What seems to spook people now is the possibility that everybody in charge of everything is a fraud or a crook. Legitimacy has left the system…James Howard Kuntsler, Legitimacy Dwindles

There is a contagious epidemic of lies spreading all over the world, and it starts with rot at the highest levels of government. We are drowning in a cesspool of lies.

All you have to do is open your eyes and ears. The litany of lies is everywhere.

Even those who are doing everything possible to lead lives of radical honesty will slip and catch themselves in a lie. Maybe it’s a "little white lie" or something that is euphemistically called an "error of omission" or a "slip of the tongue." Nonetheless, a lie is a lie. Why do people lie? Because they can.

We start lying at around age 4-5 when we gain the power and awareness of language.

The first lies we tell as children are not malicious, rather they are tests of the degree to which we can manipulate our environment.

 Eventually, children learn that lying can be used to get what they want or get out of trouble. Everyone lies a little. How many times today have you told a lie?

 Right now, I might be lying to you about lying.

So we have the little liars and then we have the big liars. These are people who are compelled to lie about almost everything. They lie to protect themselves, make themselves look good, gain financial, sexual or social rewards, avoid punishment or manipulate others.

Manipulation is a huge motivation for these big liars. In the extreme, such individuals are given vague descriptions like "pathological liar" or actual psychiatric DSM-IV diagnoses (Antisocial Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, etc). How neatly official. Big Deal. They now have a name and a label, but if their lips are moving, they’re lying. Period.

One lie leads to another and another until there is no way to distinguish the truth from the lie. Lying wears people out. Lying causes stress and stress kills. Lying puts people into a prison cell of their own making.

 There is no freedom, rather more and more need to keep boxing themselves further into the corner of their lying brain box.

I assure you that once you have been "played" by a compulsive liar, you will never be the same person. If you want to feel the depths of total frustration and absolute crazy-making, then get intimately involved with a big time liar.

The internal rot that plagues a family, culture or country begins at the top and like an unleashed deluge of contaminated rotting sewage, trickles downward.

 We all know that politicians lie. After all, the origin of the word politics might as well be from poly (many) and tics (small blood-sucking insects).

It is a foregone conclusion that those in poli-tics will lie to us to get what they want from us and to further their own agendas.

Take the financial markets, for example. My inbox is polluted with crap. I make it a point to stay on over 25 mailing lists of hocus-pocus newsletter services that offer unlimited riches (without your doing any work of course!) by trading this or that Holy Grail indicator or magical formula that has just been discovered and will turn your $1,000 to $1,000,000 in less than a year.

Right. Sure. Please give us all a break here. Marketing to groups of people who are addicted to money (that means just about everyone in the world) is easy. All the "neuromarketers" have to do is to appeal to the dopamine-driven rat brain areas. Just the thought of making money through these "revolutionary instant cash machines" produces dopamine and "lights up" the pleasure centers of your brain. .

The interesting aspect of this is that the most effective way to sell is to lie. Oh, no! Can that possibly be true? In order to sell you something, people have to lie to you? It doesn’t have to be a whole lie; it can be a partial lie. So how do you know what part of it is a lie and what part isn’t? You don’t and you likely never will until after it’s too late and your money is long gone.

They are there to get your money, and they will do everything possible to separate you from your hard-earned cash. There are some very powerful hammerhead sharks lurking around every corner and doing every sneaky deal imaginable to convince you to buy something; anything.

 Come on in, the water’s fine, so just keep buying. There is no danger here---none at all! Everything is just wonderful, so keep buying these worthless pieces of paper.

There appears to be no limit to the sneaky slimy cesspool of deception that runs through the financial markets and our society. As the social mood continues to darken, and our currency spirals downward, the rot and stench will increase.

 Desperate people do desperate things and it’s all about separating you from your money. My bonus report published today for subscribers begins a series on how not to be scammed by gypsies tramps and thieves. There is nothing underneath the glitz. There are no invisible golden threads. The emperor is naked. It is a sham that will devour and steal from you until it has the greed has gorged itself and moved on to the next victim and the next and the next.

Please, everyone who is reading this: Open your eyes; do not allow yourself to be led down some garden path that appears lush with trees and flowers, but ends up in the vast wasteland of wiping out your life savings and stealing what is left of your sanity. Beware of false prophets, hypesters and crooks.

 Your rat brain is always out to get you, and the scam artists know exactly where your rat brain lives.

Use your rational brain to override the rat brain impulses and allow yourself time to measure and judge with logic and reason. Beware and be careful. Verify. Believe in a Higher Power, but remember to lock your car.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back…"Carl Sagan