Truthout has the article Our United States of Indebtedness. This is an extremely eyeopening article even for me. As I read the beginning, I was afraid that the article would not make the important distinction between private debt and government “debt”.

To guard against that problem, I will take some quotes from the middle of the article, and put them up top.

Of course, debt in the abstract is not necessarily a problem. Collateralized debt (meaning it is tied to a hard asset like a house) has long been a reliable path to the American dream. Governments can use debt to build socioeconomic “goods” like roads, schools and power grids that contribute to economic productivity and growth. And debt is crucial to businesses quickly scaling up production or expanding into new markets.

However, household debt, which has skyrocketed over the last three-plus decades, is mostly non-collateralized or “unsecured” debt. A vast amount of the debt load carried by US households – including credit cards, medical bills and student loans – is not tied to a hard asset.

By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a collateralized debt is the same thing as a collateralized debt obligation. I knew the difference, but paid dearly for being lied into owning some CDOs in my portfolio. The dearly part was losing 90% of the current value of that investment (after having collected and not reinvested some hefty dividends). The wisdom of diversification meant that the particular investment was less than 5% of my portfolio,

Then there are just some good lines worth quoting

And that’s the maelstrom that transformed the United States into a “trickle-up” economy. No, this economy is not a drip system. It is a percolator.

Here is part of the explanation of how things percolate.

As bubbles rise and pop, this recurring action presents profitable opportunities to those with either the liquidity or the leverage to exploit the crash. Each new boom-and-bust cycle compounds this effect as financial elites concentrate more wealth into their coffers as it drains out of the middle and working classes. When bubbles pop and assets drop in value – stocks, real estate, whole companies and industries – those armed with cash or easy, exclusive access to politically greased financial leverage (like a taxpayer-funded bailout or the perpetually low Fed lending rate) simply hoard those assets for pennies on the dollar.

I am sorry for the people who don’t understand this or have been unable to squirrel away enough liquidity to take advantage of this. Somewhere along my lifeline, I came to realize that being a wage earner was no way to take control of your life. Being an owner was the only way. That’s why I started to take more and more of my wage earnings and investing them in ownership.

I may still not be insulated enough from this crazy system, but I am hoping to at least be among the last to go down.

The article is long, but almost every paragraph reveals a valuable insight. If you have not managed to get yourself out of the rat race as I have, you really need to read this article, and start planning a strategy to get out.

Getting Bernie Sanders to be President might be your rescue, but I wouldn’t bet my life (savings) on being able to get him elected. You need a plan in case he doesn’t get elected.

YouTube has the video Ex-Baltimore Cop Michael Wood Exposes Police Culture Of Corruption & Abuse (Interview w/ Cenk Uygur).

Former U.S. Marine and Baltimore police officer Michael A. Wood, Jr. made headlines when he Tweeted about the abuses he witnessed fellow Baltimore police officers perpetrating. In this interview with The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur Wood reveals the truth behind the “us vs. them” siege mentality pervading urban police forces that leads to a culture of corruption, racism and abuse, and what can be done to bring change for the better to policing in the United States.

This is such a powerful video, that I could not just post this on Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders and my own Facebook page.

The introduction I wrote in those two places was the following:

If I hadn’t had an epiphany like this 50 years ago, this interview might have really done it. For those of you who have not had your epiphany yet, this interview might do it.

In a post Cultural Deprivation, I have written about my epiphany.

I have posted on this blog about the study of “cultural deprivation” as a sophomore in college as being my epiphany about what Ayn Rand didn’t tell me, and what was wrong about her philosophy. This was back around 1963.

Speaking about epiphanies, I had another epiphany of sorts when I saw the Video Shows Texas Police Officer Pulling Gun On Teens At Pool Party back in June 07, 2015. The epiphany came about when I read a comment about what happened at about 3 minutes and 10 seconds into this video.

You see the police trying to smash this cute teenager’s face against a concrete side-walk. They weren’t just trying to get control over the situation. They were purposely trying to disfigure this girl. It’s as if they detected something that she might value and decided to take it away from her for life just to humble her. (See the use of the word “humble” in the interview with Michael Wood Jr.) As a crime goes, I suppose murder is worse than torture, but torture says more about the character of the perpetrator of torture than murder says about the character of the murderer.

Naked Capitalism has the article A Pragmatic Approach to External Debt: The Write-Down of Germany’s Debts in 1953.

The Greek debt crisis has prompted a surprising number of references to an obscure agreement signed in London 60 years ago. The 1953 London Debt Agreement (LDA) marked the end of a long period of German default on external debt owed to both governments and private entities. The LDA cut the debt roughly in half, rescheduled what remained, and tied repayments to export revenues. Greece, in one of history’s great ironies, signed the LDA as a creditor nation. Prime Minister Tsipras has argued that Germany should appreciate the lesson of 1953 and offer similar debt forgiveness to Greece today. Both Germany’s and Greece’s partisans have misrepresented the LDA and in so doing obscured the motivations of Germany’s creditors in 1953. The LDA offers an important lesson, but only if understood accurately.

This is one of those articles I like to read so that I will be armed with information to ward off the inevitable misinformation from the corporate press.