By now, followers of my rants understand that price inflation, which clearly is running well over 10% per year ("Who you gonna believe," asks WhirlyBen Bernanke, "Me or your own lying eyes?"), is a monetary symptom, not an independent phenomenon. It happens because the foxes, whom we put in charge of our hen house, are busy gorging themselves on our chickens. They simply print money, whether on paper or electrons. Debit cash, credit debt. Our debt. Their cash.

When they started to get really out of control with their money creation scheme, which is a crime called counterfeiting if you or I do it, they simply stopped telling us about how much money they were creating ("M3," the most useful measure of the money supply), but you can get a private assessment of this key figure, which is running 18% today, at http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html .

Today, they claim that inflation is running only 2-3%. Who you gonna believe - them or or your own lying eyes?

Inflation, housing, jobs, debt trade deficit - they all are much worse than they tell you. So, naturally, what is the government about to do about it? Stop telling us, of course! The national debt keeps growing, fueled by the insane war in the Middle East. What's going to cut it? We don't have any manufacturing base left in America.

Those interest rate cuts you keep hearing about? They help the bankers, not us. You won't see them. They keep the banks from going under, where they belong.

Market manipulation saves them, not us.

They keep crowing about how they are fixing things. What they are doing is making them worse, of course. Guaranteeing that Depression II will make Depression I look like a walk in the park. That means war, of course, so they can distract us from what they have done and have something else to blame. That means more privation, of course, and more of our children dead.

You know by now that your house has declined in value. Up to 70%, in some parts of the country. Overall, it still looks like at least a 90% total decline in American real estate value to me, measured from a couple years ago until a couple years from now - 50% from inflation and 40% from nominal price declines.

There is at least a 25% decline already built into the inflation rate during the next two years, just like the two years we just finished...four years means a 50% decline from inflation alone, with prices not moving down at all. But, move down they have and move down more, they will. All we need is another 10-20% decline on top of the 50% erosion in value caused by inflation and real estate will hit the levels of Depression I, with properties worth ten cents on the dollar.

Imagine: if only we had sold out and rented two years ago.....putting the proceeds into gold or silver, already we would be up 100% on the investment and saved the 30-40% decline in our existing property values.

In other words, if your place was worth $1 million in 2005 and you had sold, today you would have over $2 million in shiny metal, be renting an even more palatial residence for a nominal amount and, two years from now, you could buy back your old place for, perhaps, $400k, paid for from your $4 million stash. Net result: You have your same house and $3.5 million that you otherwise would not have had - simply because real estate declined by a total of 90% in that time period. Of course, bread will cost $6 per loaf, but $3.5 million is a lot of bread.

Instead, most of us traded our home equity for cars and trips and boats and other things. Now we are maxing out our credit cards, simply to put food on the table, while the value of our homes drops beneath what we owe on them. Next, we sell our things to pay for the food. This is just how Depression I progressed.

Meanwhile, our own food is being bid up by international forces as the dollar dwindles in significance. Soon, we will have to choose between mortgage payments and dinner for the kids. This, too, is how Depression I progressed. This is precisely how one becomes homeless.

If the normal person was capable of doing the math or, even, believing folks like thee and me, there would be blood in the streets tonight. Just as there should be, with politicians, plutocrats, bankers, media moguls and Neocons aplenty hanging from lamp poles all across America. But the normal person is too busy watching Jeopardy tonight. Tomorrow will bring a different story.