Damned, February 18, 1977
T.V. Eye by Radio Birdman, June 1977
No Fun by Sex Pistols, July 2, 1977
Radio Birdman (♫), an Australian band, featured an American ex-pat from Detroit, Deniz Tek, a med student in college in Australia, who led the band as the guitarist and main songwriter. Tek was familiar with The Stooges as he lived around Detroit during the time The Stooges were a local bar band playing at venues like the Grand Ballroom.
Sid Vicious, the substitute bass player in Sex Pistols, a guy who couldn't play at all, covered one song by The Stooges (I Wanna Be Your Dog) and one by Iggy and Stooges (Search and Destroy) for his December 1979 release Sid Sings.
Notably, the already established punk rockers, The Dictators were the first band to cover Search and Destroy (♫). The Dictators released their version on their second LP, Manifest Destiny. Notably too is the superior musicianship heard in the Dictators' performance.
Rabid: Steve Jones has said he borrowed from New York Doll Johnny Thunders’ playing.
Lydon: Yeah, because Thunders would be playing with three strings and a bit of elephant rope. Anything that was available — that was a punk ethos. We came from something. We’re not just impossibly out of thin air.
Rabid: Of course, you wrote “New York,” the funniest song ever written about Johnny Thunders.
Lydon: Yeah. Done in the greatest possible taste! [Laughs] It’s a fun song, but it was taken as a bitter retort — it was far from it. It was accolades, is what it was!
"Oh, god, yes. I mean it was just taking birth and it was movin' so fast and I knew for a fact that the New York Dolls was ground zero for all of that, which really made me so proud. When it all kicked through and especially once we got our recording deal, which took three years probably.
"No, the bands got created around us. The first band that was ever there in New York City and the first band ever was the New York Dolls.And I'm not talking about Iggy Pop because he was a 60s band; he was a late 60s and the MC5, those guys were from the late 60s.
"In fact, the New York Dolls re-hatched Iggy's career. He went on the road with us in 1973 playing little theaters all around the country from Detroit onto California. He played with us at the [Hollywood] Palladium in Los Angeles actually where Iggy Pop opens up for the New York Dolls.
"That's what was going on. Iggy was sleeping in Johnny's room at the Ramada Inn. I'm not kidding."
Don't you know where to cop? That's what New York Johnny [Thunders] said. "You should get to know your town just like I know mine." ~ Joe Strummer, lyrics City of the Deadreleased as the B-side to the single Complete Control, September 23,1977
Undeniable facts remain:
Johnny Thunders, the principal song co-writer and lead guitarist for the New York Dolls, learned no guitar methods from Ron Asheton.
The New York Dolls launched the great rock and roll revival that many later would call the New Wave as well as punk rock.
Johnny Ramone saw the New York Dolls and specifically was inspired by Johnny Thunders to pick up the guitar and form a band with Dee Dee Ramone.
Iggy Pop tried to resurrect his failed career by riding the coattails of the New York Dolls as he slept on Johnny Thunders floor.
There seems to be a godfather of punkers, but that guy isn't Iggy Pop.
The Stooges were a quite unoriginal psychedelic prog rock band, hence their original name, Psychedelic Stooges. Without doubt, The Stooges played a bad version of psychedelic prog rock.
Watch the supposed godfather of punk, Iggy Pop, during the height of the great rock and roll revival talk about his failed career and his quest for fame and riches — two quite un-punkish qualities.
And then from the same video, watch Iggy Pop put on a psychedelic rock clone performance of Jim Morrison, his idol. The video is cued up to the performance.
Within the last 39 years or so, a wrong story has cropped up claiming there was such thing as proto-punk in a lame effort to try to connect Iggy Pop and his lame psychedelic prog rock with the great rock and roll revival. Sadly, many have parroted the false story. And even more have believed it.
It's a big lie to say Iggy Pop, The Stooges or Iggy Pop and The Stooges had anything to do with the great rock and roll revival. The Stooges didn't even try to play rock and roll.
David Bowie, likely who was Iggy's lover at the time, co-wrote most songs on Lust for Life, which no one could call a comeback L.P. Instead it was a last shot at staying in the music business effort L.P.
No one who grew up in the New Wave of Music era with all the punk rockers ever connected either The Stooges or Iggy and the Stooges with bands like The Heartbreakers, The Clash, Sex Pistols and so on. When Lust for Life hit the radio, most thought "Once been, has been". Iggy Pop wasn't even half as interesting as Ian Dury and the Blockheads.
A great marketing machine has pushed a false meme that Iggy Pop is the godfather of punk. If anything, The Stooges were among the last of many easily forgotten fuzz-tone psychedelic clone bands and Osterberg was their front man. Afterward he was a David Bowie guy pal who hung around New York City with David Bowie as Bowie became enamored with The New York Dolls.
"They have to have a place to put me to reference in the whole thing [of being the godfather of punk]. And they think they have to explain that to an audience of people who are similarly lacking in intelligence or education. So you get that. It's okay. But it's tedious."
Iggy Pop wasn't the godfather of anything. Iggy Pop had nothing to do with the great rock and roll revival.
Enjoy the band that kicked off the rock and roll revival, the quite original New York Dolls led by Johnny Thunders.
And then enjoy the magic of Johnny Thunders with Jerry Nolan, Walter Lure and Billy Rath, all playing as The Heartbreakers.
Alas, these comments reflect a slew of false beliefs. First, in the days of money — coined metal by weight and fineness — during the growing seasons of farming, money was shipped to the money centers, deposited with money center bankers, who then lent against those reserves to speculators of all kinds.
