Back alley in Pilot Point TX...
Monday, July 30, 2012
Salutes to the Homeys
Blogger Pater Tenebrarum of Acting Man
put it nicely today: Since Mario Draghi "bought" European bankers and
politicos a summer vacation by promising to pull out all the stops to
save the Euro, this blog will take a break (not a vacation) for a week
from the nauseating ongoing melodrama of international finance and
instead offer reviews of the other bloggers and podcasters out there
that I follow.
1. Outstanding for consistent excellence, acuity, clarity, and the milk of human kindness is the McAlvany Weekly Commentary.
David McAlvany manages an investment company out of Durango, Colorado,
with an emphasis on precious metals. His interview subjects are
high-caliber figures often outside the posse of usual suspects making
the rounds elsewhere on the web. He speaks beautifully in complete
sentences, shows enough emotion to come off as sympathetically human,
and has an equally intelligent sidekick in Kevin Orrick. Together they
present the most coherent view of money and politics on the web. A
Christian enthusiast, he admirably keeps religion mostly out of the
script.
2. For years, The Automatic Earth
has presented the most consistently intelligent, wide-ranging, and
intellectually rigorous view of the overall ongoing financial fiasco in
the written blog format. Until the past year, most of the commentary
was written by the droll Raul Ilargi Meijer. Now he is joined by the
brilliant energy and finance analyst Nicole Foss and young Ashvin
Pandurangi. Their combined point of view is staunchly deflationist.
They do immense amounts of homework, cut through all the bullshit to
the dense core of our troubled reality, and publish several times a
week. The title of the blog comes from a Paul Simon lyric out of Graceland.
3. Zero Hedge.
The mysterious person(s) behind this massive continuous stream of
reports and analysis from the loony bin of Wall Street and beyond has a
manic edge but accurately reflects the madness of the current
situation. Zero Hedge seems to post virtually around the clock, every
day. They are relentless and hugely comical, with exactly the right
sharply malicious overtones required in these evil times. The
characters who infest their comment section are some of the worst
vermin in trolldom.
4. Mish's Global Analysis.
I don't know how Mike Shedlock ("Mish") does it. He puts out two or
three commentaries a day as well as holding down a regular job. His
great service to us is providing the best breaking analysis of breaking
news, that is, making sense of events that are often mystifying --
since mystification is one of the prime tactics of financial playerdom
in these dark, non-transparent times -- and getting it done in a very
timely way. The upshot is that few of the dodges and ruses emanating
from the money world get by this guard-dog, to the huge benefit of us
civilians.
5. Charles Hugh Smith's blog, Of Two Minds,
manages to publish keenly insightful analysis practically every day in
the form of essays that tend to follow big picture themes: governance,
energy, taxation, culture, electoral politics. Smith's penetrating,
dogged analysis connects vast constellations of dots between the forces
that are shattering late industrial economies. He apparently does it
all by himself and has also produced several excellent books that form
a rich matrix of understanding for anyone trying to make sense of the
epochal changes coming down on us.
6. Naked Capitalism
is Yves Smith's daily roundup of first rate essays on disasters of
banking, including her own forceful callings-out of the ubiquitous
misconduct that surrounds her on Wall Street where she works. Her
writing is fluent and clear on subjects that would otherwise appear
hopelessly abstruse, which is especially valuable where complexity is a
cover for misbehavior.
7. In an earlier incarnation of this life, Chris Martenson
was a PhD biochemist toiling for da man in the corporate swamps of
Connecticut. He literally dropped out and reinvented himself as a
blogger / podcaster when the peak oil and debt trap equation startled
him into recognizing that the reigning system of political-economy's
days were numbered. Since then, he has produced perhaps the best book
on the failures of contemporary finance, The Crash Course, and has lately ginned up an excellent weekly interview podcast that should be indispensible.
8. The Archdruid Report.
To the casual observer John Michael Greer would seem an odd figure,
being a long-bearded, shambling, threadbare enthusiast of things
druidical (whatever they are), but he's also about the most humane,
articulate, and lucid observer of the crumbling economic and political
scene from the realm of totally outside the box. He puts out a
beautifully crafted essay every Thursday from the backwater of
Cumberland, Maryland, and his view of where the human race is headed is
sobering, reassuring, and full of authentic empathy for our multiple
predicaments.
9. Jim Willie's Hat Trick Letter at The Golden Jackass Report
is a deep, complex, often savage dissection of financial reality that
always manages to illuminate new angles on the giant hairball of lies
and swindles that the money world has become in our time. He writes in
a singular telegraphic style that is delightful to read in a way
similar to the pleasures of watching certain horror movies. He assumes
that his readers already know a lot and can follow the often recondite
pathways of financial discourse that he is such an excellent guide to
10. The Keiser Report
with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert. Stacy is the straight-person to
Max's antic persona. But no one has flogged the evil-doers of banking
as hard and unrelentingly as Max, who worked on the inside of the
investment racket until driven by outrage to become one of its fiercest
attackers. His perch in Paris gives him a front-row seat on the
shenanigans now unraveling civilization in the Eurozone, but he shines
his lamp under the rock of Wall Street regularly and loves to put the
wicked Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan in the spotlight.
11. King World News.
Eric King is the reigning gold bug of podcastdom. While he unabashedly
"talks his book," one gathers he does it because he sincerely believes
in the arguments for precious metals (as I do) and he brings out around
five punchy interviews a week with a revolving cast of fellow gold bugs
and other generally intelligent high level players in that world -
though I could do without the snide Gerald Celente.
12. Financial Sense New Hour.
Jim Puplava recently expanded his formerly weekends-only massive three
hour podcast to include premium-priced weekday interviews with a lineup
of insiders. Puplava covers the waterfront energetically, but he has
some weaknesses: 1.) his malaprop rate is staggering; 2.) he doesn't
challenge guests spouting obvious nonsense; 3.) other than being a
staunch inflationist, his views on the markets shift with whatever wind
is issuing from a guest's mouth; and 4.) he's a closet John Bircher who
does an annual summer show (any week now) featuring an appalling roster
of right-wing crazies. In a normal culture, that alone would tend to
discredit all his other worthy endeavors. His sidekick John Loeffler
sounds more consistently intelligent. Both of them are jesus freaks, of
course.
I left a few characters off the main list, but shoutouts to CK Michaelson's Some Assembly Required blog, Bruce Krasting's blog, Bill Bonner's The Daily Reckoning, Whiskey and Gunpowder, the brave Martin Armstrong, Jesse's Café Americain, Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture, Carl Denninger, Peter Schiff, the great, sobering Doug Noland of the Prudent Bear's Credit Bubble Bulletin, Pater Tenebrarum of Acting Man, Doug Henwood, the savvy and beautiful Lauren Lyster, Bill Moyers... and probably several others who I am (unfortunately) too rushed to mention.
Monday, July 23, 2012
What the Summer Breeze Said
Europe is giving new meaning to the term "bootstrapping," the
age-old (virtuous) idea of picking oneself up off the floor after some
blow or reversal of fortune has laid you low. The new method might be
called "skyhooking" in which a massive rescue apparatus secured at some
mysterious point unseen in the clouds lifts whole exhausted nations
from their knees in order get them to summer vacation. Hence: the
interesting spectacle of an entire continent headed for vacation
despite facing utter financial ruin, revolution, and civil war.
No one who has been to Europe in our time can doubt that it is a
lovely place to stage human existence. The towns and cities are in
immaculate condition, even the ones bombed to gravel in the receding
unpleasantness of the 1940s. The trains, trams, and subways run cleanly
and on-time. The citizens, though well-fed, maintain normal
physiognomies and wear dignified adult costumes out in public.
Everything along the streets broadcasts the notion, central to
civilization, that grace and beauty matter -- even the handwriting on
the bistro chalkboards. What a wonderful place. I'd like to go back.
But events suggest that this sweet period of history is drawing to a
close and whatever happens there next will be less like Midnight in Paris and more like Riot in Cellblock D meets Quest for Fire.
This skyhooking procedure has been both fun and sickening to watch,
like any great public stunt of seemingly impossible derring-do. Here
you have a whole bundle of nations, all up to their chins in the
quicksand of debt, pretending to catch lifelines of new credit dropped
mysteriously from the clouds by hidden central bank airships, only to
find that the lifelines are a kind of collective hallucination coming
over them like a fever dream in their hour of desperation. Seems rather
cruel, actually. Especially since they have lately sunk deeper in the
quicksand from their chins to their eyeballs.
No one on
the scene -- or watching from a remove for that matter -- can conceive
a happy ending to this chapter of history, which might be remembered on
some distant clear-skied day yet to come as the age of
government-by-check-kiting. Or the Chinese fire drill banking model --
no offense to that great nation of diligent workpersons. Yet, reports
from even the most anguished Euro nation du jour (Spain) say that the
restaurants are bustling and there is no shortage of nearly naked
nubile beauties along the beaches of the Costa Brava. And over in
Italy, of course, a squirrel could make the journey from Monterotondo
to Lago Maggiore by leaping from one outdoor luncheon table to the next
with its knobby little knuckles never touching the ground.
The question is: what happens when the recognition finally hits that
the money just isn't there? That the whole circus of alphabet soup
bailouts and skyhook rescue operations was a fraud? Well, my guess is
that things fracture and splinter and there commences a great scramble
for the table scraps of the incredible banquet that this congeries of
nations put on its Master Charge card. And when the table scraps are
all gone, the members of some nations, or regions within nations, set
out pillaging around the place where their neighbor sat at the banquet,
and pretty soon you get such a disorderly scene in the lovely old
banquet hall of Europe that even diligent Chinese tourists will not
venture there for a while.
None of this is to say that
the action I describe is not following similar lines in other corners
of our sore beset planet. For instance, those diligent Chinese I aver
to have been running a set of banking rackets at least as shoddy,
careless, and plumb crazy as the Eurolanders. And don't get me started
on the Anglo-American clusterfuck, which has left the rest-of-the-west
with a future as ingeniously booby-trapped as the Aurora cineplex
shooter's apartment (and to a strikingly similar note of destructive
insanity).
But in these dog days of summer (and the
horse latitudes of the spirit), isn't it easier to just mix another
vodka and tonic, kick off your flip-flops, and enjoy the feeling of
cool sand between your toes? Rest up all y'all. Events will be pinging
around the reality-scape good and hard in a few weeks. Me: well, I'm
just keeping the fruit trees watered out back for now.
Enjoy your vacation.
Monday, July 16, 2012
from 5 Min forecast:
“According to a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York,” Chris writes by way of background, “about half of the stock
market returns enjoyed in the past decade are a result of the actions taken by
the U.S. central bank.
“The study guessed that if you excluded Fed actions over the last decade, the S&P 500 would be at 600 today — instead of 1,352. Put another way, the study essentially says that the gains we’ve seen in the market are mostly fake. They are not due to real earnings gains, but just manufactured good looks that come from printing money.
“This reminds me of an old Seinfeld episode with the following dialogue”:
“The study guessed that if you excluded Fed actions over the last decade, the S&P 500 would be at 600 today — instead of 1,352. Put another way, the study essentially says that the gains we’ve seen in the market are mostly fake. They are not due to real earnings gains, but just manufactured good looks that come from printing money.
“This reminds me of an old Seinfeld episode with the following dialogue”:
“Jerry: What about the breathing, the panting, the moaning, the screaming? “Elaine: Fake, fake, fake, fake.
“Likewise, we might say,
‘But what about all those earnings reports and conference calls, the boosted
sales, the profit margins?’”
“Fake, fake, fake, fake!”
“Fake, fake, fake, fake!”
The Rising
The word lamppost is popping up lately with alarming frequency in
connection with the word banker in all kinds of respectable places, and
I don't think this refers to, say, men in Armani suits searching for
their car keys where the light is shining on the sidewalk after
quaffing a few rare cuvee jeroboams of Louis Roederer Cristal. Rather,
it seems to suggest a certain unease with the levers of jurisprudence
in this republic of grifters, stooges, and bought-off lackeys.
Also of late come rumblings from the most august newspaper in the
land that certain questions concerning LIBOR-fixing among American bank
officials might soon be entertained in a federal courtroom. But isn't
it a fact that the US Department of Justice has its hands full - not to
mention its dockets - with cases of alleged performance-doping by star
athletes? Just think: all that effort (and expense!) at repeated
prosecutions and Roger Clemens remains at large! His fastball might yet
shred the constitution and dishonor all the combined sacrifices of our
men in uniform in countless heroic wars.
Meanwhile, has The New York Times
sent a reporter to chat up the elusive John Corzine? It must be an
easier job than, say, trekking to a cave in Tora Bora to interview the
late Mr. Osama bin Laden - which a few plucky reporters actually
accomplished back when - yet Mr. Corzine is now better hidden than the
Orang-pendek of Sumatra. And higher-functioning, too, considering his
current role as Uncle Scrooge McDuck to the Obama reelection campaign.
In what 5th sub-basement of a Robert A. M. Stern-designed luxury
high-rise does Mr. Corzine sit with his moneybags of purloined MF
Global customer funds writing checks to the Democratic National
Committee?
All this is to say that when a few lame
rumors of prosecutorial zeal appear in old gray mouthpiece for the
status quo, you can bet that the true tipping point of public
impatience has probably been breeched and the fall of the elites is
closer than you think. In the sizzling sauna that the US has become
under the regime of climate change denial, the black swans of political
turmoil are moistly hatching. Who knows what form the mischief might
take and how the trouble starts. Perhaps a hostage crisis at the
Maidstone Club where families of a dozen hedge fund chiefs are held in
the pool house by an out-of-work pipefitter from Wantagh high on bath
salts. Or a swindled soybean farmer in a Semtex-rigged vest pays a call
on the PFG-Best futures trading headquarters in Cedar Falls, Iowa, just
as the lawyers and their financier clients sit down in the conference
room to an ordered-in lunch of sloppy joes, fries, and slurpees. Or
maybe a part-time evangelist off his Zoloft in some broiling strip-mall
in a bankrupt California shit-hole sees the numbers 666 resolve among
the remnants of his half-eaten enchilada on a Mitt Romney for President
commemorative plate and packs up an arsenal of legally-acquired small
arms for his journey to the Republican Convention in Tampa....
This is, after all, the country where the Kardashians reign. Anything might happen.
This is also the fruit of utterly failed moral leadership in a
rudderless society adrift on a sea of delusion and untruth in an age of
accounts unsettled. The battle over which empty suit gets elected
president is a preface to the discovery that the national government
only pretends to be in charge of anything. As the reality of total,
comprehensive bankruptcy simmers up, perhaps a critical number of
citizens stop forking over their quarterly taxes - since it would be
the same thing as pounding sand down a rat-hole. Then, things really go
south governance-wise. The next revolution in North America could make
1793 Paris look like an Ace of Cakes episode. Lamppost lynchings will seem too merciful. Rather, look for a new realty TV launch: Kardashian Kangaroo Kourt,
in which every week a score of obscenely wealthy celebrities plucked
from the realms of banking, showbiz and politics are dragged over three
miles of barrel cactus in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge
behind a Dodge Mopar-loaded Ram Runner (mostly American-made).
In the meantime, let's just all kick back these hot summer nights on
the front porch with a few vodka and Red Bulls and enjoy Jack
Abramoff's new radio show on Clear Channel in which the re-branded
"lobbying reformer" offers advice on improving the transaction of
public business in our nation's capital. This is Mr. Abramoff's first
job since completing his prison work-release gig in a kosher Baltimore
pizza store. God bless you, Jack.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
The Drowning Pool
News that that a swarm of termites deep inside the British banking
system have been fiddling the interbank interest rates (LIBOR) for
years in order to systematically vacuum a few billion pence off the
exchange floors for themselves is the latest blow to the credibility of
the global money system - and probably a fine overture to a looming
climactic implosion of the gigantic, creaking, smoldering, reeking,
duck-taped edifice of broken promises, booby-trapped hedge obligations,
counterparty follies, central bank euchres, sovereign flim-flams, and
countless chicanes too various, dark, and deep to smoke out. Next,
we'll probably hear that Lloyd Blankfein over at Goldman Sachs has been
tinkering with the rotation of the earth in order to gain a few
micro-milliseconds of advantage in his firm's high frequency trading
rackets. After all, back in 2008 Lloyd himself claimed to be "doing
God's work."
In short, world banking is now hopelessly
pranged, and I am not at all sure the project of civilization (modern
edition) can continue by other means. The impairments of capital
formation are now so profound that no one and nothing can be trusted.
Not only are all bets off, but nobody will want to make any new bets -
and by that I mean venture to invest accumulated wealth (capital) in
some useful project designed to sustain human well-being. What remains
is just the desperate hoarding of whatever remains in assets
uncontaminated by the pledges of others to pony up.
All
this points to a dangerous new period of political history, a deadly
Hobbesian scramble to evade the falling timber in a burning house as
the rudiments of a worldwide social contract go up in flames. Such is
the importance of legitimacy: the basic condition for governance,
especially among supposedly free people. You can meddle in a lot of
distributory issues - who gets what - but when you mess with the most
basic operations of money to the extent that no one is sure what it's
really worth, or what it represents, then you are deeply undermining
society. This is now the condition that is set to blow up republics.
Reality dislikes fraud and accounting tricks. Reality is serious
about settling scores. Reality eventually intervenes and puts an end to
monkey business. What will it be this time?
Europe and
America have been buying a month here, a month there (of a fragile,
continuing status quo) on the installment plan. That's what QE, TARPs,
LTRO, EFSF, Operation Twist, et cetera, are all about. Think of them as
multi-billion dollar (euro) fire extinguishers bought on credit cards.
Europe is now completely out of credit to buy more fire fighting
equipment. For months now it has been down to whether Germany intends
to keep supporting Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, the French
banks (and a few stray forgotten places between the backwaters of the
Danube and the Gulf of Finland) without any say in how they manage
their allowance. Much as Germany enjoyed the Ponzi heyday of the Euro
zone, a big "tilt" sign now flashes ominously over the continent,
signaling game over. All fall down. Everybody gets real poor real fast.
M. Hollandaise over in Paris has already sealed his fate with his
stupid plan to return to "go" on the Ponzi game-board. Merkel's
tattered scarecrow of a coalition will blow away in the next national
election. The Club Med countries will soon boil up in street-fighting,
Holland and Finland will drink themselves to death, and across the
channel outsider Britain will fizzle away to a burnt bowl of
mulligatawny. That's what the end of the summer looks like to me.
Over here, in this sorry-ass edition of America, the election will
look more and more like a World Wrestling Federation staged dumb-show
between two catamite hostages of a foul corporate oligarchy. Imagine
that horse's ass Mitt Romney spending the next four months denouncing
Obama-care, modeled on his own health care reform in Massachusetts,
while Obama pretends he has a grip on an economy where the rule of law
is absent due to Obama's own omissions and negligence.
And if you can't stand that spectacle, just look around at America
itself: a wasteland of futile motoring and discount shopping populated
by depressed, overfed clowns bedizened with sinister tattoos,
pretending to be Star Warriors. No nation ever seen in human history
ever laid such a disappointing egg. Only to have it fry on the sidewalk.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Read these words from Justice Roberts
opinion:
"Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."
The healthcare act is clearly a consequence of our (America's) political choices. The choices we make in November will be very telling; do we want to remain a free market democracy, or do we want to become a socialist nation like the (failed) European models?
"Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."
The healthcare act is clearly a consequence of our (America's) political choices. The choices we make in November will be very telling; do we want to remain a free market democracy, or do we want to become a socialist nation like the (failed) European models?
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Hostage Racket
Not to put too fine a point on it, but didn't that cunning rogue
Chief Justice John Roberts pour a jug of Karo syrup into the gas tank
of America's twelve trillion cylinder engine? Or, put another way
(forgive the metaphor juke), didn't he just give President Obama enough
rope to hang himself? Out to dry, that is. Roberts must know exactly
what he is doing: prompting x-million young and/or poor voters to an
election year tea party tax revolt. The Obama health care reform will
henceforth be defined as a tax against people too economically strapped
to buy health insurance - in other words, a gross injustice, courtesy
of Obama.
Or call it a poison pill. Obama gets to brag
that the heart of his 2700-page reform package stands - at the expense
of the very people it was designed to protect. Forget about the
niceties regarding the interstate commerce clause and other chatter
points. This was all about Chief Justice Roberts interfering in a
presidential election in a most mischievous way. He might as well have
just heated up a branding iron that spelled out T-A-X and applied it to
Mr. Obama's forehead.
Of course, with or without the
so-called reform, the American health care system remains a hostage
racket. When you are sick, you will do anything to get better, and the
system knows it. You will sign onto any agreement to keep yourself
alive, even if the health care system ends up taking your house and
your children's educations. It is a well-established fact that the
chief cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is unpayable medical
bills on the part of people who have health insurance. It is considered
bad manners to inquire of a surgeon what his fee might be for a
life-saving operation. Anyway, you don't want to know because it will
be a figure with no anchor in the reality of hours spent or services
rendered. Ditto the folks who run the hospital, where there is no
reality-based relationship between things dispensed and prices charged.
It's simple racketeering and true health care reform would be the
vigorous application of Department of Justice attorneys on the doctors,
pharma companies, insurers, hospitals, and HMOs who are engaged in
routine, systematic swindling. But the truth is, we don't want to
remove the swindle and the grift, we just want to find some way to get
the American public to pay for their own shakedown.
Before you get too exercised over the multiple idiocies and injustices
of the current American medical situation just reflect for a moment
that the whole creaking system cannot possibly survive no matter what
the Supreme Court might have ruled or whatever Obama sought to
accomplish. The US economic system is about to blow up. The banking
sector has been kept technically alive on the life-support of
accounting fraud since 2008, but that artful racket is coming to an end
because sooner or later the abstraction called "money" must make
truthful representations of itself in relation to reality, or else
people cease to accept its claims of value. Without a functioning
banking system none of the rackets organized into US health care can
continue.
The eventual destination of health care, like
everything else in society categorically, is a much smaller, more
modest, more local scale of operation. We'll be lucky if the people
with medical expertise can reorganize the wreckage of the system into
something resembling small local clinics with all the costly and
pernicious racketeering bureaucracy peeled off it. The insurance
companies will be in the elephants' graveyard of failed institutions.
Let's hope the doctors and their support staff remember to wash their
hands.
A couple of side notes:
Anyone
seeking to understand the deplorable physical condition of the general
public need only stroll through the supermarket aisles and see the
endless stacks of manufactured sugary shit that pretends to be food in
this culture. That whole matrix is coming to and end, too, by the way,
but probably not soon enough to save the multitudes programmed into
metabolic disorder. They will just have a shorter life-span, aggravated
by loss of income in a cratering economy and everything that comes with
being impoverished. The doctors themselves by and large know almost
nothing about nutrition, and make no organized effort to militate
against the homicidal processed food industry - which brings me to the
second side note.
Namely, that the diminishing returns
of extreme bureaucratization and turbo-specialization in medicine has
only made the doctors generally stupider and more inept. My own
situation is a case in point. For two years I suffered an array of
peculiar symptoms ranging from numb hands to supernatural fatigue. My
ex-GP showed no interest in investigating the cause. Even my request
for a toxicology workup was essentially shrugged off. I had to become
my own doctor. For a while I suspected Lyme disease, which is raging in
my corner of the country. I went to see a Lyme specialist who didn't
accept insurance (because the insurance companies did not recognize his
aggressive treatment protocols as falling within the current "standards
of practice" - and this because the medical establishment doesn't know
its ass from a hole in the ground about Lyme disease).
Anyway, I asked the Lyme specialist to include a test for cobalt
levels in my bloodwork because I thought there was an outside chance I
had cobalt poisoning. The reason I thought this was because Google
searches of my symptoms kept pointing to metal-on-metal hip replacement
failure. I had gotten just such a metal-on-metal hip replacement in
2003. The hardware was developed because the orthopedists wanted to
give younger patients a longer-lasting implant. That's when the
diminishing returns of technology stepped in and kicked everybody's
ass, including mine.
My cobalt blood test came back
off-the-charts high. (My many Lyme tests all came back negative.)
Wouldn't you know, though, that the Lyme specialist wanted to treat me
for Lyme anyway. He ignored the cobalt numbers and wrote out a
prescription for $400 worth of antibiotics. He was the proverbial guy
with a hammer to whom everything looked like a nail. I declined that
course of treatment and instead went to my new GP for a first
appointment and asked for an additional cobalt test, along with one for
chromium. (My hip implant is an alloy of titanium, cobalt, and
chromium.) They both came back way over the toxic level. Apparently,
the rotation of the metal joint has been shedding metal ions into my
system for nine years.
Next I went to the orthopedic
surgeon who put the implant in. He ordered an MRI and xrays and
appeared rather concerned. Eventually I was routed to yet another
orthopedic surgeon who specializes in "revising" hip implant failures -
in particular ones of the type I have, which have been failing at such
a staggering rate that the lawyers have assembled one of the greatest
litigation feeding frenzies in history. They are going after the
manufacturers of these devices.
I have health insurance
but I am quite sure that I will be soaked for many thousands of dollars
beyond the coverage to resolve this problem, which will involve at
least the changing out of the terminal bearings of my implant - if I am
lucky. In the meantime, I have to become exactly the kind of
pain-in-the-ass patient who asks too many questions so I don't end up
crippled, or dead, or taken for ride like a purloined human ATM
machine. I suppose I am also lucky that this happened to me soon enough
to even have this kind of remedial surgery. Another year or two and I
would have just steadily turned purple and croaked like some poor 19th
century foundry worker.
There's an excellent chance that
I will be on the operating table at the same moment that another
financial crisis erupts, one that will be orders of magnitude worse
than the 2008 Lehman collapse. Won't that be something? I hope that the
surgeon and the anesthesiologist, and whoever else happens to be on
hand, don't all run out of the room at once to call their investment
managers while I'm lying there inert, like a boned-out Thanksgiving
turkey. Pray for my ass. I'm a hostage in the system.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
