by William Skink

I’ve been having some fun playing around with the photo apps I got recently. There is some intention, though, to the images I’m assembling and will continue to share.

The scene above is set in Missoula; the up and coming Sawmill District, to be specific. (part of that half billion dollars in development that’s going to be happening in Missoula in the next decade). Not only were these big, rusted pieces of industrial machinery visually intriguing, but upon closer inspection I discovered they were providing temporary shelter for people. I found clothes, blankets, a makeshift latrine and lots of empty cans of malt liquor strewn about.

Obama’s smiling image, hovering over this abandoned machinery, has a crack and is starting to melt, which I think is quite appropriate. We are coming to the end of Obama’s disastrous tenure at the helm of the Titanic, and the economic situation that he will pass on to the next figurehead is a ticking time bomb, as evidenced by an alarming letter the Fed recently sent to JP Morgan:

Yesterday the Federal Reserve released a 19-page letter that it and the FDIC had issued to Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on April 12 as a result of its failure to present a credible plan for winding itself down if the bank failed. The letter carried frightening passages and large blocks of redacted material in critical areas, instilling in any careful reader a sense of panic about the U.S. financial system.

A rational observer of Wall Street’s serial hubris might have expected some key segments of this letter to make it into the business press. A mere eight years ago the United States experienced a complete meltdown of its financial system, leading to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. President Obama and regulators have been assuring us over these intervening eight years that things are under control as a result of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. But according to the letter the Fed and FDIC issued on April 12 to JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank with over $2 trillion in assets and $51 trillion in notional amounts of derivatives, things are decidedly not under control.

If that wasn’t bad enough, our pals the terrorist-loving Saudis recently threatened to dump their Treasury holdings if our government lets the terrorist cat out of the bag that Saudi Arabia helped finance the 9/11 attack:

In a stunning report by the NYT, Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Or mostly Congress, because Obama has remained steadfast in his support of his Wahhabi petrodollar overlords, and has been busy lobbying Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Yep, I think Wahhabi petrodollar overlords is a good description of this berserker nation wreaking havoc from Yemen to Syria to North Dakota, where the collapse of oil prices has destroyed the fracking boom. Too bad America is too indebted to not take this threat seriously.

The economy is a house of cards built on debt and deceit, but that won’t stop local development from keeping the gentrification train chugging along. Another downtown condo-project was recently announced in the Missoulian (sorry, no link), this one a 27-unit, 4-story building where the defunct Firestone shop on Main Street currently sits because that is precisely what Missoula needs, more high-end condos that your average Missoulian can’t afford.

The economic situation is why the Bern insurgency continues to threaten the coronation of Hillary Clinton. I hope those in the “progressive” Montana blogosphere will become more vocal as Montana’s June primary vote approaches. Right now what’s out there is pathetic.