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Frontrunning: November 24
- The Goldman "leak" was right all along: Q3 preliminary GDP at 2.8% (Hatzius had it at 2.7%), massive drop from previous fudged number of 3.5% (Bloomberg), ex CfC and other stimuli Q3 GDP was negative
- More central bank secrecy: HBOS and RBS bailed out with secret last minute emergency financing (FT)
- Russian central bank cuts interest rates to record lows (BBC)
- It's beginning to look a lot like a "W" (MarketWatch)
- Huffington: Will the unemployment disaster be Obama's Katrina (HuffPo)
- A real-time view of the commercial real estate market, or lack thereof (CoStar)
- Cohan: Goldman Sachs: the case for the defense (FT)
- China sees share fall on banks' fundraising fears (BBC)
- Icahn outbids Penn National Gaming for starting bid on Fontainebleau (WSJ)
- Rajaratnam denies SEC insider trading charges (Reuters)
- IMF chief outlines risks of an early exit (FT)
- Government deficits and private growth (WSJ)
- How "global" are global imbalances? (CFR)
- Foreclosures will keep rising through 2010 (LA Times)
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Goldman Leaks: "That's one small squirt for man; one giant leak for mankind."
"one giant leak for squidkind."
You've gotta love a 25% error in the GDP. Can't say I didn't see that one coming.
Q3 preliminary GDP at 2.8%... ex CfC and other stimuli Q3 GDP was negative.
Gee, what a shock.
Come on now. It was "only" a 20% revision downwards. Let's not be so hard on our economic overlords.
Which is more insane? The official Government economic statistics or people who believe them? Did you notice the question was which was "more" insane, not if one or the other is insane?
The powers that be (place here any bogeyman you wish to include) are weaving an alternative reality filled with economic numbers, official statements and various supporting characters and entities. Which leads to a simple question. The answer can be as complicated as you wish but I like to distill things down to its simplest form.
Why are the powers that be creating an alternative reality for public consumption and why is the pubic rejecting real life first hand experience to the contrary and basically accepting the alternative reality at face value?
Why? For the same reason that virtually all humans require a belief in some religious/spiritual power.
I think Bradbury touched on that in Fahrenheit 451 with his description of interactive TV which allowed people to create their own past and present. Marx's opiate for the people. Boy, was Bradbury (and Marx) right about how easy it is to control the populace by lying to them.
cog, baudrillard explored this question quite extensively.
"The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control-- and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against an ideal." J.B. Simulacra and Simulation
just found this on a google:
http://www.dreamgate.com/dream/articles_rcw/baudrillard-dream.htm
maybe not directly relevant to your exploration, but on other levels, perhaps quite poignant, especially if you consider cyberspace to be the interface between "reality" and the unconscious.
Because as Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes, said long ago: "What we wish, we readily believe."
People, unlike sheep, keep each other in line.
This is like any situation in the history of human beings when enough psychopaths gravite to positions of control and start pillaging en masse - it gets top heavy and they all point fingers.
The only recovery without total collapse is the majority of the US as a 3rd world country - a slide into Orwell's 1984: most of us will either be proles or part of the hyper-surveilled buffer class.
i choose the end of blade runner.
Wow It's almost like Goldman had the inside track, what a shock! So will markets shoot up on the "good news" that the GDP number was way worse than initially reported? The old investment strategy of buy on bad fundamentals...I know I heard Cramer talking about it before. Now I have to wonder how Kudlow will spin this turd into an excuse to be bullish.
hmm... I don't I don't remember the preliminary estimate coming with a ±25% error band.
time to roll out one more viewing of Old Boy versus Evil Goldman Squid ...
they've been re-co-located in a dark pool they're unfamiliar with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yvSmSGjNg
Very nice!
Yup Goldman is brilliant. They can tell us the truth and still take us to the cleaners. I'm starting to have a new found respect for those guys. and yes, it is sad.
Goldmanites are good.
Russia's interest rates record lows at 9%.
duke that was ah!!some
Hummmmm.
http://www.thesmartasset.com/mini-madoff-goldman350.jpg
HSBC gives retail goldbugs the boot:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125902295608261455.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFT...
Nice trampoline for the dollar at 75. Boing! Boing! Boing!
Of course it looks like a "W" - it's Dubya's final message to the world
So does that mean when the dollar goes down to 0 that will be Obama's final message to the world :-P
It was obvious that the GDP data was leveraged.
I put up a sticky note in the office calling for 2.4% GDP before the print...i was a little red faced that day but the revision today brings some good validation.
Why revise the # at all if it is a fantasy # anyway?
They knew that a 'more positive than expected' GDP would trigger a stock rally, but a later downward revision would have only a minimal effect.