Silver Doctors

That loud popping noise you heard overnight wasn’t raucous 4th of July fireworks displays, rather it was the sound of the rare earths bubble popping.
Japanese scientists Monday announced the discovery of 100 billion metric tons on the ocean floor off Hawaii. (This basically doubles previous world known reserves of 110 billion metric tons).
We hope you already converted any MCP and AVL gains into physical silver.

From Reuters:
Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.
“The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometer (0.4 square mile) of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption,” said Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo.


The discovery was made by a team led by Kato and including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.
They found the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 meters (11,500-20,000 ft) below the ocean surface at 78 locations. One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Kato said in a telephone interview.
The deposits are in international waters in an area stretching east and west of Hawaii, as well as east of Tahiti in French Polynesia, he said.
He estimated rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion metric tons, compared to global reserves currently confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey of just 110 million tonnes that have been found mainly in China, Russia and other former Soviet countries, and the United States.
Details of the discovery were published on Monday in the online version of British journal Nature Geoscience.

Chapter 13

“It’s over,” explained Vaughn’s boss with averted eyes but a look of relief.  Perhaps it was a look of surrender.  “We didn’t get that Fannie contract so we’re shutting it down.  There’s nothing more we can do.”
Vaughn wasn’t at all surprised.  He had seen the books.  Costs for fuel and insurance were soaring and the customer base was dissolving like a sand castle in the tide.  The customers that remained weren’t paying timely so they might as well have been washed away into the sea as well.  Without the GSE contract to manage foreclosure properties it didn’t take a CPA to foresee the inevitable.

“Who got the deal?”
“Reznick.”
“Reznick’s not minority-owned is it?”
“No, but he’s big a donor.  That’s how it works now, I suppose.  Here’s your deposit stub.  I’m sorry, Vaughn.  I appreciate all you’ve done for me these years.  I wish I could do more.”
“Thanks.  I understand,” Vaughn replied, extending his hand.
“I hope you can get your money out and buy something before the banks close again.”
They shook hands.
Vaughn went to his desk and began packing up his things.  A lot of stuff can accumulate in fifteen years, even in a small place.  It took him three trips to get it all out of his cube and into his truck.
On the final trip he stopped to survey the deserted parking lot.  His firm was one of the last ones hanging on at this complex.  A massive ‘For Sale- Bank Owned’ sign decorated the entrance.  No one had called the agent in eight months despite the newer building’s inspirational architecture, manicured lawns (now overrun by Canadian thistle), and its Renew America ‘Green’ construction rating— which meant that its low volume toilets required three flushes.
Vaughn sighed, got in and started up his truck.  He prayed he had enough gas to get home.  Before putting it in gear he looked down at the box he had set on the passenger seat.  On top of the stash of file folders and fading documents was a photo of his wife and daughter.  It was of them both holding a kite string and looking up into the sky.
The family had some savings but it would not last long enough to get them through the winter.  Vaughn was going to have to find something and what a horrible time it was to be looking for work.  The only people that had jobs seemed to be the people working for the government.  ‘Tax feeders’, Vaughn called them and they seemed to be carrying on as if nothing was happening at all.  If he saw another one of them protesting a government wage freeze or some such he decided he would run them down.  No, not really.  But it felt good to channel his rage.  You can’t really blame them, he thought.  They just want to take care of theirs which made them little different than him.
Vaughn had more important things to consider like: would they lose their house?  Hopefully not for a while.  There was a 180 day moratorium on foreclosures enacted by yet another Executive Order of the President.  There seemed to be a new Executive Order every single day.  The bankers holding delinquent mortgages were placated by yet another change in accounting rules and yet another round of congressionally approved bailouts on the order of yet another trillion dollars.  A trillion here, a trillion there…pretty soon they would be talking about some real money.  How many trillions was it up to now?  Who knew.  Tack on an additional nine months of legalities and Vaughn’s family would at least have a place to stay for quite a while.  That was a positive.
“But am I a failure?”  He asked himself as he drove out of the desolate lot.  “Define ‘failure’”, he answered himself.  “Define it in today’s extraordinary context.  I suppose being unable to feed and shelter my family would constitute failure.  We’ll be okay for a while.  Besides, nobody starves to death in America.  If worse came to worst we could always move in with my mother.”  Vaughn chuckled at the thought of Jess and his mother living together under one roof.  “This’ll all blow over soon.  Even if we lose everything I’ll get it all back once things recover.  Believe in yourself, Vaughn Clayton.  Don’t worry.”
He drove past the For Sale sign noticing it had been tagged with a graffiti sickle-and-hammer.
The idea that it would be the final time driving out of that lot had a profound effect.  The last time he had experienced such a sensation was at high school graduation with the accompanying realization that a door was permanently closing on a phase of life that seemed so significant at that time.  It was a loss-feeling…disorienting.  It was a mixture of sadness, hopelessness, cynicism, and fear but also one of relief and liberation.  He didn’t know if he wanted to celebrate, sob or smash something.  He had worked so hard there only for it all to be for naught.  You are always taught that if you work hard and persevere you will succeed.  Now Vaughn wasn’t so sure if that axiom held, anymore.  Resourcefulness and craftiness probably had more to do success in these days. 
Vaughn passed at least twelve police cruisers on his thirty mile midday commute home.  He also passed police Humvees and police MRAPS and even a police tank.  He didn’t imagine they were catching speeders (taxation by citation) with these newly commissioned armored vehicles.
As Vaughn approached the beltway he took special note of the strip malls and office buildings that lined his commute which he had made for years in a semi-lucid stupor.  The architecture was familiar, like landforms to a sailor making an inland passage, but he truly examined the features of them this time.  He looked into their windows.  So many were closed, empty or boarded up.  More than half, he guessed.  He looked at their walls.  Covered in graffiti.  Many more sickles-and-hammers, he noticed.  The grocery stores!  Grocery stores never go out of business.  Everyone has to eat.  Yet there they were, or at least their abandoned husks.  Vaughn counted four dead grocery stores along the way.
His needle was on ‘E’.
He whizzed past apartments and condominiums advertising free rent.  Many were empty, abandoned, some had their windows and facades blackened by fire and left that way.  Where did all the people go?
Passing by a residential neighborhood, he took note of the large number of empty houses with their unkempt yards and broken windows and empty driveways.  So many empty houses.  Who was going tom buy all these houses?  Why did they build so many?  Who loaned them the money to build them and buy them?  Where did all the money come from?
Making it home was going to be close.
He searched for an open gas station.  None were to be found as even the gas stations were dying.  Three and fourfold increases in prices couldn’t save them.  The convenience stores and the fast food joints— they never closed fast food joints— but there they were…golden arch rainbows culminating in big pots of emptiness.  So many were gone…boarded up.  Some were even bulldozed leaving nothing but scarred earth which itself was overrun by more of that damn thistle.  Nothing overran the thistle.  Some shops were fortunate enough to be reborn as dog groomers and prepaid cell phone outlets but then only to die again.
There was one sector of the economy that was still thriving, though: the banks.  The banks and their big, blocky, menacing, obnoxious bank buildings were all still brimming with bankerly activity.  These survivors were not the little, local banks and credit unions, mind you, but the big, bloated national banks with big, bloated, patriotic, bankerly names like Ameribank, Freedombank, Libertybank, Nations, U.S., Allied, Republic, and Victory.  Their names sounded as if they were devised by Rooseveltian war propagandists.  They all remained intact, gleaming, buff-polished granite, indulgent lawns neatly groomed, hedges sculpted into fluffy green balls of foliage, fresh stripes of luminescent gold-leaf lining the smooth, black asphalt of their parking lots.
Their lots were full, too, corralling the filthy autos of their army of hapless, banker wage-serfs.  These hourlies were charged with deciding the creditworthiness of borrowers with a ten question computer algorithm.  No skill at character evaluation was needed.  No need for business modeling and what if analysis.  No need to even look ‘em in the eye.  Relationships?  Bah!  Too extravagant an expense.  A spreadsheet and a regression equation can replace a professional loan analyst.  Any monkey can press ten buttons and if the equations are wrong?  Who cares!  They are too big to fail.  Here, put on this blue polo shirt and name tag, Bonzo.
If the banks failed, the economy would collapse and America would regress into a third world country.  So the banks were infused with trillions of dollars and their worthless assets were bundled up and delivered unto the banker’s bank…the super bank…the uber-bank of all banks…the Federal Reserve.  No need to worry about taking on all that risk, the Fed is god!  It can keystroke all the money necessary to keep all the failures going and going and going.  A trillion.  Two trillion.  Four.  Eight.  Sixteen trillion…each crisis they would ‘double down’.  Anything less and the ponzi would have collapsed.
And while the Fed presented their teat to their suckling cronies the rest of the economy withered away.  The bankers prospered on Fed-backed investments and the carry trade and paid multi-billion dollar bonuses to their Manhattan executives while the auto lots and the grocery stores and the restaurants and the apartment complexes and the carpet cleaning businesses and the construction firms and the manufacturing plants died.  The banksters took it all for themselves and the chumps on Main Street, who were told by insistent Bloomberg tarts that it is indeed a “free market”, starved to death awaiting banker-chimp approval of their lines of credit.  Yeah, it sure was a good thing that the banks were bailed out.  If they weren’t, America would have turned into a third world country!
Vaughn laughed at that thought as he scanned the economic ruin and the broken-down, burning cars and the cops driving around in tanks and the piles of litter and tires and busted furniture and soda bottles filled with piss that covered the shoulder of the highway.
His needle was now well below ‘E’.
Vaughn wondered why he didn’t notice it all before.  He supposed he was always superficially aware of it but he never really processed it.  Why?  It didn’t happen overnight.  Perhaps it took the loss of his job to jolt his consciousness.  It’s a recession when a neighbor loses his job.  It’s a depression when you lose yours.  It was a really, really bad time to be looking for work.
The government, on the other hand, was doing its best to redirect the boiling domestic rage.  For months they paraded their financial scapegoat around— those evil, sneaky Asians!  How dare they dump our Treasury debt and crash our dollar!  It was an act of economic war!  We should retaliate!  We should teach them a lesson!   
The media, of course, never used bigoted terms directly.  The media were all college-educated, east coast progressives who would never permit themselves to even be accused of a proletarian gutter-trait like ‘racism’.  But that was EXACTLY what the message was as every big media story had its margins colored in with references to the “unexpected” (sneaky) and the “underhanded” (treacherous) means by which these oddly-customed Asians kamikazied America’s economy.  The media did it while reading their politically correct scripts, no doubt, but while showing file footage of Mao and robed Buddhists and short, squinty-eyed Asian men with coke-bottle glasses dressed in western suits always ritually, chronically bowing.  It was all very subtle racism, designed specifically to allow the media presenters to maintain their aura of self-righteousness.
It was very effective at stimulating the proletarian’s jingoist nerve.  The economic war fever spread like a plague delivered by flees on supersonic, flying rats.  The horribly portrayed Chinese and Japanese who were merely protecting themselves as any self-interested peoples would, deflected blame from where it belonged.          
Vaughn drove up into the foothills.  His morning commute in to work was brightened by sunshine.  The premature drive home was clouding over.  There was a hint of snow as specs of white danced over his hood.  It was early in the season for snow.
The needle went back up to ‘E’ as his truck climbed and his gas tank inclined.
He turned on the radio.
“Unpatriotic short sellers are pushing the equity markets down as…”
He flipped to the next station.
“…Reports indicate heavy casualties as the 101^st attempts to break out from encirclement.  This marks the first time since the Vietnam War that American forces have been…”
Next station.
“Greedy speculators drive the price of oil up to a record high for a twenty second consecutive trading day.  The Secretary of State is meeting with OPEC officials to work out the details of…”
Next station.
“In order to combat the persistent disinformation which is undermining law enforcement and security efforts, the President is using Executive Order to attach provisions to the Cyber Security Act which will enable the Department of Homeland Security to block malicious, unpatriotic websites…”
Flashers just ahead.  Checkpoint.  Checkpoints were common now.  Vaughn slowed and stopped.  The officer approached.  Vaughn rolled down his window.
“Where you headed?” the cop asked, authoritatively, sunglasses reflecting the gray.
“Home.”
“And where’s home?”
Vaughn gave him his address.
“License, please,” the cop asked.
Vaughn handed it over.  The cop scanned it into his database, gave it back and waived Vaughn through.
Vaughn turned off the highway, past the gas station and onto the winding canyon road leading up to his neighborhood.  The silent, ancient ponderosa pine filled his field of vision.  Nobody was on the road at this time of day on a weekday.  It was a workday, after all, and those that had them were at their jobs and those that didn’t were on the internet pretending to look for one.  Vaughn drove up his lane.  Dogs came out to bark at him.  Snowflakes filled the air.  He turned the last bend in the road and approached his driveway.
But something wasn’t right.  He couldn’t put his finger on it at that instant but something out of place; an open window, a strange car.  No.  What then?  Then he saw it.  It was an unusual tire rut in the muddy shoulder leading to the top of his driveway.  He stopped his truck and examined it trying to comprehend where it might have come from.  A delivery truck, perhaps?  He couldn’t think of what Jess would have delivered.
He pulled into the long driveway and stopped at the front of the house.  The front door was wide open.  Something was definitely wrong.  It was below freezing.  The wind was starting whip the snowflakes around.  He parked and jogged up to the door.  He could hear his daughter screaming.  He ran into the house.  He took a deep breath.  The house was in shambles.  The furniture was turned over.  The cupboards were thrown open.  Piles of smashed dishes and picture glass and lamps and books and papers and overturned potted plants littered nearly every inch of the floor.  He didn’t stop to look.  He ran into his daughter’s room.  She was standing up in her crib with a crimson, contorted, screaming little face.  Vaughn shouted for Jessica.  There was no answer.  He picked up the child and darted from room to room.
“Jessica!” 
Still no answer.  Brooke’s screams turned to sobs.  She plunged two fingers into her mouth.  They found the bedroom ripped apart as well.  The mattress was turned over and cut open and shards of foam shrapnel had exploded everywhere.  The contents of the closet were strewn across the floor.  The carpet in the corners was ripped up revealing the plywood subfloor.  He dialed Jessica on his cell.  It rang.  He bounced Brooke up and down to calm her sobbing.  It rang.  Brooke clutched tightly.  It went to voicemail.
“Where are you!” he shouted into the phone.
Startled by his tone, Brooke started screaming again.
Vaughn sat down with her and calmed her again by holding her head on his shoulder and rocking gently.  He looked out the window at the snow that was beginning to accumulate on the pines outside.  The magpies were darting to their havens.
Both doors to the house were still open and a bitter cold draft blew past them both as they sat rocking in the bedroom.  Brooke’s tiny hands were purple and freezing cold.  Vaughn carried her to the front doors and kicked the debris out of the way to clear an arc by which to close them.
“What is happening?”  He asked.
He sat down again and took a deep breath.  His heart was pounding.  He had difficulty getting enough oxygen.  His mind sifted through all the details trying to cobble them together into something coherent.  There was no possible explanation for events other than something horrible.  Pounding, pounding, pounding heartbeats.  He was hyperventilating.
“Breathe,” he commanded.

Chapter 12                Chapters 14 and 15 will be available this weekend

Indivisible can be purchased here from Amazon:

Chapter 12

 Under Sheriff Garrity had been working for thirty straight hours.  He had reached the point of sleep deprivation where his mind began morphing things out of the shadows that darted across the highway in front of his police SUV.  He slapped his face back into consciousness.
The past two days had been without precedent.  He received a call from a condescending prick from the Department of Homeland Security who advised him that the agency would soon be “coordinating” (i.e. ‘taking over’) the Sheriff’s department.  Garrity would have a new dotted-line boss and this new command structure would be for an indefinite period of time.  It was explained that it was out of the necessity of national emergency that the Feds take over coordinating security.   

A black SUV appeared at the station soon after the call and two young, well-groomed, sunglass-wearing agents in black suits set up shop in his office…at his desk.  They treated Garrity rudely and even at one point asked him to go get them coffee.  Garrity was not to keen on the new arrangement.  As Under Sheriff, his part of Hamilton County was his appointed responsibility.  He resented the Fed usurpers.
 An appeal to his boss, the Sheriff, was of no use as his boss had a new Fed master, too.  To make matters worse, Garrity was scolded for his uncooperative and unpatriotic attitude.  He almost quit right then and there.  It wasn’t like they were paying him, anyway.  He was being issued scrip as Hamilton County was officially insolvent.  The new fancy paper was worth even less than the old Federal Reserve Notes…when it was accepted at all.
Garrity escaped the meddling Fed busybodies by excusing himself to make their coffee run.  He went immediately on patrol and didn’t return, ignoring their calls.  There was plenty of work for him to do maintaining visibility and enforcing the nationwide midnight-to-dawn curfew— government workers and far away parts of N.Y.C. and D.C. exempted, of course.
It was 2 AM and Garrity could barely stay awake.  For the past few hours he had been working through a list of registered gun owners, ‘temporarily’ confiscating their rifles, pistols and shotguns.  To his surprise, no one seriously resisted although some complained and threw that ‘goddamned piece of paper’ (aka The Constitution) in his face.  Garrity would just smile at them, allow them to vent for a moment, then conspicuously slide his hand down towards his taser which was clipped to his belt.  This motion alone pacified all the resisters.
Garrity was not surprised to find that neither Joe Joe nor any of his MS13 gangbanger affiliates nor any other known felons or persons-of-interest appeared on his gun owner list.  Ex-cons couldn’t by law own a gun but he knew they still had them.  He chuckled.  A lot of good confiscating guns does when the only ones that give them up are the law abiding citizens.
He turned on the Hair Metal channel on his taxpayer funded satellite radio.  The ballad ‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn’ filled the taxpayer funded cab.  It was so familiar a song to Garrity that he thought it a chore to even listen to it.  But he felt himself starting to doze off again so he rolled down the window, stepped on the gas, took a swig from his flask and burst into verse…
“Though it’s been a while now…
I can still feel so much pain.
Like a knife that cuts the wound heals…
But the scar, that scar remains.
…”
He took another swig.
Every Rose has it’s…oh…fuck this!”
He switched off the radio and tuned into the frozen night air as it swooshed in.  He looked down at the speedometer and noticed he was doing 80.  That was double the speed limit on the winding foothills road.  No worries.  There wasn’t a soul out save for him.  His SUV bobbed and pitched as the road rippled and snaked down off of Ed’s Hill.  He slowed to make his turn, then floored it again as he straightened out on a dirt road with the wheels kicking up a swarm of stones and pebbles.  Two more turns and he was pulling into his garage.
Garrity got out and opened the back hatch.  He stared excitedly at the neatly stacked stash of confiscated guns and rifles, contemplating adding one— an early 1900s double barrel shotgun— to his permanent, personal collection.  It would look especially keen over his fireplace, he thought.  When or if it was ever to be returned to its rightful owner was anybody’s guess.  If so, he could merely deny any knowledge of it.  The irate owner would undoubtedly file some sort of grievance that could be ignored until the owner finally gave up in frustration.  Citizens usually gave up on those sorts of things after about 90 days so the vintage gun was all his if his conscience would allow it. 
Garrity’s two German Shepherds barked away inside his house.  He opened the door into the house and apologized to them, made his way to the kitchen and offered them some cheese which they each wolfed down in one gulp.  Dogs cannot grasp the concept of savoring.
Daisy and Himmelstoss were Garrity’s family and he loved them as much as anything in the world.  ‘Daisy’ seemed to be an anachronistic fit of a name for a shepherd and Garrity had vaguely recalled the name ‘Himmelstoss’ as some WWI German war hero from his High School literature class…from some book he never bothered to read.  ‘Himmelstoss’ was a bit clunky for a dog’s name so he shortened it to “Stossy”.  Thankfully, Daisy and Stossy had outside access through a doggy door so the very long shift did not result in any accidents.
Garrity scooped them each out some dog food but they were curiously disinterested so he grabbed a beer from the fridge and made his way to the family room with his dogs in tow.  He fell back into his leather sofa and flipped on the television.  Big media talking idiots materialized giving calm reassurances to the semi-panicked Americanus.
“Hello, Bobby,” came a velvety female voice.
Garrity spit out his gulp of beer.  Looking into the shadowy corner of the room he noticed her.  I knew it, he thought.  She came back.  I knew she would.
“What are you doing here?” He asked, feigning indifference, “and why didn’t my dogs rip you apart?  Bad dogs!”
“There, there Daisy.  Good boy, Stossy,” she replied, stroking their heads as they came to her and sat at her feet.  “They know me, Bobby.  C’mon.  Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“What makes you think I wanted you back?  Didn’t you think of calling first?”
“Oh Bobby, I wanted to surprise you.  Tell me you’re happy to see me.”  She got up and slithered over to him as the dogs watched with wagging tails.  She took a spot next to him on the sofa.  “Bobby.”  She always did that— just purr his name in a sultry voice.  That simple trick always knifed in under his armor.  He was defenseless against it.  “It’s been a long time, Bobby.  I missed you,” she explained as she extended her arm over his shoulders.
Garrity kept up the phony resistance.  “What do you want, Mae?  How’d you get here?  Don’t you have a million Treasury things to do these days?  I’m sure there’s some faggot French banker you’d rather be ‘having dinner with’ right now.”
“Oh, Bobby.  Don’t be crude,” she pleaded. “I came here to see you.”
“You expect me to believe you came out here just to see me? What do you take me for, Mae?  What do you want?”
“It’s crazy out there, Bobby!” Mae continued, shifting to a begging tone.  “I had nowhere else to go.  They closed the D.C. office and wanted us to stay in some dungeon at that awful DIA.  I couldn’t stay there, Bobby.  That place is just weird.  They wouldn’t fly me back to D.C. and they won’t pay for my hotel anymore so I had nowhere to turn.  You’re the only one I could turn to, Bobby.  Please help me.”
Garrity pretended to be irritated.  Deep down he was, of course, elated to see his estranged ex-wife.  She left him a year and a half before when she got the Treasury Department gig.  Lured by world travel, prestige, a fat salary, and the chance to hobnob with the most powerful men in the world, she ditched her bumpkin cop husband.  He was not a suitable escort in the spheres of political power.  Bob Garrity, of course, did not take her rejection well.  He tried to maintain a tough exterior.
“Do you have any money?” he asked.
“Huh?  Oh…no…nothing but scrip and this special debit card.”
“You can’t hardly buy anything with those.  We go shop to shop making sure the stores accept them but as soon as word gets out their taking scrip their shelves get cleaned out.”
“So how do people get by.”
“They eat a lot of cornbread and cheese and wait in lines, I guess.  Some barter.  People survive, that’s what they do.  I’m lucky.  I get to eat at the Department and commandeer gas.  I even get dog food rations.  Got Daisy and Stossy rated as police dogs.”
Mae started caressing Garrity’s forearm.  “Bobby…”
“What?” He asked, refusing to make eye contact.
“Will you just let me stay with you a little while?”
“I don’t know, Mae.  I don’t think I can provide you the aristocrat lifestyle you’ve become accustomed too.”
“Don’t be cruel, Bobby.  I came back because of you.  I’m not asking a lot.  I know how tough things are.  I realize I was wrong.  I know that, now.  Please just give me a chance.  Where else can I go?  I need you, Bobby.”
She massaged his shoulder and the wheels in Garrity’s brain started to turn.  She had him and they both knew it.  She knew all along that she could just reappear in his life and that would be enough.  She knew she was an irresistible temptation for him.
For Garrity, it was as if his prayers had been answered.  He was already plotting in his mind how to extract repayment from her and to what level of depravity he might be able to extract it.  Mae never had any boundaries.  He had, in fact, considered that it was probably the toll of stress on their physical relationship that paved the way for their separation.  But now here was a spectacular stroke of good fortune and perhaps a final opportunity to redeem himself and recapture the woman who was his only obsession.  He wished he had been working out.
The wheels kept turning.
“We gotta get out of here,” he explained.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, away from here.  Some place warm.  Mexico?  Costa Rica?  At least until things settle down.”
“How much money do we need for that?”
“A lot.”
“How ya gonna get it, Bobby,” she asked, wrapping her other arm around him and squeezing his barrel chest, pressing her breasts against him.  He had totally dropped even the façade of resistance with the sensation of her firm curves and the warm, smooth skin under her rayon dress.  She placed her bare right leg over top of his lap.  He caught himself panting.
The wheels in his brain stopped. 
“I have an idea,” he answered.
“I knew you would, Bobby,” she answered as she pulled back, got up and sauntered into the kitchen.  “That’s why I loved you.”

Chapter 11           Chapter 13

Indivisible can be purchased here from Amazon:

A few weeks ago, we detailed The Doc’s experience convincing an average Jane to invest in silver.
The Doc explained how he converted a good friend who is a junior high math teacher (who literally had no idea what gold and silver ARE) to invest her life savings (~ $7,000) into physical silver.
Today, The Doc celebrated Independence Day Weekend by making another convert to physical silver bullion- a medical doctor (we’ll call him Joe) who owns his own multi-physician clinic.

Joe obviously has more education than Average Jane, and also has much more real life exerience with the ravages of inflation by owning his own medical clinic. 

Joe’s compensation from medicaid and medicare is continually decreasing, even while the salaries of the physicians, nurses, office managers, and receptionists he employs are continually increasing.
Joe’s wife is Bosnian, and she lived through a major war as well as a currency crisis before emigrating to the states, so he also has a much better understanding of the importance of REAL physical assets such as gold and silver than did Average Jane.

Joe has been considering investing in gold or silver for nearly 5 years now, but had yet to make a single purchase.  He watched this spring as silver ran nearly to $50 thinking he had missed the boat.
He has kept tabs on silver as it has corrected into the low $30′s, yet Joe’s life savings (north of $150,000) remained dying a slow death in a fiat savings account.

As of today, Joe’s life savings has left the fiat world, and has shifted into nearly 5,000 ounces of physical silver.

So what was the tipping point?  How was The Doc able to move this medical doctor over the edge, and into the decision and ACTION of purchasing physical silver after years of contemplation?

In a word: Physical.

The Doc converted Joe in the exact same way that Average Jane was converted- by letting him hold REAL SILVER in his own hands.

There’s Nothing Quite as Convincing as Holding a Silver Eagle in Your Own Hand

Ironically, it was Average Jane’s just delivered 100 silver eagles that did the convincing (The Doc’s silver is in deep storage at numerous sites).

Joe didn’t need an analysis of COMEX silver depletion, gold and silver price suppression, JP Morgue/HSBS naked shorting, QE3′s inevitability, etc.

After Joe and his wife held physical silver for themselves, Joe had all the convincing he needed.
After helping Joe set up an account at a reputable online dealer, roughly 5,000 ounces of silver exited public supply.

Many silver bugs complain that friends and family are not interested in their arguments and recommendations of gold and silver as wealth preservation/ investments. 

From The Doc’s experience in the past month, both with an Average Jane as well as with a medical doctor, perhaps we should spend far less time attempting to convince others of the merits of gold/silver, and more time letting them absorb the feeling of holding REAL MONEY in one’s own hands. 

There’s nothing like it.

Imagine if every reader let a family member or close friend hold an ounce of silver this 4th of July weekend.  How many more might come to financial freedom and independence this Independence Day?

Chapter 11

“Will you do it?” asked Jimmy Marzan.
“Do what?  Shoot Americans?” asked Michael Rollins as he twirled his Osiris Eye ring around his middle finger.
Their unit had just received the situation report and rules of engagement which were little changed from what they were accustomed to back in Shariastan.  Their platoon was en route to a developing situation involving a riot in a south Chicago ghetto.  The rioters had amassed and were turning over cars, smashing out windows, and setting fires as well as being generally un-compliant with police orders. 
The platoon’s orders were that rioters who did not disperse were to be given first a bullhorn warning, then tear gas, then a high intensity sound blast and finally warning shots.  After that, the appropriate level of response was left to the discretion of the lieutenant who was a smarmy little dweeb just out of OCS.  There was no other objective other than to restore order.  If they were fired upon, they were permitted to return in kind… after HQ approval, of course.

“Yeah… I mean shoot Americans,” Marzan clarified.
“I guess I’m not really too worried about it,” Rollins answered, dryly.  “I’m a soldier.  Orders are orders.”
Marzan wasn’t surprised by Rollin’s candor.  He had known him for eighteen months and Marzan probably knew more about what Rollins was going to do than Rollins himself.  In truth, Rollins didn’t bother to think much at all about what he was doing.  He operated reflexively, by muscle memory.  He had a well-documented record of complete moral and intellectual detachment.  If there was an order, Rollin’s would execute it without question.  Bulldoze a hovel?  Done.  Lob a hand grenade into a courtyard?  Done.  Fire on a carload of Hajis that ran a checkpoint?  Done.  No questions.  No hesitation.  He was an automaton.  He performed his soldierly duties as if they were a video game.  There was never any remorse or second guessing or empathy.  He was, in many ways, an excellent soldier… in the eyes of the established order, anyway.
I don’t think I can do it, Marzan thought to himself silently, trying not to reveal his doubt.  He forced his face into a deadpan expression to hide any hint of consternation.  He was not mentally hard like Rollins.  His conscience frequently haunted him and he hated himself for it.  He constantly had to use the ‘remember the dead buddies’ technique on himself.  It was a weakness.  He was never comfortable bullying and intimidating the indigenous peoples of the countries he was stationed in.  Despite their small stature, brown skin, and annoying, indecipherable babbling that they called a language, he could never fully dehumanize them.
Weakness!
Their little brown eyes would cut through his coat of mental armor.  He’d experience their terror, grief, fear, submission, hatred… as it was all transferred into him by their look.
Rollins had a mental firewall that deflected those sorts of things.  He saw only deception in their shifty, beady-eyed glances.  Everything else, all that touchy-feely bullshit was blown off like so much chaff.  To him, all Hajis were just liars shining him on.  And just as soon as his back was turned, they were skipping back to their hideouts to finish improvising their explosive devices.
“So you really don’t have a problem with it,” Marzan asked, knowing in advance what the answer would be.
“Hey look, we’re giving them plenty of warnings.  If they don’t want to get themselves dead then they should do what their told.  It’s pretty simple. Don’t be a dumbass.  Respect my authori-tah.”
Marzan wondered why Rollins didn’t return the question.  Was Rollins really that self-absorbed? He wondered.  Or does he sense that I’m uneasy about it and he’s just letting me off the hook.  No way.  He’s definitely that self-absorbed, he concluded.
Their Humvee stopped.
The night was illuminated by rippling gold dancing on the un-smashed window glass, undoubtedly reflecting fires emanating from the numerous store fronts that had been set ablaze around the corner and down the street.  The power was cut off intentionally to give the Domestic Security Force (or DSF), which was the new name for Marzan’s unit, a technological advantage.  The U.S. military loves to fight at night because the third world guerillas they engage usually can’t see in the dark.
The troops dislodged themselves from their Humvees, huddled for a moment to receive last minute instructions and activate their night vision goggles, than began their stealthy maneuver into the darkness with the Humvees creeping along behind.  Their viewfinders pictured green silhouettes scrambling between alleyways, aimlessly hurling bricks and Molotov “coke”-tails (which were coke bottles, filled with siphoned gas and ignited with a tube sock fuse).
“Dumbasses,” Rollins thought as he watched them dance about like drunken idiots in the darkness, oblivious to the laser sites that were marking them.  The little brown people overseas would never expose themselves as stupidly as this, he thought as he moved his laser dot from dumbass to dumbass.  The Hajis learned quickly that the night provides no cover against American military.
The soldiers progressed slowly, deliberately, knees bent, M4s aimed, targets acquired and reacquired.  They proceeded around a corner and a block down the street, past the Carniceria, past the prepaid Cell Phone store that serviced the neighborhood drug dealers, up to the Checks Cashed façade which was at the last corner.  The golden din of firelight danced on the asphalt ahead.  Marzan could hear the smashing of glass and the primordial, devious laughter of an insanity-fueled mob.
What was their problem?  Marzan asked himself.
The proles were, of course, angry about prices.  They were angry about shortages.  They were angry that their welfare checks were delayed.  They were angry about being hungry.  They were angry that mass transit had stopped servicing their area.  They felt trapped without it.  They had been lied to.  They had never known an instant in their life where some government bureaucrat wasn’t telling them what to do, where to go, or giving them the financial wherewithal to do it.  Now their government benefactors were pulling away, disconnecting from them, cutting them off.  Despair and panic had set in.
Terrified and not knowing what to do, they gathered and protested during the daylight hours.  The cops soon rode in— chubby, blue-polyester vials of mustachioed nitroglycerine.  Their nerves were already worn thin by the twenty four hour shifts and being asked to do many exceptionally dangerous things that they did not sign on to do.
Someone hurled a brick that careened off a cruiser windshield.  The cops drew their pistols.  Most of the proles scattered but the angriest— the unattached, unemployed, unencumbered young men remained.  They hurled taunts at the cops.  More rocks were thrown.  A cop was hit in the chest with half a cinderblock.  Gunfire!  No one other than the actual shooter knows who fired first.  The cops returned fire.  Screams.  A wild commotion of young men started running this way and that.  More shots.  Someone was firing an AR15.  More screams.
Outnumbered 100 to 1, the cops retreated back into their cruisers.  The mob slowly enclosed them.  Fearing a rout, the cops left.  A Pyrrhic victory-riot ensued.
Marzan was the first to peek around the corner at rioters.  The mob was much bigger than he had envisioned.  There were hundreds.  The squads took their positions.  A Humvee pulled into the street and with an enormous bullhorn affixed to its roof it addressed the crowd.
“You are hereby ordered to disperse!”
Rollins laughed as he sited in one of the dumbasses— as he was now accustomed to calling them— some fifty yards off.
“These idiots got no idea what ‘hereby’ means…”  Rollins exclaimed.  He actually had no idea what ‘hereby’ meant either other than to add emphasis to “get the hell out of here before the U.S. Army smokes your ass”.
Some rioters spotted the soldiers with their M4s.  The firelight flickered in the black, bulletproof windows of the Humvees in a surreal omen.  Some of the rioters dispersed sensing something wicked about to happen.
The sight of cops might be cause for some concern but cops, although locally despised, were local scoundrels who lived locally and had to answer to locals for what they did.  This time, the proles were staring into the ranks of mercenaries.  These soldiers were from faraway places like Orange County and Savannah and Houston.  They might as well have been foreign invaders from China.  They had no connection or affiliation to that south Chicago neighborhood.
The soldiers did, in fact, feel that this neighborhood was just another foreign battlefield— as if it had been chiseled out of a Shariastan desert and plopped right down into some the south side of Chicago.  It was unreal to both sides.
The rioters that did not flee held their fragile concept of being ‘American’ before them.  They cradled the abstract notion, contemplating it, trying to decide if it was palpable and real or just some sort of vaporous illusory nonsense drilled into their brains by public school propagandists.
The tear gas lobbed in.
Fearlessly, some rioters grabbed the smoking canisters and tossed them back.  The big show of authoritarian force is always just that, a show.  There would be some back and forth, the mob would blow off a little steam, then the storm troopers would march in and methodically disperse the crowd.  That’s the way it always works during riots.
The sound blaster siren went off.
It wailed so loud that it made teeth chatter.  A few brittle windows crumbled under the pulsating scream of noise.  The rioters scattered into the alley ways and behind burned out cars to shield their ears.
Warning shots were fired.
It was at that moment that the Chicago rioter’s remaining notions of being ‘American’ completely dissolved.  America was now just some far away gang of white politicians sending the Army into their black neighborhood.  Only their homes meant anything to them, now.  They knew then that there wasn’t going to be any methodical, non-lethal dispersal.
AR15 gunfire came from a window somewhere above.
“Smoke ‘em!” came the order from the green lieutenant through the earpiece radios of the soldiers… after HQ approval, of course.
The Domestic Security Force opened fire in short bursts.  Muzzle flash… ricochet… beelike zips of bullets slicing the nearby air… dull clangs of aluminum automobile hull being punctured by 5.56x45mm rounds.
Rollins squeezed gently.  His ‘dumbass’ did a full cartwheel in the air before landing on his face, instantly dead, dying in no more special a manner than any other of the several dozen little brown people he had already smoked.
After ten more seconds— which seemed like forty five minutes to the outmatched, outgunned and terrified partisans— the volley abruptly ended.
Silence.
No return fire.
No groans from the wounded.
No car alarms wailing.
Just the sound of the flames baking the stale Chicago night.
The platoon moved forward to check out their handy work, this time advancing behind the cover of their Humvees.  Rollins came upon his ‘dumbass’.  He was maybe seventeen, just some skinny kid.  The energy of the bullet had knocked the high tops clean off his feet.  Funny how that odd stuff happens sometimes, Rollins thought.  The kid wore a  stained Bulls jersey.

Chapter 10             Chapter 12

Indivisible can be purchased here from Amazon:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created solvent…

Declaration Of Debt Independence

Two large withdrawals to report from the 7/1 CRIMEX warehouse inventory update.
In total, another 736,472 ounces of silver left COMEX warehouses, dropping total inventory to a NEW LOW of 98,713,965 ounces!

COMEX Silver Warehouse Inventory Update 7/1/2011
*Brink’s had a massive withdrawal of 706,468 ounces from eligible inventories
*HSBS had a withdrawal of 30,004 ounces from eligible inventories
*No movement once again in registered silver vaults
*No movement once again in JP Morgue’s new vault

*Total Registered silver supplies remain unchanged at 28,090,714 ounces
*Total Eligible silver supplies declined 736,472 ounces to 70,623,251.
*Total CRIMEX Silver Inventory declined to a new low of 98,713,965 ounces

Chapter 10

Mae spent a week holed up at the airport Red Roof Inn waffling over what to do.  She would have preferred a Hyatt, of course, but the DIA Hyatt was boarded up.  She couldn’t bring herself to go back to the DIA catacombs but she hadn’t quite convinced herself to make the call to impose upon the one person she could trust in the whole greater Denver area.  So Mae stalled, passing the dull nights with her security detail turning them into lounge drinking buddies and then one drunken and regrettable three-way.
She finally received the phone call she dreaded.  An unfamiliar and nasally voice, probably some low-level douche from secret Service, informed her that her time at the lonely hotel purgatory was up.  She requested a driver and in about an hour a solitary black SUV picked her up.
“People will think I’m a Senator or something riding around in this thing,” she mused as the black GM rolled down the sparsely developed airport superhighway.
“Sorry, ma’am.  It’s all we got with bulletproof glass,” explained the driver who mistook her observation as a complaint.

They rolled on down the pristine DIA superhighway which traversed property coincidentally owned by one of the cronies that secured its taxpayer funding and ensured DIA’s strategic placement beyond the orbit of Neptune in terms of Denver metro convenience.  Pena Boulevard spanned fifteen miles of bleak, windswept, Colorado steppe between Interstate 70 and the gleaming canvas spires of the most expensive airport ever constructed.  Those magnificent, ivory pyramids rose up from the plain much like the Pyramids in a design that was probably inspired more by that goofy Christo guy than creepy Egyptian mystics.  Christo was that dude who once hung a sheet across the Rifle Gap and called it ‘art’.
Mae decided she wanted nothing more to do with that spooky place as they passed the sculpture of Bluecifer— which was a giant apocalyptic blue horse with orange glowing eyes that had fallen over and killed its sculptor.  She especially hoped to never see the two young men of her security detail ever, ever again and they probably felt likewise.  During their encounter, Mae skillfully guided them into a potentially embarrassing lack of inhibition during their naughty little rendezvous.  If word of that were to ever leak out it would certainly not be good for their career advancement.  Even in the heat of passion Mae was cunning enough to create a mutually assured destruction.
She was making her getaway and despite pleadings and protestations of her boss and other Treasury officials.  But she could not persuaded to go back to that dungeon and pass through that red door.
Traffic on the highway was light that morning as it had been for several weeks.  The big crash was like a concussion that scared all the civilian agents of commerce into their bunkers.
To make matters worse, the reeling banks had closed a half dozen times since that black Friday.  The slightest rumor triggered panic redemptions and movement into commodities.  This didn’t sit too well with the bankers so they leaned on The Gnome to lean on Congress to make these new ‘alternative currencies’ less attractive than their beleaguered dollar.  ‘The Currency Stabilization Act’, drafted by the bankers themselves, rammed through by the Speaker between botox sessions, and hastily passed by the worms in Congress, slapped a 100% “windfall gains tax” on the sale of twenty five different commodities.  This didn’t accomplish anything other than to drive the commodity markets out from the light of the exchanges and into the dark alleys but at least they were ‘doing something’.
The first bank holiday was the longest at five business days and a weekend.  By business day three, tens of millions of Americans had exhausted their emergency stores of frozen pizza and soft drinks.  The diapers all ran out and so did the baby formula and then the graham crackers and the egg noodles and eventually even the olives and mustard.
In order to save everyone, FEMA set up Ramen Noodle/baby formula distribution centers at all the nation’s football stadiums.  They were quickly inundated by angry, hungry, desperate mobs.  The cops drove them back with their megaphones.  The mobs re-congealed.  They were driven back again by water cannon and sound blasters.  They reformed.  Out came the batons and the tasers.  They finally dispersed.
Batons and tasers worked well for the desperate mobs at the FEMA centers but not so well at the banks where the throng had justice and retribution on their mind.  Many of the fine banking institutions across the nation were set ablaze, often with their pitiable, essentially blameless, minimum-wage-earning clerks still holed up inside.
By the fourth business day of the holiday, many cops had been on duty for stretches of twenty four straight hours.  Their nerves and sanity were pushed beyond mortal limits.  They had become the proverbial ‘rusty wire holding the cork that keeps the anger in’ as Roger Waters once described it.  Not all of them held it together.  Rumors of mass shootings both by and of cops swirled around on the internet.  Television and the papers reported none of it so mainstream Americanus just shrugged it’s shoulders.
Fearing an inability to contain the cauldron of civil unrest on the brink of boiling over, the President took decisive action.  He held a press conference flanked on either side by the Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary— whose red hair, small stature, and pointy nose gave him a leprechaun-ish aura.  So together, The Gnome, the Leprechaun, and Prince Charming declared that the crisis was “over” and the banks would open the next morning.  It would be a Friday so the triumvirate clung to hope that they would only have to make it through one grim day of “holy-fucking-shit-here’s-our-last-chance-to-get-our-money-out” panic.  Then they would be saved by the weekend.
Truckloads upon truckloads of paper money emerged from the garages of Federal Reserve regional banks.  New bills were included, with bigger denominations of one thousand and five thousand…Reagans and Roosevelts.  To hell with money-laundering drug dealers!  America needed liquidity.  They stuffed the new bills into the vaults of every bank of any significance, nationwide.
And so The Gnome, the Leprechaun and Prince Charming crossed their fingers and held their breath.  Futures trading revealed nothing as the Plunge Protection Team was keystroking money and buying everything in sight trying to tame the animal spirits again.
Ding Ding Ding Ding!
Their mouths dropped.  In less than one hour the markets were ‘limit down’ again.   
“Fuck!” exclaimed the President flanked by his fairy tale sidekicks as he lit a Marlboro.
The trio somberly ordered the foreign currency trading desks closed.  No dollars were allowed to be dumped until the threesome could come up with some other scheme to halt the slide.
     The domestic banks, however, remained open.  They had too.  The entire economy had nearly dissolved in a week without money.  As an emergency remediation, all the NY banks were given access to emergency lending facilities.  In other words, every bank that The Gnome deemed “too big to fail” gained access to an unlimited line of credit at 0% interest that was never to come due so that they might supply enough digital dollars to offset the panic cash withdrawals that were sure to take place.
The move to shutter the banks a week before proved disastrous.  Keeping them open might have been even worse but closing them definitely fomented the panic…giving it ‘legs’ as it were.  The lesson of being caught without the ability to buy toilet paper because debit card transactions were shut off was not lost on Americanus.  Americans could be accused of sheep-like idiocy in times-o-plenty but they were quick learners.  They were not going to get caught with their pants down again.
When word got out in the middle of the night that the banks were reopening, the lines accumulated within fifteen minutes.  When the doors opened, a swarm inundated the pimply-faced bank tellers.  The truckloads of cash were quickly exhausted despite personal withdrawal limits of ten Reagans per.  Customers were turned away cursing.  Some turned over the signage.  Some banks reported assaults.
With their digital money turned back on, there was a mad rush to the grocery stores and gas stations.  People weren’t buying popsicles and root beer, this time.  Now they were buying fuel and canned goods and dried goods and paper products.  The pumps and shelves were cleaned out in minutes.  Americanus indeed learned quickly.
The supply chain, which was an uber-complex machine greased by millions upon millions of credit transactions began sputtering within hours of the original collapse.  Parts of it blew apart as unsound trucking companies ran out of gas and could not do anything about it other than pull their trucks on to the shoulder and walk away.
But despite the gaping holes, sound businesses endured by the wits of their brilliant, industrious managers who hustled fuel with collateralized IOUs to keep their fleets rolling.  The goods that were moving were moving based on million dollar deals sealed with handshakes and emails.  There were crafty, resourceful men and women, millions of them, dealing in millions of products, making billions of decisions that held the fragile economic order together.  They were adjusting to the extraordinary situation.  They were surviving.
Then the government just had to do something.
The government’s busybody administrators could not resist their pervasive and pathological need to save the day.  So like a monkey wrench…nay…a hand grenade tossed into the works, the government busybodies went about meddling and destroying the fragile arrangements created by the resourceful managers.  The government busybodies had to save everyone from evil greed!
First, the evil price gougers were to be cited, than arrested, than their assets were to be commandeered.  This started with the gas stations and progressed to the sellers of produce, and then the diaper merchants.  The possibility of high profits that could be made if one could only get a truckload of diapers to Flagstaff was quickly doused by the government busy bodies who made it illegal to make any ‘windfall profits’.  The exploiters who were on their way to Flagstaff to fulfill the diaper demand and make a buck caught wind of the new laws that could result in five years in prison and turned their loads back for home.  It was no longer worth it.  Arizonians would have to do without diapers and the other things they needed regardless of what they were willing to pay.  Thank god the government put those evil price gougers in their place.
The government busybodies then decided that certain goods had to have priority and thus their handlers were to be moved to the front of the growing fuel lines.  This destroyed the complex procurement and hauling matrix of pickup, delivery and backhaul.  Within hours of the regulations, trucks were rolling empty.  Gluts and shortages of goods exploded everywhere.  A mountain of tires accumulated in Toledo while trucks across the country sat idle on their flats.
Mae, of course, cared not one whit about any of it.  She only studied ‘aggregate demand’ in her PhD program.  She was incapable of even comprehending the interdependent, infinite locus of goods and services and time preferences that form an economy.  Economics was just two intersecting curves on a graph and a bunch of equations with Greek notation.  Besides, she was still getting paid.  Her investments were adjusted in value by keystroke entry so as to keep her whole.
Her job function as an Assistant Treasury Secretary was for the moment pointless.  The Asian countries were her clients and they were not speaking to anyone in the U.S.  All she wanted to do was reach her hideout and wait until the whole thing blew over.
She gazed out the window from behind her Jackie-O sunglasses as the SUV flew down I70.  She had not been outside the Red Roof Inn in three weeks.  She noticed that along the sides of the road were parked hundreds of fifty foot semi trailers; their tires removed and their doors pried open contents looted.  Many were burned.  Most were scrawled with illegible graffiti.
Many abandoned cars lined the interstate as well, mostly older models, beaten down by years of abuse.  They were the cars of poor people, cars with mismatched wheels, dented, rusted quarter panels and scraping gouges along their sides.  Their destitute owners lacked the wherewithal to get them home.
It only takes about 4 days before an abandoned vehicle gets raided.  All of these abandoned cars had their windows smashed out.  Whatever was of value on the inside was long gone.
Mae sipped from a martini glass as they whizzed past the heaps.
The interstates, the arteries of commerce spanning coast to coast and state to state were now the repository of the plaques of economic collapse.  Wasted machines on the shoulders nearly outnumbered the machines being driven on the road.
Mae’s SUV was making good time until they hit a traffic jam.
“What’s going on?” She asked as she checked her lipstick in her compact.  It had gotten smudged by her martini glass.
“Got a call out.  Should hear any second,” replied the driver.
“Well, I don’t want to be stuck out here on this highway with all these lunatics.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am.  We’re bulletproof.   I can always call in air support, too.”
They sat there staring into the ass-end of a rusted out Sierra pickup, mud flaps emblazoned with chrome nudes.  Its expired tag was from Guadalajara.
“Allmighty says there was some kind of an explosion up ahead.  DHS and FBI are investigating.  They think it was a roadside bomb.  Can you believe that?  An IED in Denver.”
“How long?”
“It could be a while, ma’am.”
“Any way we can take a detour?”
“Not from here.  We’re a mile or so from the next exit.”
Mae sipped the last of her martini.  She didn’t check her lipstick.  She dozed off in the air conditioned, leather seat.
Mae awoke to a forward thrust.  She checked her watch.  She’d been asleep for over an hour.  At last they were moving, albeit at about a geriatric’s pace.  Mae poured another martini.
After about twenty minutes the roadside carnage came into view.  Two fire trucks, one facing the wrong direction, flanked the smoldering shell.  Its tires had completely burned away and the twisted, blackened heap rested on its metal wheels in a puddle of grease and foam.  A group of policemen were huddled on the shoulder.  On the ground before them was a white sheet covering a corpse with two stumps of charcoal poking out one end.  
Mae downed her glass and sucked the olive off the plastic skewer.
“Never thought I’d see anything like that, here,” remarked the driver who chomped away at his chewing gum as they passed the carnage.  “I’ve got some bad news, Ms. Lane.”
“What’s that?”
“We gotta get some gas.”
“Oh no.  You’re not stopping!” Mae ordered, terrified at the prospect of pulling off the highway into some Globeville ghetto and waiting for gas in a government limo.
“We’re stopping one way or another, ma’am.”
“Then turn back,” she ordered.
“Can’t do it.  We wouldn’t make it back to DIA.  Just relax.  You’ll be fine.  Did I tell you we’re bullet proof?”
“You did.”
They pulled off the interstate onto an arterial and found an open gas station not far from the highway.  Preceding the pump was a line of thirty cars waiting for the petrol that had tripled in price in just three weeks.  Mae’s driver accelerated, bypassing them all, eventually angling the SUV into the front of the line.
The horns let loose in a fury.  Then the drivers started getting out of their cars and letting curses and gestures fly.  They had been stuck in that line for forty five minutes.   Their patience was razor thin.
“Who the fuck are you?!” Screamed a mull-man three cars back who looked as if he might storm up and throw his fist through the SUV’s bulletproof windshield, yank her driver out through the hole, and strangle him to death with his sausage fingers.  The driver calmly radioed in the situation to Allmighty.  Then, to Mae’s surprise, he got out.
“Where’re you going?  Don’t get out!” she screamed.
“Everyone just calm down!” the driver ordered while displaying his badge.
The populist response was a barrage of four-lettered curses and threats of violence.  The proles were really, really pissed off.
“I’m with the Federal Government,” the driver continued as he raised his badge even higher.  “I do apologize for cutting into line like this but we must not be delayed.  We are on official government business.”
“The line starts back there, asshole,” remarked the mullet-man with balled up, sausage-finger fists.
One car lurched forward and bumped the SUV jolting Mae’s head back and spilling her martini.  She was afraid.
“Everyone just calm down,” the driver replied.  “It’ll only be a minute and then we’ll be on our way.”
“You can wait just like everyone else,” screamed a greasy-haired woman with a screaming kid strapped into her beat up minivan.
“Look,” the driver continued, “…we are with the government.  We are here to help you.”
“Haven’t you helped us enough?” replied the mullet-man.  “Huh, haven’t yah?  Fuck you!  Move that fucking car to the back of the line!”
The car that had just bumped the SUV backed up and revved its engine.  Mae’s driver decided that the mob was not amenable to reason so he got back in.  He too was beginning to feel anxious as images of the roasted car and the two charred stumps on the highway flashed through his mind.  Although his SUV was bullet proof, it wasn’t fireproof.
“Where are they?” lamented the driver.
“What’s wrong with these idiots?” Mae asked.  “Don’t they know who we are?”  She rolled down her window and screamed out to the proles, “Don’t you know who we are?!?” One responded by tossing a beer bottle at her window SUV which shattered into foamy shards on its bullet proof glass.  Mae rolled the thick window of agate back up. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” She pleaded.
“Hang on.  We’ve got support coming.”
“Well, where the hell are they?”
Outside, the driver noticed the mullet-man had taken out an aluminum softball bat from his backseat and was making his way towards the SUV.  He stopped at each car along the way, cajoling the occupants to get out and join him.  Some did.  A wake of pissed off proles formed behind him as he approached.  The driver wondered if they had access to fire.
“Let’s go!  Let’s go now!” Mae screamed.
“Hang on.  I hear them.”
The mullet-man reached the back of the SUV.  He looked over his shoulder at the line of cars behind him noticing a throng of about a dozen had formed.  He turned back to the SUV.  His grip was sweaty on the rubber grip of the DeMarini.  His heart was racing.  What would happen to him if he took a swing?  He would definitely ruin his bat.  He didn’t care anymore.  There was nothing left to lose.  Softball season was cancelled.
To Mae’s surprise, her driver got out again.
“Don’t be stupid!” he ordered.  “The police will be here any instant.”
“Screw you, Fed,” the mullet-man man replied, scanning the driver for whatever weapon he might be carrying.
“I’m armed,” the driver advised, noticing his glance.  “Don’t make me use it.”
“You can’t shoot all of us.”
“Yeah.  True,” the driver answered.  “But I can shoot you.  Then I can get back in this car and wait another two minutes for the cavalry to arrive.  So I suggest you just calm down and back away and I’ll forget about how you threatened a government agent with that bat.  We’ll just get our gas and be on our way.  Is that a DeMarini, by the way?  Nice bat.”
The mullet-man was not disarmed by the driver’s small talk.  He was ready to make his move, hoping to swing his metal pipe in a wide, wind-ripping arc, landing the meat of it squarely on the side of the driver’s skull.  But he took one quick glance over his shoulder for moral support and found that his posse was dissolving.
“Your odds ain’t so good anymore,” commented the driver.
“Who do you think you are?” asked the mullet-man as he lowered his weapon. “You Feds think you’re royalty or something?”
“Honestly?  More or less, yes.  We’re the government.  Our job is to run things.  And you’re job is to do what you’re told.”
“You people lie.  You’re all liars.  You caused all this.”
“These are tough times, my friend.  We’re all in it together.”
“Bullshit.  You ain’t felt it like us.”
The thumping of the helicopters appeared over the surrounding cottonwoods and elm trees.  The choppers hovered around and above the SUV.  A sniper had the mullet-man in his sights.  One gentle squeeze and the bullet would explode through his barrel chest, the energy sending him flopping into the air like stuffed animal.
“Go back to your car,” ordered the driver in a calm voice.
The mullet-man complied.

Chapter 9               Chapter 11 available Sunday

Indivisible can be purchased here from Amazon:

Want to see hypocrisy defined?  Watch Greenspan rip apart The Bernank.
One might be surprised to hear Greenspan criticize his protege Bernanke who is merely following in Greenspan’s footsteps- yet Greenspan isn’t criticizing QE 1 or even QE2…

He’s criticizing that QE HAS NOT BEEN SPENT AND ALREADY CAUSED HYPERINFLATION!

The 5-year yield has risen 42 basis points from 1.4 to 1.82, or 29.71% in the last week-the largest single week rise EVER!

With the T-bond complex imploding PRIOR to the mere PRETEND END of QE, can you imagine what would happen if QE was ever totally curtailed?
We’d have 30% interest rates and DOW 2,000 before Obama could get his shoelaces tied in the morning!

QE to Infinity….AND BEYOND!

Click here for more from Zerohedge:

We find it only slightly ironic that while capping gold and silver with its left hand, Uncle Sam’s right hand is giving 30% tax credits and rebates towards solar power purchases, of which a large component is of course silver.
Did you ever think you would see a federal SILVER SUBSIDY?
Federal subsidies which increase demand for PHYSICAL SILVER.  Just one more bullish factor for silver.

Just like subsidies for ethanol sent the price of corn soaring, subsidies for solar investments will drive silver prices.


Excerpt from Dr. Jeffrey Lewis’ latest:
Thanks to a tax credit worth 30% of the solar panel purchase price from the US Treasury, and low-cost, long-term financing, more companies are getting into the solar lease business.  Google will fund a $300 million residential solar panel investment.  Bank of America raised a $2.6 billion fund to do the same for commercial buildings.

This is a no-brainer for silver investors.  Just like subsidies for ethanol sent the price of corn soaring, subsidies for solar investments will drive silver prices.  Silver is, after all, the only component in solar panel developments that is rising in price.  Get ready for the next move up.

Click here for more:

Peter Schiff today called for gold to eventually reach levels NORTH of $10,000 (seems suddenly a popular target after Jim Sinclair upped his $1650 call to $12,500 recently), as well as stating that silver has bottomed in the lower $30′s.
Schiff is looking for $50 to soon be the new $30 for silver- meaning people will soon be waiting for a dip back to $50 to accumulate physical silver.
As we have stated here many times, it won’t be long until silver’s current dip down to ~$30 is looked back on with nostalgia similar to the 2008 dip down to the $8 range.

The rush to get out of the dollar will turn into a stampede and then it will look rather disorderly.  The effects will be rather pronounced on prices for consumer goods, particularly things like food and energy.

Click here for Peter Schiff’s entire interview today with KWN: