Patriotic? No! Survival and higher living standards yes. Avoid letting big global business get their way and avoid being screwed by them. They run our gov’t. Unfortunately.

The way I see it, consuming high quality cheaper imports, is like doing illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine, that makes the victim feel good, for years, but after about 40 years of a bad habit, it takes its toll in various ways, and practically impossible to quit. (like imports)

Another view is the imports are like rat poison. The unwitting US citizen, or rat, eats the bait and dies later. Like the summer ’08 meltdown. Exporting more and importing less, leads to prosperity in the net exporting country, like China, japan et al, and RUINS the net importing country like the USA.

When I first got out of high school in ’62, I worked for only two years in a union defense plant, Republic Aviation on the F-105. The second two years I worked for Grumman Aircraft on the Lunar Excursion Module.

In the Union place it was last hired first fired. In the NON union place, the supervisor lays off whoever he feels like. Politics. The two bosses I had liked me. I used to change their spark plugs. If they needed one guy on a Sunday, they always offered it to me.

Turns out, they had to lay off 5% once. They laid off older guys with 17 years on the job, and kept me on with only two years. It turned me right off right away. I knew that day, this place was not my “home”. I would end up in a different dept. eventually, with new bosses, and I could get canned.

Soon after that I quit for a higher paying job close to home. Never in a union after that. Factories, job shops, survival of the fittest. You don’t produce, come in late, or take too long on a job, or screw up a job and you get fired.

You have get up the nerve and ask for each raise. After 1975, I went to self employment. Freelance. No sick days, no holidays, no free medical ins etc. And you wait 30-60- and 90 days to get paid. Two times, the company went bankrupt and I lost what they owed me.

If I had my life to do over? I would take a union civil service gov’t job, union utility worker, union rail road worker etc. I wasted my life starting out in manufacturing in 1962. It NEVER entered my mind that by 1975 the gov’t I paid taxes to would bad mouth manufacturing and off shore manufacturing work.

Back in ’75, TPTB’s media started saying things like…
“High wages are causing inflation”
“We don’t want the smoke stack”
“We don’t need the rust belt”
“The consumer will get cheaper higher quality imported products”
“We are going the be a service economy”
“We don’t want those dirty menial jobs”
“The union United Auto workers make too much money and are ruining the country”
But they PAY taxes and give us cars. There was no bashing of unionized civil service tax absorbing jobs.
Me, and George Carlin tried spreading the word, but it did no good at all.

yeah, fat chance debt will ever be forgiven, although it should be, Shititah or not.

No idea what you’re trying to say. Should we be subject to the Old Testament? Really?

God help us all. They’ll never forgive our debt, ever.

So everything you said in your first post made perfect sense. Imports made for less with higher quality. No doubt set up by the globalists, no tariffs, etc.

Then in your second post you go on to say that we should buy inferior vehicles to in essence be “patriotic” and share in the pain. I call bullshit. The US has had 50 years to make superior vehicles and they still can’t do it. Further their service is inferior. Honestly, I’ll never buy another American car – ever.

Do you really think the American public isn’t getting squeezed? Do you think we should have to buy American at inflated prices while we’re getting squeezed from every side? You must have been a union employee. $70 hr. workers, funded by the US Gov’t. putting out absolute crap.

I will buy an American vehicle only when I have no choice.

“So let me get this straight, the price of silver is plummeting and the demand for silver is going through the roof so much so that the US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, found it necessary to halt the production (ie demand) for the #1 use of retail physical silver. His other choice, and the one that is mandated by the Bullion Coin Act of 1985, was to continue purchasing silver blanks to fill demand even though it may drive the price of silver much higher.”

BY DEFINITION: US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, is artificially manipulating the silver market as his actions are meant to STOP the upward pressure on the price of silver and support the manipulation actions.

US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, should be charged for the illegal act of willfully manipulating the silver market!

The bright side of all this: Jack Lew is telegraphing just how long we should expect to see the silver price held down until the next leg up begins – July 27th!

Tick, tick, Tick.

The problem, in addition to Jack the bankster, is that these dumb ass miners continue to sell the metals at a loss. They are the only companies in any market that throw their shareholders under the bus continually. They have done it for years and continue to do so. They are as treasonous as old Jack.  So much garbage needs to be cleaned up. So many traitors like Jack Lew need to be hanged.

Finally we agree on something!! All the Best……Silverngold

Don’t bother buying a car. Stop buying things you don’t need. You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses. The best car to own, is car you already own. Stop consuming. Ask yourself the question, do you really need it? Consumption is not the answer. New stuff is a guarantee for more problems. Looking for happiness or fulfillment?  Volunteer.  Help others. Be thankful

Forgiveness of DEBT or Default does it make any difference ?  You might as well Forgive and look good  in doing so since you are not going to get paid anyway ! At least get some “good will” from it !

If you love your country, you are supposed to buy a US made car, even if it’s not as good. Considerate it like a war. War is sacrifice, it’s supposed to hurt.

It’s all too late now anyway, and things are reversing naturally. People are rebelling against the past. I see many people SWITCHING over to US made cars from imports since the ’08 meltdown.

I met a lady at a garage sale. She had a new Chevy Suburban, told me….”We got rid of the Honda and bought that, we LOVE it. Next we are getting rid of our Toyota and buying another American car.”

Has ANYBODY noticed all the brand new V-8 Dodge Ram pick/up trucks lately? Or all the new Jeeps, Grand Cherokees, Wranglers etc erc? Brand new Tahoes and GMC Yukons all over the place. Ford vans and P/U trucks. People are buying more of the older technology trucks with high quality body on frame and V-8 engines.

Lately in my area, every time I see photos of a car accident, the imported uni-body “tuna can” is up-side down or on its side if you are lucky. Two recently erupted in flames, but not like the old times when the Pinto, or Chevy P/U trucks went on fire the media says nothing, no bashing, about the dangers of these small imported cars.

One lady got out of her burning Toyota that was rear ended, and could not open the doors to get her husband and two kids out. She watched them burn. Front page…”I want my family back”.

Uni-body, no frame, its a sheet metal BOX. When the shape gets distorted you CAN’T open the freakin doors.

The people and TPTB, have learned a lot about America’s problems because of that meltdown in ’08. A very big learning experience.

In my decades of observations, the American cars made up thru 1950s and early sixties were the best on the planet. You got a reliable, durable, simple, user friendly car that lasted forever. Many are still in use in Cuba.

We had high quality thicker steel that did not rust out in a few years. We had chrome plated BUMPERS made of 1/8 inch thick steel. They were even good on gas, and real cheap and easy to maintain and repair YOURSELF!!!

Our cars were the BEST available until, the high quality but cheaper imports flowed in after 1960? Higher quality is SUPPOSED to be more expensive, not cheaper. So the subsidized cars being dumped on our shores, FORCED domestic producers to “cut corners” using recycled cheaper thinner steel so they rust out, piss you off, and you do exactly what the welfare PTB world wants YOU to do. Buy an import and contribute welfare money to nations we had to fight against, in wars, and then rebuild their countries at our expense.

Just like real money versus fiat money, the “bad” foreign cars drove out the “good” for the USA cars.

Re the alleged “domestic made” foreign cars?? Still adds to the trade and US consumer dollar deficit. They are assembly plants made from imported parts. (probably China for Jap cars) It’s a good symbolic public relations ploy, (throwing us a bone) and they can cram more cars on a ship when dissembled, so they save money besides. It’s the minority.

The majority of foreign made cars come off ships in ports. I’ve seen aerial views of acres and acres and thousands of imported cars right near the ships that brought them here.

… lest we lose focus

It amuses me to no end to see what a certain “TA Site” offers… true believers that TA still works! I learned long ago… and many here will agree… that the market manipulations we see are real, and part of a concerted program of ‘control’ by TPTB… namely the Fed and government and bankster cartel. What’s that old saying? “Don’t fight the FED”.

I resigned myself to the knowledge that paper was not the place to be. That left ‘stacking physical’ as the only sane option. Even though the manipulators ever ‘control’ the price of physical downward to make it ‘appear’ to be a bad investment. But holding physical at this point in time is no longer about a ‘good investment’ that ‘makes money’. No… it is now about survival when this monster ponzi scheme implodes the world’s reserve currency… and the USA economy.

George Ure at www.urbansurvival.com and others have made the point that when looking at the ‘Big Picture’, the FED is actually fighting deflation. Under such a scenario it is not unusual for gold to go down, also. The point is that gold will go down less than other assets that collapse under a deflation/debt destruction scenario. And that is where I want to be. Bringing some purchasing power through the economic vaporization at the end game. Physical gold and silver in your control… that you can hold and touch. And a lot of patience…

Meanwhile, it is a summer Saturday, hot and well pollinated. Time for a dip at the swimming hole.

FROM ZH—–
Greece: Banks Can Reopen … for Deposits
Jul 17, 2015

Take, for example, the recently-announced ‘generosity’ of the powers that be — that is, the banking powers that be — which will permit the long suffering depositors to…*cough*…deposit more money into the banks:

Greece: Banks Can Reopen … for Deposits
Jul 17, 2015

Greek banks will reopen Monday after a three-week closure, the country’s deputy finance minister says, though withdrawal restrictions will stay in place. Bank customers “can deposit cash, they can transfer money from one account to the other,” but they can’t withdraw money except at ATMs, the official says, and a withdrawal limit of 60 euros ($67) a day will stay in place, he said, though Greek authorities are working on a plan to allow people to roll over access to their funds so that if they don’t make it to a bank machine one day, they can take out 120 euros the next day.

Yeah, depositing more money into the Greek banking system is exactly what all 12 remaining Greek idiots are clamoring to do…everybody else just wants their money back, thank-you-very-much.

Obviously, the only rational response of anybody in Europe watching this charade of theft continue would be to sell gold, right?(which has happened vigorously ever since the Greek crisis began) Because, you know,

nothing says “confidence” quite like selling your gold so you can then park that money in a bank that may not let you withdraw it again.

Of course, we here at Peak Prosperity hold to the view that everything, and we mean everything, in our ””markets”” is stage-managed. And that especially includes gold. The central banks are demanding and commanding complete fealty to their story line, no exceptions tolerated. We are at that all-or-nothing moment in history when everything either works out perfectly or it all falls apart.

Savers have to be punished so debtors can be saved.

Why? Because if debtors are rescued, that makes it possible for more debts to be issued in the future..

And why is that important? Because the banking system needs ever more loans in order to survive.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-18/all-hail-our-banking-overlords

So we will see twin $200 trillion debt and $1.5 quadrillion derivatives implosions. That will lead to the most historic wealth destruction ever in global stock, with bond and property markets declining at least 75 – 95 percent. World trade will also contract dramatically and we will see massive hardship across the globe.
So what do you think is coming, and how bad will things ultimately get once this global debt crisis finally spins totally out of control?

In addition to Spain, Italy and France, let us not forget Belgium (106 percent debt to GDP), Ireland (109 debt to GDP) and Portugal (130 debt to GDP).

Once all of these dominoes start falling, the consequences for our massively overleveraged global financial system will be absolutely catastrophic…

Spain has over $1.0 trillion in debt outstanding… and Italy has €2.6 trillion. These bonds are backstopping tens of trillions of Euros’ worth of derivatives trades. A haircut or debt forgiveness for them would trigger systemic failure in Europe.

EU banks as a whole are leveraged at 26-to-1. At these leverage levels, even a 4% drop in asset prices wipes out ALL of your capital. And any haircut of Greek, Spanish, Italian and French debt would be a lot more than 4%.
Things in Asia look quite ominous as well.

According to Bloomberg, debt levels in China have risen to levels never recorded before…

While China’s economic expansion beat analysts’ forecasts in the second quarter, the country’s debt levels increased at an even faster pace.
Outstanding loans for companies and households stood at a record 207 percent of gross domestic product at the end of June, up from 125 percent in 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
And remember, that doesn’t even include government debt. When you throw all forms of debt into the mix, the overall debt to GDP number for China is rapidly approaching 300 percent.

In Japan, things are even worse. The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan is now up to an astounding 230 percent. That number has gotten so high that it is hard to believe that it could possibly be true. At some point an implosion is coming in Japan which is going to shock the world.

Of course the same thing could be said about the entire planet. Yes, national governments and central banks have been attempting to kick the can down the road for as long as possible, but everyone knows that this is not going to end well.

And when things do really start falling apart, it will be unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Just consider what Egon von Greyerz recently told King World News…

Eric, there are now more problem areas in the world, rather than stable situations. No major nation in the West can repay its debts. The same is true for Japan and most of the emerging markets. Europe is a failed experiment for socialism and deficit spending. China is a massive bubble, in terms of its stock markets, property markets and shadow banking system. Japan is also a basket case and the U.S. is the most indebted country in the world and has lived above its means for over 50 years.

So we will see twin $200 trillion debt and $1.5 quadrillion derivatives implosions. That will lead to the most historic wealth destruction ever in global stock, with bond and property markets declining at least 75 – 95 percent. World trade will also contract dramatically and we will see massive hardship across the globe.
So what do you think is coming, and how bad will things ultimately get once this global debt crisis finally spins totally out of control?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-17/bankruptcy-planet-accelerates-–-24-nations-are-currently-facing-debt-crisis