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Frontrunning: December 28
- Morgan Stanley sees the 10 year at 5.5% in 2010, Goldman Sachs at 3.25% - someone's prop desk is going to get spanked (Bloomberg)
- Tanker freight rates to drop 25% as 26-mile long line of idled tankers runs out of fumes (Bloomberg)
- Deflationary side effects: Japan Finance Minister admitted to hospital (Bloomberg)
- Ferguson - The decade the world tilted east (FT)
- Summers - The man who blew up Harvard's portfolio, has set his sight on the US next (WSJ)
- Buffett doing the patriotic thing and firing 21,000 employees of companies that did not get taxpayer bailouts (Bloomberg)
- Everyone confused how to spin a possible (but not certain) 1% holiday retail bounce into fabulous news after last year's retail rout (NYT)
- Mortgage anxieties mean Fannie-Freddie limbo as Fed pulls back (Bloomberg)
- Yuan forwards retreat after Wen rejects appreciation calls (Bloomberg)
- Isn't this man in jail? Conrad Black discusses the dismal decade. He sure has his reasons (NationalPost)
- Bear Stearns parties on as banks scrap events (Bloomberg)
- Internet sales tax scofflaws cheat state (LA Times)
- Is NYMag becoming a blog? The Wasserstein holding tries to boost Grant's subscription sales (NYMag)
»
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Conran the English furnishings merchant with the French blue shirts and cigars, yes
but why give space to any of those guys whose propaganda has helped lead to the collapse of the United States
just like in China we should be able to pay a buck and work out our frustrations by beating on a guy like Conrad Black
why even reference him?
MS is wrong....
Who is going to buy the US and Corp. debt > $3 Trillion ????
10 Year > 11%
Watch it happen....
That was my thought, 5.5 seems a little low given the rampant spending before an election.
Ferguson is a Goldman proxy lapdog, unworthy of any attention.
M. Copenhagen
Ahhh Warren Buffett. One of the biggest f'n hippocrits of this entire debacle. 'Buy American!' - At all time highs so there are buyers for the shit I don't want on my books anymore, thanks suckers.
And when I asked why the hell all the buying and selling shit with berkshire and charity was going on with money on bloomberg terminals everyone all of a sudden shut up about it. Once he loaned 5 billion to JP Morgan I knew that snake had scales.
Much agreed. I remember the first interview that Becky Quick "to spread 'em" did with him after the stabilization... the lies dripping off his tongue were as obvious as the fear in his face.
"It is certain that if people do not understand a true political economy, they will make a false one of their own" ~ W.S. Jevons - The Theory of Political Economy
Damn people, understand the implications of that sentence. :)
The peoples' time is yet to come, phaesed. One day, maggots like Buffett and the whores to whom they make "campaign contributions" will be behind barbed wire awaiting interrogation and public trial.
by who? the browncoats?
Twilight of the Psychopaths
by Dr. Kevin Barrett
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.” – John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman
When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.
Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the leisure to develop arts and sciences. And while that would be a good idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.
Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and “warfare.” Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.
The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:
1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;
2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits);
3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.
Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.
In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true “Revolution in Military Affairs” was not Donald Rumsfeld’s move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall’s discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: “Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges” (Grossman, p. 4).
Marshall’s discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers — the 5% who are natural-born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators—did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for humanity’s genetic endowment!)
Marshall’s work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science. In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane majority, would rather die than fight.
The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers’ behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that psychopaths were in control of society’s perception of military affairs. Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly sane, normal society.
How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.
So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers, Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history, doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world. As a leading “conspiracy theorist” according to Wikipedia, I feel eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate than the prevailing wisdom: The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.
Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld—the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or “endgame” (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists—in short, the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.
Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.” Given that Bush is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement to McClendon should be taken seriously.
Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.
Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being — a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish — militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.
Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths co-opt and corrupt normal human beings. One way they do this, is by manipulating shame and denial — emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced among normals.
shadow of his former self — a manufactured psychopath or psychopath’s apprentice.
This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society. Despite easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld. Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone, Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic leaders. They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust. They refuse to see the evidence that the psychopaths’ guilds running America’s most powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes, Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys. And of course they refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that their own psychopath-dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.
All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view. If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens’ wilful blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.
But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere are waking up. The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either party with significant grassroots support.
If “love” is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul — a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies — implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath’s tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together.
The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the people’s growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation since the dawn of so-called civilization).
Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism — ritualized mass slaughter — is increasingly unavailable. And if war was the great human tragedy, the pathocrats’ pathetic attempt at a war-substitute — the transparently phoney “war on terror” — is repeating it as sheerest farce.
Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths. Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.
Daayuuum! That shit is off the hook, sir. Truly great to get at the real personalities of these fuckers. Good on ya mate.
TD Noted:
Morgan Stanley sees the 10 year at 5.5% in 2010, Goldman Sachs at 3.25% - someone's prop desk is going to get spanked (Bloomberg)
comment
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You nailed it last week. GS is right. The UST needs to sell an almost infinite amount of debt at low rates for several years just to feed the beast. This money has to come from somewhere and it must be low cost money.
An engineered crash in the market is the only solution. This will manufacture a flight to safety, creating demand for low rate UST debt.
Actually, a series of engineered crashes over the next couple of years is the only solution for both cheap deficit financing plus stalling for time in case the real economy actually improves in a couple of years. The Fed and new QE initiatives will be used as the power supply to boost the market after each crash, thus setting the buy in and sell points for each permutation. The astute buyer will 'invest' when another bout of QE is announced at the bottom of each 'crash'. The sell point will be when QE ends and the market looks toppy, such as now. CNBC and avaricious investment advisors will assist. CNBC for infomercial ad revenue. Investment advisers for the 2% fees on invested assets under management.
It wouldn't be surprising if an accommodating market manipulator was just holding on until end of year has passed, prior to the first ride down on the roller coaster in early January, keeping YTd gains locked in until 2010.
The only other alternative to an engineered crash for the purpose of lowering UST rates and financing the deficit is high rates, such as what a text book would state is next. Remember, an almost infinite amount of new debt needs to be sold each year for the next several years. Rates high enough to do this would crush the economy and create a 2nd great depression, no to mention the cost of servicing this debt. The other is to repatriate all the overseas cash by putting the USA on a fire sale. Since the middle east and China have so much cash, this 'solution' would be unpalatable. A miracle recovery might be in the cards (ha ha). A series of engineered crashes is the only reasonable alternative.
What happens when the crash goes to gold and silver though? But yes a miracle recovery is on deck. The facade is going to be 4.5 percent growth for 1st 2010. All fake all bullcrap. The last charade before peoples disatisfaction begins the alchemical transformation to action.
Simple. You buy more.
What happens when the crash goes to gold and silver though?
reply:
Both are in bubble mode to some degree. Both will fall when the markets fall. Liquidity built this market and lack of liquidity will make it fall along with all asset classed artificially propped up by it. Nothing is as it seems nor do textbooks explain it since liquidity pumps, HFT churn, and liquidity drains are not in any textbook. Also, 2010 bonuses need to be funded. Accommodating HFT manipulators will gladly participate if a payoff is in sight.
Sorry you need to read the textbooks again and apply faith and "wealth" principles to things. After the second crash in the great depression everyone lost faith in the system and mining stocks could pay a decent wage every quarter by just having as little as a hundred shares in them. The dividends were rediculous. All these runups are just about the "high" ride. When you try to make the buzz real and keep it real it gets strange. You can't get blood from a turnip and you can't get wealth from rediculous indebtedness ponzi. We are headed towards a long hard 3 year conversion.
Gold is never a bubble. It's simply an accountant. It crashes once and once only. It's not even going down right now. It's all an illusion. HFT is simply faking the psychology of it with a "tool" to make the psychology appear more pervasive than it is. The psychology is extremely isolated at this point and all you have to do is watch it to see when it has it's final psychotic break back to reality.
Gold is a trade. Try eating some or using it at Wal-Mart instead of plastic. People who know gold will make money on the roller coaster I described. But assets that respond to inflation won't rise much in the coming deflation, especially if a lot of their volatility is due to poor market regulation.
Psychology is important, as you said. The roller coaster wil make gold look attractive to traditionalists such as yourself and I plan to buy the big dips, starting with the next crash. I'll use gold stocks, though. More liquid. As I said, this is a trade only. I plan to make money this time off the rubes now that I understand how the game is played.
Gold is still a fear trade ...when state and local Governments go belly up
Boy. I say this with alot of respect. You do have good understandings and you do see things pretty clearly but there's holes in this shell games table you haven't looked at. We are watching one right now that probably won't come out for 6 months.
It's a strategy move. Every play reveals more needs for control and possible end around runs. They know they can't confiscate this time. People will kill them. So this time around mining is NOT THE WAY TO GO. All the mining stocks will be controlled by the powers that be and they will use you as a cash dumpster. I wouldn't touch a mining stock without first killing about 20,000 people on this planet. Then it would be safe.
crashing the stock or pm markets won't generate a single cent more for the bond market, Mish has a good post on this when he commented on the "money on the sideline" bs. Don't let the folks on cnbs con you into thinking there is inverse relationship. The fed is printing and buying those new issues, the bs about crashing stock market to support bonds is just a camouflage to divert attention away from the monetization folks, wise up ZH!
Bingo.
With the infinite capacity to create money and the ability to operate in secret, you can do anything.
Anything.
Good thoughts. The only way for rates to be low is for money to move from risk to non-risk. Everyone is holding on as tightly as possible for EOY to show their holdings in the filings. QE 2.0 will be announced, as you said, after the crash, and then yes, agreed, buy along with it.
Just another day in wonderland....
Bernanke will print more....
And the China/Japan buyers will become sellers
out of domestic need....
So ...
What is the future interest rate of "MONOPOLY MONEY" ????
love the way you phrase Summers. He will blow up the entire US in the next 5 years, just like the way he blew up the Harvard portfolio.
One thing interesting is that he doesn't like Mohamed El-Erin. He doesn't like the concept of "new Normal'. He let him go when he was at Harvard. History proves that El-Erin was right.
One wonders when the will get around to investigating Rahm Emanuels role in Freddie Mac?
The ties between indicted banker Allen Stanford and members of Congress -- including millions in contributions and weekends in five-star Caribbean resorts -- are now the subject of a sweeping federal investigation.
http://www.miamiherald.com/486/story/1399470-p3.html
Allen Stanford did not set out to defraud anyone. Allen Stanford does not run a ponzi scheme.
Allen Stanford just sucks at math.
In other news, Alan Stanford has been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace prize.
He's nominated for honorary suck at math PHD in theoretical ponzi financial mathematical systems. LOL
the very left and very popular firedoglake blog has a petition to have Rahm investigated
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/investigaterahm?source=web&subsourc...
If it happens at all, it would be after the statute of limitations expire.
What is the statute of limitation on treason? Heh
And as far as ongiong crimes go, such as a cover-up, no statute of limitations effect there yet . . .
If Morgan Stanley is right and the 30 year mortgage rate hits 7.5% and with the 8,000 tax credit ending plus the so called prime mortgage borrowers just starting to walk away due to resets and being so far underwater I just dont see how housing recovers at all - I see another 15% drop in prices at least if they are even close to being right and the 30 year goes to even 6.5% - What do you think ?
Seriously.... What else is Obama willing to sign off on?
He's already giving the okay for another terrorist bombing like Bush II.
The willingness of this man to sell out amazes me.
I guess my only hope is he's the reason why it wasn't worse (if the story wasn't completely staged and farcical)
cme, aapl, bidu, goog, ice
blowoff tops
off topic but seems the MSM picked up that obscure story from a Michigan paper
Dutch probe claims of Nigerian bomber accomplicehttp://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFLDE5BR04I20091228
ghost towers of china.....
shades of Bangkok in the late 90's
brand new empty tall buildings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ektMQGbW3wk
buried in Jim Grant article:
“Inflation is upon us,” he says.