Packaging with Dead Squirrels

LONDON — The strongest and most expensive beer ever created sold out within hours Friday, a Scottish brewery said, as they courted controversy by packaging the bottles inside the bodies of stuffed animals. BrewDog, the self-described maverick brewery, presented the beer -- which contains a record 55 percent alcohol -- inside the bodies of dead squirrels and stoats. Animal rights activists rushed to condemn the stunt. "It's pointless and it's very negative to use dead animals when we should be celebrating live animals," Advocates for Animals policy director Libby Anderson told BBC Scotland. "This seems to be a perverse idea."

Perverse?  What's so perverse about it?  Are leather shoes perverse?  How about  baseballs?  Me thinks that animal rights activists are going too far here.  The beer is being packaged in DEAD squirrels, not live ones.  Good idea.  Dead squirrels have no rights, not even animal rights.  In fact, I wouldn't mind squirreling away a few bottles of Shiner Bock myself.

Let's show the animal rights activist how we feel about their silly-assed complaining by taking up a collection to purchase a gift for them - Namely a copy of one my favorite books, 101 Uses for a Dead Cat.

The coming crash

Although not caused by the same market forces, there is an eerie parallel between what we are now experiencing and the Great Depression. There was also a recovery in 1930, after the crash hit in 1929. Then the second shoe dropped. I have been saying for a long time, in both the Bush and Obama periods, that the market would eventually go a lot further down than it has so far, and I still stand behind what I originally said. My original statement was that the Dow would end up between 7,000 and 8,000, and it looks like a CNBC analyst is pretty much saying the same thing.

Now I am no analyst, and I have no credentials, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that a sizable bubble still exists. That would be the derivatives market. No matter how hard the government tries, it is not going to be able to stop that bubble from bursting. IMHO, and I have felt this way for a long time, the Great Recession is going to turn into the Great Depression, part Deux. I cannot see how this won't happen. Bubbles are still there, the government can only prop up the markets to a certain point, and the Fed can only lower interest rates so far. After all, how much below ZERO can the interest rate go? The Fed's back is now against the wall, and there is no more wiggle room.

As for whose fault this will be, I have said time and time again that it was President Clinton who signed the Gramm-Bliley bill that dismantled all the Glass-Steagal protections that were in place to prevent this from happening. Unfortunately, it is President Bush who is going to be unfairly blamed for something he was not directly responsible for. Obama will take some blame too, but for the short term, Clinton is going to be let off the hook. Not so in the distant future, when historians will look back on Great Depression II more objectively. 20 years from now, I have a feeling that this will become known as Clinton's folly.

In the meantime, get ready for a wild ride. It's coming, whether or not you want to see it. Right now, know that the small light you see, way down the tunnel, is the harbinger of the great freight train that is coming straight at us, and is surely going to run us over. Those who are prepared for it are the ones who will survive the coming crash.

  Read this article from CNBC.