In Hock for the Holidays

There is too much cheer around here.

The cause?

A seasonal divorce from reality in the surreal interlude from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

What we need is a bottle of brandy and a dose of economic news. We will all feel worse and everything will return to normal.

The mask fell off the farce of our banking system last week as the nation's economic collapse continued to unfold in slow-mo, like a car wreck when you see the collision coming, when you face death and it's not so bad because you grew up around Democrats.

Citigroup, staggering under the stupidity of the credit crisis caused by, well, Citigroup and its band of cohorts at the Federal Reserve, avoided rehab with an injection of $7.5 billion from Arab oil sheiks.

If further help is needed, corporate executives, the best and brightest in America, will pick up a few rocks of crack on a southside street corner.

Is that Counterfeiter-in-Chief Ben Bernanke on that bicycle?

The credit junkies gave up 4.9 percent of the company for the fix. They will pay Abu Dhabi Investment 11 percent interest, which makes Citigroup both a subprime lender and a borrower, too, more or less.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be?

Talk about being part of the problem.

Citigroup, the nation's largest bank, has $50 billion in notes it cannot value. It does not have assets to cover its liabilities. It does not even know what its liabilities are.

Citigroup is a major stockholder of the Federal Reserve. If the nation's largest bank and major Fed owner is insolvent, what about the rest of the nation's banks, also members and/or owners of the banking cartel?

They're insolvent, too.

The Fed's own numbers prove it.

Reserves of depository institutions stood at $41.9 billion as of Nov.

21. The monetary base was $828.7 billion. So, reserves were less than 5 percent.

Let's all run to the banks tomorrow to get our money and see what happens.

If you want to look into the abyss, check out the banks' alleged assets. About 87 percent of assets are in government debt. These are pieces of paper. Like Federal Reserve Notes, the ones in your purse, these are simply promises to pay. That's why they're called notes, like the promissory note on your mortgage.

It's not money. It's a note.

Back in the day, the paper bills of currency were receipts for gold or silver on deposit at warehouses called banks. If you took a $20 bill to the bank, you could walk out with gold or silver.

The currency was not a promise, but a receipt for a hard asset. It had value. It was real money. Because gold or silver could not be easily produced, the supply remained relatively stable, and so did prices.

Under this system, America got rich.

A Republican took us off the gold standard 36 years ago, proving Democrats do not have a corner on the crack market. We've been getting rapidly poorer ever since.

As the Fed bails out Wall Street with the creation of more money and credit, Main Street will continue to die under the staggering load of escalating prices.

While the Fed expands M3 money supply at 11 percent, listen for the denial of reality from every purchased mouth: Inflation remains under control.

Criminals claim their innocence, do they not?

The new money gets funneled through Wall Street, which collects fees, commissions and Christmas bonuses. Government collects inflated taxes. Borrowers pay off debts in cheaper dollars.

See who wins?

But the ethics of counterfeiters destroy everything with higher prices: health care, education, energy costs, the very food on our tables.

See who loses?

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.