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Open Thread
Due to an intensive travel schedule over the next 24 hours, posting will be limited (and if prior travel experience is any indication, Greece riots over the next week may be anticipated). Please consider this thread open to mock, ridicule, debase and taunt the now completed Stress Farce, as well as to brainstorm anything and everything else that may be of interest.
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Mission accomplished
A $500B haircut on $20+ trillion of assets? A 2.5% decline is a stress?
Sue Herrera on CNBC, in a perfect breathless Marylin Monroe voice; "And they're so much better than expected."
Primal Scream
And some other dork; "They came out just as leaked."
Inserting enema nozzle.
Portugal states all banks passed stress tests. (Want that gold back from the BIS, eh?)
Starting Ativan and Thorazine Drip.
Simon Whoozitsname n CNBC; "New era of financial transparency."
Switching channel to Jerry Springer
(Openly weeping)
knuckles,
We were silly to think it was any other way than it is. The real stress test is can we take the speed of the unmasking at a faster pace, or not? We don't have enough fuel but we must land the plane anyway. How do you tell the passengers this, who bought tickets, assuming there was enough fuel in the plane?
About those enemas you've been taking lately. Er, uh, it may not be the Ativan and Thorazine you like. A quick theory...sometimes trauma survivors subconsciously re-enact the original trauma repeatedly in an attempt at mastery of the trauma, or in an attempt to get a better result.
Just sayin'. It could be a more healthy way of dealing with it than other forms of, er, self abuse.
Now about Jerry.... don't you fucking do it man, I will send the cops and the medics to your place. Don't even. Step away from the remote dude. NOW!
"A quick theory...sometimes trauma survivors subconsciously re-enact the original trauma repeatedly in an attempt at mastery of the trauma, or in an attempt to get a better result."
That's actually an excellent description of classic depression, where we seem to be in an endless positive feedback loop of self inflicted trauma. The MSM, TV networks, music and movie industry combine to create a distracted society that's designed to kill the pain of self induced trauma (depression) while never actually solving the underlying issues causing it. The powers that be don't want mentally and physically healthy self aware motivated individuals. Thus we stay perpetually dependent upon the morphine drip provided by the TV, music and movie industries.
Speaking for myself, I think that Zero Hedge should be on the list.
that is so fucking true, dude. all are a salve for a half-healed wound, and not a very good one at that - I can fix most of our problems in one fell swoop (literally) - make a smart bomb simultaneously destroys every television set in the world - may not be pretty but it would be effective...
Do it.
i kinda prefer the 'blipverts' idea...
(google it... :^)
Beware of delusions of adequacy. You get lulled into a state of false bliss.
The wound never does heal...the cure for suffering is more suffering. Do not take opium...put salt in the wound. For when you take opium, you sleep and when you sleep you are not. And to be, that is everything.
This is why I love Zero Hedge and all of you fellow wounded with your eyes wide open.
Nicely put.
And all horribly sleep-deprived.
Maybe we have just a really distorted belief in what man is meant to be. I used to travel to Manaus fairly regularly and the electronics companies there had a fairly transient work force. The native males (in particular) were very undependable. They would come out of the jungle and work for a while until they had earned enough to buy what they wanted and then one day just not show up. They knew their life was not sticking widgets together.
Here in the US we identify what we are with what we do for a living and we judge the quality of our life based on how much we acquire... pretty wacky, eh?
"Here in the US we identify what we are with what we do for a living and we judge the quality of our life based on how much we acquire... pretty wacky, eh?"
Yes, it is and it illustrates how completely divorced we are from ourselves. If you have not already done so, you might be interested in my series that can be downloaded from Scribd.com for free.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33507389/Welcome-to-the-Insane-Asylum-Our-Collective-Psychosis
Hey Cog Dis.
Check out this extremely interesting post.. it's from a Christian blogger but this post in particular is more about the evolution of traditional male and female roles and how they helped shape civilization.
We talk so much about greed and regulation and income distribution and so on and so forth and lost in the conversation is the simple question of what kind of society to we really want? Do we care at all about gender roles? And clearly all this greed and competition is driven by a deeper biological impulse in both sexes to go forth and fruitfuilly multiply or die trying. If we don't master this impulse and get above it as a species we might very well be doomed to fail while other civilizations amongst the stars figure it out and thrive in our place.
The IT and biotech revolution is heralding an era of mind blowing transformation in human affairs not seen since the invention of civilization itself as determined by the rise of agriculture under the political and moral guidance of the The Bible. In reaction to the Romans you had the Jesus update...then Islam came about as competing societal O.S.pushing back against Christianity...and now, as always in the face of unbearable civilization-threatening political/financial seizmic activity, we are about to move onto something else... Will we come to worship Google? Could it be that we are moving towards a singularity were a huge paradigm shift is just beyond the corner but we will not know what it is until we are there? I dunno... But something's going to give... I'm thinking a bit loosely here but thought some of the ZH readers would find this an interesting read. I certainly did.
http://matthew5sixteen.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/the-greatest-in-the-kingdom-of-heaven/
I'll read it later. Thank you.
CD
You really should read this. I'd love to get your thoughts on it.
Well, I followed my own advice and I read the article once to trigger my bias and cognitive trip wires and then read it a second time to soak in. I then read the reference article by Baumeister. The articles reminded me of something Todd Harrison of Minyanville often says. My apologies as I am most likely misquoting. "Where you stand depends upon where you (were) sit(ting)".
One of the problems I consistently see in all modern societies is the deliberate blindness to history that is any older than a few hundred years. Even then, the really good stuff only happened over the past 50 or so years. Everything before was so ....er....primitive. The effect is of looking at the world with very narrow blinders on.
The basis for the article and for the reference article by Roy F Baumeister is that people hundreds and even thousands of years ago did things pretty much for the same reasons we do today. That while technology may have dramatically changed our world, "human nature" has not changed. I disagree, at least about the "human nature" part.
More to the point, cultures were formed and still form for a variety of reasons that may or may not be recognized and understood today. The role of woman in society has not always been as it is today. Far from it in fact. When I speak of indigenous cultures, most think of North American Indians or Australian aboriginals and so on. But 4 or 6 or 10 thousand years ago, I would argue that all cultures (from our current point of view) were indigenous. In those cultures, woman were often revered and honored and seen as "naturally" carrying or possessing higher value than men, often (but not exclusively) because women created human life (with the help of man).
This subject could consume dozens of pages and is well beyond the scope of this comment space. But if there was one consistant theme of my 5 part series on our collective insanity, it was that we have veered wildly off the path of mental and cultural health and sanity and towards collective insanity and ultimately suicide many thousands of years ago when there was a conscious and deliberate decision to attempt to break from our natural ties to earth and to each other and towards selfish pursuit of power and material "wealth". This required, no demanded, that women be removed from the alter of respect and adoration and reduced to that of litter bearer of the womb that would produce workers, soldiers and now consumers.
Seen from this point of view, Baumeister's view of the male/female dynamics isn't "wrong" but rather is simply viewed from a contemporary position as "X" which is then extrapolated backwards as if "X" always was and always will be. This last sentence is such a simplistic summary of Baumeister that I could tear it apart as silly and wrong on every level. Like I said, this subject could consume dozens of pages. Baumeister is standing where he is because of where he was sitting prior to standing. I propose that we all need to re-examine where we were sitting, and why, before we examine where we stand.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33507389/Welcome-to-the-Insane-Asylum-Our-Collective-Psychosis
I haven't read either article yet (I plan to), but your thoughts and the other poster's about the deliberative blindness of history rang true with me.
You both might be interested in the following, if you hadn't already found them:
The Long Now Foundation - www.longnow.org - its free, downloadable seminars are really fantastic. Relevant here:
www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/feb/24/world-without-us-world-us/
www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/jul/12/five-ways-use-history-well/
And for the amazing adaptive ancient wisdom that we're losing -
http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html
No need to read loooong stuff...just post a link for CD to read it
What a nonsense assertion.
Avarice has as much in common with biological impulse as crack-smoking does...That is to say NONE.
To ignore the role that sex and pair bonding play in the human animal's incessant drive for status is utter nonsense. My phrasing might not always be the most elegant but I stand by my statement that war and sex are intrinsically related and since war is what drove the development of finance (see Niall Ferguson's The Cash Nexus)it would seem ridiculous to me that we will ever figure our way out of the toxic paper bag that we have created for ourselves.
Thanks for reading the article CD and sharing your thoughts. I think it is difficult for us to imagine how gender roles exactly ended up as they did. In a perfect world we could all be standing at the same place when take our seats. I doubt that an individual homoerectus woke up one day with the entire conspiracy against women worked out. I don't think it at all heretical to consider that birth control and the ensuing sexual revolution have thrown century old assumptions on their heads. Are we to believe that TPTB only "allowed" this advancement to further increase the workforce without considering the impact it would have on the traditional notion of family life?
There is a lot to discuss here. Men and women have been torturing each other since the beginning of time using the tools at their disposal. While I am no expert in the matter beyond my own experience to deny that we respond to biological imperitaves seems to me to deny that we are in fact but crazy animals. In my estimation our humaness is that which separates us from our animal instincts which means our ability to keep our "animal spirits" in check: discipline. And discipline is sorely lacking in our current itteration of civilization.
Perhaps you've already read this book. "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origin of Human Violence."
Here's a quote from Amazon:
Contradicting the common belief that chimpanzees in the wild are gentle creatures, Harvard anthropologist Wrangham and science writer Peterson have witnessed, since 1971, male African chimpanzees carry out rape, border raids, brutal beatings and warfare among rival territorial gangs. In a startling, beautifully written, riveting, provocative inquiry, they suggest that chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human warfare?which would make modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression. They buttress their thesis with an examination of the ubiquitous rape among orangutans, gorilla infanticide and male-initiated violence and hyenas' territorial feuds, drawing parallels to the lethal raiding among the Yanomamo people of Brazil's Amazon forests and other so-called primitive tribes, as well as to modern "civilized" mass slaughter. In their analysis, patriotism ("stripped to its essence... male defense of the community") breeds aggression, yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, they reject the presumed inevitability of male violence and male dominance over women.
http://www.amazon.fr/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/...
I'll check that out. Thanks.
We cannot forget to mention the Bonobo monkeys who are the antithesis of chimps. They literally make love not war. Almost all conflictual situations are resolved through sexual interaction (and yes this includes mano-a-mano).
And while Cog Dis justifiably preaches the virtues of community and cooperation one need not go much further than ZH itself to witness the kind of rabid gun totting individualism that quite frankly doesn't promise much better if they ever get their hands on the reigns of power.
History is proving to be an ongoing regression of violence begetting violence. And I am the first to agree that when it comes to protecting family and community against a real or perceived threat, the human animal doesn't seem to give much credence to any other alternative. And this coming from a guy who has never thrown a punch in his forty years of being or even held a functional gun.
The fiction writer's palet has two colours:sex and violence. The central driver of all narrative forms (inclduing investment "stories") is conflict. A proper story builds to a climax then collapses through its denouement. Try as we might to experiment with this function it remains the golden rule, the Aristotlian three act structure. I find it amusing that many the optimist cite the fact that the end has been declared as imminent for millenia but that since we always seem to beat the denouement and pump the narrative towards a greater, more exhilirating climax that this is proof the only way to go in the long run is up. But that simply doesn't make for a very good story. All great stories must come to an end.
What happens if "the end" is not an event but rather a process, as in a series of small events? For a writer in 1980 to say the end is coming, what exactly is s/he talking about when s/he says "the end"? The end of all humanity, with no more humans walking on the earth? Or the end of the way society functions, the give and take of life as it is known at that precise moment?
For those who are 40 or older, consider again what life was like when you were a senior in high school. Since we're talking 20 plus years ago, there was no Internet, no personal computer to speak of, no cell phones or 300 channels on DirecTV. If so-called "advancement" were frozen 20 years ago would we not be different, see differently, than we actually do today? Can't we say that "the end" did happen while at the same time a "new beginning" materialized at the exact same moment?
Our perception of time as linear has a lot to do with how we "see" our world. If we were instead to view our world one frame per year, would we not see a different world each time and thus say "the end" was here and here and here.
What I remember most distinctly about the 80s was seeing The Day After at the tender age of 13 and then spending the next week looking in the sky waiting for the missiles to come. The fact that the headlines were screaming 1 minute to midnight didn't help either.. Funny enough I haven't felt that level of pure existential fear/cognitive dissonance until the week that followed Lehman's collapse. My feeling is that our cleverness is up against insurmountable odds.. We keep narrowly escaping from the clutches of defeat and think somehow that we are better off for it. The second link referenced by @DarkAgeAhead is a clip of National Geographic's Wade Davis speaking about the shrinking of the ethnosphere.. Not only is it a thought provoking clip but it also gives instructions on how to make a shit knife (hint..it needs to be coooold out). It would be best for humanity if the West could implode BEFORE it destroys every last aboriginal culture for it is they...the meek...who stand to inherit the Earth and bring it back to something resembling it's former glory.
http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html
I have to admit, I have not yet been tough enough to try to make my own shit knife just yet.
ADDED - for a fantastic written version of Davis' Ethnosphere (the sum of all dreams, thought, inspiration, laws, and I'd add markets since the dawn of consciousness), this really clarified how culture works functionally as evolutionary adaptation (PDF):
www.ed.psu.edu/icik/2004Proceedings/section7-davis.pdf
So just as we're undergoing a Death of Birth in the biosphere (google EO Wilson), we're also causing a "Standardization of Spirit" (Jane Jacobs) or "Great Forgetting" (Wade Davis) in the Ethnosphere. Our shared adaptive mind evaporates just as the most severe ecological/planetary boundaries are just emerging.
All because humanity is now a literal biogeologic force of nature - you guys may have read about this already, but google the "Anthropocene" and you'll find some excellent work by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel chemist, all worth reading.
Wade is always very quotable.
"If there is one lesson I have drawn from my travels, it is that cultural and biological diversity are far more than the foundation of stability; they are an article of faith, a fundamental truth that indicates the way things are supposed to be.... There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills, and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is the most important challenge of our times."
Wade is a new discovery for me. Made the price of admission to ZH worth it!
What I find unsettling however is how chipper he seems about the whole thing... He must be hedged with a spot reserved in many different ethnic communities where he can retreat should the great unravelling be in his lifetime.
In all seriousness though I find his work, and in particular, his presentations invaluable even if they make me sadder about how badly industrial civilization has screwed up!
Absolutely, thank you for that quote.
Ah, yeah. I believe he writes about that in his Ethnosphere and the Academy speech, quite well (and I'm sure many other places as well).
They do mention the Bonobo in their book but don't seem to think we are descended from those apes. The big distinction between the evolution of the Bonobo vs Chimpanzee (and us as a separate branch) has to do with the habitability of our native terrain. The Bonobo evolved in a nutrient-rich environment, whereas the Chimpanzee and we evolved in a hard-scrabble environment where nutrition literally had to be scraped from the soil or hunted.
Another interesting point is that the Bonobo never left the trees... Something about being bipedal and Savannah bound leads to violence... Oh yeah...giant cats with fangs three feet long.. .that'll do it!
this is not aimed "at" you Wyndtunnel, just picked a spot in this "conversation" thread to reiterate: gender is an artificial construct, variable from culture to culture, in order to further the nationstates current agenda - it has little to do with what actual humans would create for themselves if left "alone". . .
currently males have dominance over the various nation's desires, and therefore females are "othered" into subservient roles, particularly sexually. . . males and females get their rulebooks early, and question not the game, choosing to believe they are unique and have free will, at least in the "west". . . I seriously doubt many females in more funda-mental nationstates would choose to be secluded or veiled. . . as most females I know in the "west" would also prefer not to be viewed solely as sexual objects, less than fully human.
but sure, everyone thinks they have "free will" and the culture has no effect on the way they present themselves to the world. . .
a good read would be Leonard Shlain's "The Alphabet vs. The Goddess" or "Sex, Time and Power". . .
http://www.sextimepower.com/
The whole point of evolution is the advance of technology. Somewhere along the line, the software will advance to the point where consciousness is digitised. At that point, the human machine relation will be reversed and we humans will be looking at a super being of our own creation. Human will then start to die off from there.
very interesting . the individual is the vessel of all the universe
as it relates to humanity. the first and last. alpha/omega.
that which is our own creation requires our consent to exist.
language, convention, currency, culture, technology .. all of it
depending on our consent. but "we" don't get it.
so first we need I, then "we", then comes our creation. generational
hand downs of our creation figure in, existing infrastructure. some useful,
some deadly. "our" creation/consent/re creation.
the mind can sort this out? one at a time, peacefully. it requires our
attention and our humility and the resulting respect and kindness. imo.
a generosity of spirit would be good among like minded individuals.
slave masters don't qualify as honest brokers, or anything else, consistent
though they may be.
speaking of consistency, "newtonian sleep" comes to mind.
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=8hEYwk0bypY&feature=related
CD, your series was an awful, terrible lot of awesomeness. Thanks!
When you do eventually read it later CD can you read it to me as a bedtime story, please.......are there pictures to look at too?.......I like pictures, and I need to sleep deeply.
Knuckles has a recipe for you above.
shut up.
scratch, sniff this
And it's also wrong from a motivational standpoint. You have to go to the street concept of "juice" to understand trauma. Juice is when you do something bad and then try to benefit from the "rep" of the original bad deed. In other words you kill a few people and then try to push people around who don't want to be killed. Trauma works like that but it's a trap for the victim. The victim doesn't necessarily want to relive the trauma at various volume levels to understand it. They simply want to try every approach to it. There's only 3 approaches according to basic fight or flight reaction. Avoid it (flight). Kill it. (fight). Or transform it so that it becomes less likely to exist any longer. This would appear to take multiple fights and flights. The problem is that just like everyone at the top has been "captured" by bad behavior everyone involved in these human processes is "captured" as well. Which is why you get the "feigned transformation" phenomenon. Or the this time it's different.
Then instead of using the repeating pattern of the abuse to solve the problem the simply use it to hurt individuals and then keep hurting them at various volumes until they try to find some crippled way of living within a range of abuse at some point on the continuum that's not ideal but tolerable. Depression is simply a redirecting force. It's a way to give up on a approach even when the person believes very deeply that the approach is sound and will work. Without depression we'd be stuck in an endless loop of trying to the same stupid thing. Which is why drug companies want so desperately to get everyone on anti depressants. Because when they come out of their depressed cycle they are going to be different using different approaches and less "manageable".
The difference between societal and governmental usage of these reasonings and "explanations" and "justifications" is subtle and simply involves a willingness to be extremely self assured about the "rightness" of something as well as having a good "cover fire of it's for a good purpose". Here's a good example of it being used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyNuriXG3BQ
++ excellent post, from beginning to end!
or.. how many times can i fall down before i cant get up again ?
Great stuff, knukles.
"The market can stay irrational longer than your Thorazine drip lasts."
(blubbering laughter, drooling, glassy eyes)
Hmm. Musta gotta jolt of N2O with that 'zine zing
Technically, it was not a drip...
so YOU are the one watching! They have to have at least one viewer, and I thank you for your dedication and for taking one for the team. Please hang in there and continue reportage.
- Ned
A $500B haircut
What, is John Edwards at it again?
LOL
"Doesn't everyone pay $500B for a haircut?" remarked John Edwards as his stylist is once again flown in on a private 747.
Plus tip -- $10.
"Doesn't everyone pay $500B for a haircut?"
No, some just payed $500.00, and shut down the entire airport.
as the US.
i spent some time there. it was nice. i think they are way ahead of us here in the usa. we are like neanderthals in comparison to the europeans. thats the way it seems to me when i watch our fabricated lying media and tv and newspapers, see our use of war for the profit of big business, hear the incessant desire to blame everything on liberals and socialists, even though both parties are in actuality controlled by the wall street group which also controls and gave birth to the CIA. european governments more or less work for the interest of their people. the EU government is another story, as I have both positive and negative feelings about the brussels government.
And American cities are uglier than snot compared to Europe.
Have a great weekend guys and safe trip.
Well, what can be said that hasn't already been said... oh right!
http://mfc.elmberg.net/files/images/trichet_watch.jpg
Stress test=keep bond vigalantes away.... lehman anyone bueler anyone
Anyone going to Chelsea's wedding this weekend?
Ugly chicks + lawyers + politicians = boring party.
Though, I bet the parents of the bride have some good drugs.
... and cigars.
I donno, not with his taste in "cigars"
I donno, not with his taste in "cigars"
I'd think that the problem would be her taste on the cigars.
arrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh
Ohhhhhhhhhh!
Do lesbians get grooms as "beards." Hillary I mean...
Hungarian CB; Hungarian banks pass tests by wide margin!?!.......no IMF credit line as of last weekend, right?
http://www.pszaf.hu/en/topmenu/press/pszafen_pressreleases/stress_test.html
".... Both OTP Bank’s and FHB Mortgage Bank’s results, based on consolidated data according to the International Financial Reporting Standards, are sound and well above the expected threshold under all scenarios, including the adverse scenario supplemented by an additional sovereign shock....."
Thanks for the insight M73........and very illuminating as per the lowest common denominator imho.
Here's what I zeroed in on from the article;
"The most important accomplishment of the stress test is that, beyond the regularly published information, the stakeholders are in a position to receive comparable data on the capital status of the banks through a coordinated exercise with a commonly agreed methodology from a prudential and financial stability perspective."
Speaks volumes about the stakeholders........who are the stakeholders? And what was that commonly agreed methodology only the stakeholders know?
How about California gold?
Special Report: High finance and corporate pot, California stylehttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66M1YH20100723
Bon voyage!
I am! I'm going to Chelsea's wedding! It's a really big fucking deal!
Joe B.
Outfrigginstanding sodbuster. Time for a diaper change. Thanks ;>)
Ah- think I could catch a ride with somebody? Anybody?
Joe B.
if you promise to keep your mouth shut Joe
Say "Hi" to MadHedgeFundTrader -- he'll no doubt be there.
He's probably The Band too.
But wait...won't the "other" Tyler's be posting?
It's the first annual ZH Montauk to Nantucket  yacht race; all of the Tylers will be participating
Boatloads of Brad Pitt look-a-likes...yippee.
I am Spartacus !
No, I am Spartacus!
Since when were news writers ever Spartacus?
LMAO!!!! Nice!!
Left is right. Up is down. Oh the unbearbale lightness of being stressed.
Anyone have a stress test date for the "East" European & Baltic banks?....LMAO
Thanks, ZeroHedge for everything.
Be careful in your travels.
:D
I have to admit I am relieved. I been so concerned about the existence of some real problems all this time and now I have been shown I was just being big silly.
Everybody back in the pool! False alarm.
bass was on cnbs earlier. he made the point made earlier here about the stress tests, sovereigns and held to maturity etc. point being the tests were useless. faber agreed.
I would just like to say that the implosion of MBS and the swoon in the banking system in 2008 was a symptom of the problem, not the cause of the problem.
Nothing has been fixed
we have a problem? What? Did we not fix that little thing?
Travel safe Ty low volume ramp ahead.....
In the U.S., there were 914 listed ETFs at the end of June, up 21% from a year ago, according to the National Stock Exchange, a data provider. Since 2007, ETFs have raked in $480 billion in net cash inflows, bringing total assets to $780 billion.
ZH finally let me in the club. Sweet!
Me too!!!
Hope I don't lower the neighborhood value.
Welcome to both of you! Newbies is soooo cute!
I know. It's so sweet how they're all proud and everything!
Perhaps they'll learn quicker than I did that it's best to stick to baseball....
Welcome aboard !
Here it is....
US Official Policy
1) Counterfeiting/dilution is ok....
2) Changing accounting rules to improve valuations is ok....
3) Incurring debt to pay off debt is ok.....even when it is impossible to pay it back....
4) Fascism is ok....The revolving employment door ie the SEC to the IBs is ok....in order to game the system to the max....Regulatory capture is ok...
5) Making the US small business segment smaller and smaller by increasing the size of government is ok....government wants to eat more apples while cutting down the orchards...it's ok....
7) It's ok that retirees make 0% interest on savings.....the goverment is pressing the new idea that work should not be rewarded...It's ok....
8) An unfair stock exchange with regards to electronic front running....It's ok....
9) Although trillions were just lost ....it's OK that no one has been held accountable....and it is entirely ok to not hold anyone accountable this time...but next time will be different...It's ok....
10) Its OK to lie about going after the natural resources in Iraq and Afghanistan...It's OK...
11) Its OK to eliminate the middle class in the US....its OK...
12) Hey its OK to keep the same politicos in office that caused many of the problems....and to allow the lobbyist system to control the population....Its's OK...
Hey everything is OK....
And this is just the beginning of the list....
Pretty accurate summary of economic policy. You've got to love the market distortions which are growing exponentionaly due to these 'policies'.
A young man falls off of a boat. He screams, "Help! I can't swim!
"Don't worry," says the captain of the boat, "We have a floatation ring!"
The young man continues to flail uncontrollably. He screams "Help! Help! Throw me the floatation ring!"
The captain responds, "I was just trying to make you feel better about your situation. Yes, we have a floatation ring but it is back at the dock. Actually, I THINK it is back at the dock."
(You should have seen the look on that poor man's face as he slipped under the water.)
First, you assume that you have a life-vest. - Ned
Nice list. The question is, is it intentional? Can we establish that it's intentional if it is, without conspiracy theories? How can we get to the bottom of this?
is it intentional? yes
Can we establish that it's intentional if it is, without conspiracy theories? apparent as the nose on your face. look up the definition of conspiracy theories
How can we get to the bottom of this? the suggestions I've heard that sound workable are along the lines of stringing up the apparent perps and continue ferretting out the unnamed.
conspiracy fact is not consipracy theory
every major economic crime (in the criminal trial system) usually involves a "conspiracy"
(Late entry): it's intentional if laws are enacted or changed in order to effect the change. The policies instituted in the 1980s to favor capital (PTB) over income (Middle class) are very clear, right there on the books. Laws including the tax code were designed to favor outsourcing, increase "productivity" (income deflation), produce inflation and grow the FIRE sector while favoring capital accumulation (reducing taxes on cap gains, dividends and passive income, reducing taxes on large estates and the highest income brackets).
Upcoming cardinal climax good for gold
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-upcoming-cardinal-climax...
BRING IT ON BABY
travel safe Ty...be home by July 30 for the climax
If the poles actually do flip, that's gonna cause one helluva swirlie!
Luckily, I'll have my gold bars to keep me safe...
Sarcasm duly noted...
Arks anyone?
good article. thanks for the link.
Or widespread chaotic defaults and deflation could be bad for gold.
Anyone short everything next week?...
This seems as good a place as any for my final spam of some friday playlist action
some favorites of mine: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5E7FB2A12195500D
and a new set i'm working on: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C3229B6DB98CFEC2
peace up...A-town down d(-_-)b
Great stuff, Steak, Thx.
Euro stress tests are "bad news" announced on Friday pm after European markets closed. If they were good news, they would have been announced on Monday.
The US Fed and Treas Dept coordinated "good news" to occur in (still open) US markets: timed to coincide with F earnings (predictably good), and curiously timed announcements by TARP recipients GE and HIG to increase dividends.
It is a Euro-sham, incorporating the "best practices" of Govt lying perfected by the US since Sep 2008.
Be careful of people stopping you to ask directions...
and all your food and liquids
but have a nice time
I find it hard to believe this public announcement. Thinking a body-double experiment?At any rate, please return safe and un-chipped, err, unharmed!
European bank stress test, I mock thee.
+1000 haha
Debt is an efficient tool... It ensures access to other peoples’ raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms. — Susan George, A Fate Worse Than Debt
“Spinning” the stress tests is critical for the rulers of international banking. IMO, these bankers use the IMF as a stalking horse for world government; its pattern of swallowing up sovereign countries has been the same since its inception. Greece, Latvia, Hungary, Iceland, Bosnia, Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Argentina, Tanzania, Indonesia, Equador…
The IMF, headed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the World Bank—the most powerful bank in the world headed by the Goldmanite Robert Zoellick-- are agents for global empire, a global empire for a few greedy men run by a global corporatocracy-- a collective of corporations, banks and governments.
John Perkins’ job as an ‘economic hit man’ (EHM) for the corporatocracy was to manipulate economic forecasts in Less-Developed Countries (LDCs) to justify wild load growths between 17 and 20 percent. It was to justify massive commercial building projects for corporate interests and as a swindle to ensnare world leaders in a web of debt and dependent loyalty.
His job was “to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars…to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promoted U.S. commercial interests.”
The banks give loans to the LCDs for the projects. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to the member corporations (the creditors) to build their bloated massive infrastructure, the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an “economic hit man” is successful, says Perkins, the country defaults and the corporatocracy Mafia moves in for its additional pound of flesh—UN votes, installation of military bases, precious resources such as oil or canals... “And, of course, the debtor still owes us the money.”
Wrote Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004):
“[Debts] were accumulated without the consent of the majority of people in those countries and served to make the corporatocracy and a few wealthy Third World families even richer—but debt-forgiveness is not what this is all about. The G8 (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia), the World Bank and the IMF are once again exploiting these nations and they are calling it “debt forgiveness.” They are insisting on ‘conditionalities’ that are cloaked in phrases like ‘good governance,’ ‘sound economics,’ and ‘trade liberalization.’ While the language is enticing, it is also terribly deceptive. These policies are ‘good’ and ‘sound’ only if you are looking at them through corporate windows.
“The countries that agree to such conditionalities are called upon to privatize their health, education, electric, water, and other public services—in other words, sell them to the corporatocracy. They are forced to drop subsidies and trade restrictions that support local businesses while at the same time accepting that the U.S. and other G8 countries can continue to subsidize certain G8 businesses and erect trade barriers on imports that threaten G8 industries.”
Says Global Issues: "Many developing nations are in debt and poverty partly due to the policies of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank."
Robert Zoelick is a Bilderberger and a Trilateralist and a member of the CFR and a member of PNAC and a Squid alumnus.
http://www.nndb.com/people/832/000123463/
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a Bilderberger
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/06/01/12158.shtml
When they said they stressed a 6% gain in unemployment, did they really work that through to housing prices, asset prices, and incomes (and therefore consumer defaults)?
Similarly, a 20% decline in stock prices - does that really have any impact on bank balance sheets unless you follow the scenario to it's logical conclusion: a 20% decline in the value of the bank's collateral?
Just wondering out loud if these numbers were created to 'shock' the reader, but were not really followed upon. I don't see how a 6% rise in unemployment wouldn't have a MASSIVE impact on a bank balance sheet - much less an economy as a whole. And of course, government deficits, value of sovereign debt, etc.
Sort of like how the US banks still hold most of the home equity loans near par, when essentially there is little to no value left in them.
dupe
pg.42 0.6% rise in unemployment NOT 6%.
So how the stress in the farce tests worked.
lizzy or anyone
Care to share the link to the actual full report? They seem to have hidden it well from the various search engines. Or I don't know the exact name of the report so I'm drawing a blank. All I can find is the "official" sugar coated summary press release.
Summary report at CEBS
http://stress-test.c-ebs.org/documents/Summaryreport.pdf
Thank you kind sir/madam.
Keep your powder dry, my man....
Topics to be covered this weekend: Gold - Bad! US Economy - Good! Jews - Bad!
That should keep things rolling until TD gets back.
akin to masturbating till blisters come and the arm tires without expected outcome. Damn that viagra!
lol
Economic markets are no more real or true than any book with Favio on the cover.
Reality exists only in the economy of Nature and its derivative markets!
Ok, I'll bite. I hate all this discussion/speculation regarding potential Fed QE. It's boring & it's bullshit. Here's why:
No matter the activity, event and/or occasion, all animals, human or otherwise, deploy their best shit first. Job interview? Check. First date? Check. Fishing (trying your best fly/lure first)? Check. Go on, think of any other instance one might encounter.
In no case does anyone ever "save the best for last". That's just a saying, typically uttered in (complimentary) surprise by another commenting on some kind of miraculous comeback/turnaround.
So what does this have to do with future QE? Simple - Ben and his CB buddies have already used their best shit. It didn't work. And we're not even talking about diminishing marginal returns. For example, if $2, 5, 10, 25T didn't work the first time around, then just double/treble/quadruple the amount.
No, what I'm talking about is that QE fundamentally didn't work. It's not a function of degree/volume, it's a function of physics. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip, and you can't gain monetary velocity if people don't want to borrow. This is true regardless of how willing lenders may or may not be, and how much excess reserves lenders may or may not possess.
Printing money has nothing to do with attitude. Once the herd has determined that lions are afoot, they will not rest easy, they will not take leisurely sips of water, and they will spook at the slightest hint of danger.
Ever watch a nature show? What about ones covering primates? See how nervous the smaller monkeys are? Swoosh, in a blink of an eye, a huge Harpey eagle swoops down and carries a crying monkey away.
That's us; before we were primates, we were fish, and before that, yeast. So Ben is going up, say around 500m-1b fucking years of evolution where only the nervous survived. Good luck with that.
So how does Ben attempt to alter behavior? That's what QE 1.0 was all about - reassuring the herd (by supporting housing prices via Fannie/Freddie). Part 2 was bidding up equities, and part 3 was the 'green shoots' propaganda campaign.
In no case did freshly printed money ever get to people in order to bid up asset prices. SNAP, UI, mortgage forgiveness, etc, etc are all forms of merely maintaining some form of the present status quo (actually, preventing chaos) rather than creating any positive, affirmative steps towards the resumption of credit fueled consumption.
So if Ben & his buddies didn't pull off reflation via QE the first time around when they were nominally in charge of the situation, how are they supposed to do it operating from an untenable defensive position?
Answer: They can't. Ben knows any direct QE will have no effect, other than to creat a direct 1:1 price increase and thereby ultimately destroy the Fed's present monopoly franchise. It's a testament to the ingrained belief structure everyone holds - it's why religion is so powerful - that even supposedly analytical agnostics think/believe the Fed has some miraculous power.
They don't - the Fed is now operating on the same emotional level as an unemployed family breadwinner facing foreclose & eviction. What do people start doing in these kinds of emergency situations? Out goes the ballast. Well, we're going to start seeing our vaunted Fed begin to act like any other desperate person aiming to maintain/preserve their last claim to legitimacy.
Personally, I don't see how the Fed is going to survive. Obviously it will not be 2010, but by 2012, the country might actually be ready to bravely face our future.
Just in time for the Mayan calendar "reset". Excellent.
Negative. All it is a change of aeon. Currently, we are in the age of Pisces. The Mayan calendar only went as far as the end of the age of Pisces. In 2012, the earth's axis will tilt it in a way that during the morning of the spring equinox, the Aquarius constellation will be on the horizon. We will enter the age of Aquarius. That's it, that's all. All this talk of "armeggedon" and end of world bull is simply a mistranslation of the pegan understanding of the change of aeons. The problem is that all the religious nonsense that was created because of this mistranslation gives someone an opportunity to capitalize on people's expectations. Other than the Vatican, do you know who else was very interested in this change of aeon; those who follow the son of the morning. If you know who they are, then you realize the implications of this change. The question is, come 2012, who will get to control the narrative? The Vatican, or the Luciferians? Darkness or light? Stay tuned...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EegRh8Z4H-o
Couldn't help it.. LOL
Aw, man. Does this mean we're going to be overrun with hippies?
Ah yeah I was inaccurate in my thought. As I understand/understood (before your excellence post), the Mayan calendar just sort of stopped at a natural terminus, rather than as a foreboding sign.
I hadn't heard anything that you've described. Fascinating stuff. I'd love to read more...anything you'd recommend?
Hmm, for me, these days it's hard to see anything other than an intensifying twilight on the visible edge of the future. And worse, it seems that this dark, biophysical storm already has outbursts here in the present. Like Cormac McCarthy's book, The Road, as bleak a scenario of an environmental oblivion as it gets...well, that's looking more and more like a few small areas of Africa, at least in a few key ways.
As to cosmologies and the Universe, my favorite is Thomas Berry, a writer who's a Catholic priest but deeply embedded in the Eastern religions and systems. His book, Dream of the Earth, talks about an intimate Universe based both on physics and the traditional ecological knowledge of diverse religions and cultures. A placental universe really.
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
Thanks for the link - I'll definitely check it out.
EDITED - google'd. Discerning the underlying Absolutes is just awesome, or aw-filled!
I'd also recommend two literary sources:
A history of Pagan Europe (http://www.amazon.com/History-Pagan-Europe-Prudence-Jones/dp/0415158044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280175367&sr=8-1)
and
A history of god (http://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280175724&sr=8-1)
I read somewhere that Jesus' symbol of the fish was a reference to the precession of the equinoxes going from Aries to Pisces.
"No matter the activity, event and/or occasion, all animals, human or otherwise, deploy their best shit first."
Well all hustles: pool, golf, desert tank battles, etc. etc. etc.
yeah, or offers to buy stuff, like houses or cars. nobody ever puts their best forward with these, unless squeezed and hard.
Yep. It is a long list:
Expect conventional carpet bombing before the nukes start exploding...
A tazer in the groin often precedes a bullet in the head...
That is funny shit. And true.
You may be right. QE is not a 100% outcome, it's a binary outcome. And betting your life savings on a binary outcome is a serious risk. Despite that, you must admit that ending the Fed would probably choke the government and many client states internationally. That's why it's perhaps unlikely that the Fed will avoid extreme measures.
The "loans for everyone" campaign is an example of a possibly extreme measure if people take up on it. If I wanted to cause mega inflation, I'd write up a bill to put the SBA on steroids and make the loans dis-chargeable in corporate bankruptcy.