Slope of Hope

Denying someone an opportunity based on anything other than their skills is immoral. And equally immoral is actively seeking out and hiring the "disadvantaged" or "under-represented" simply to meet some kind of quota or corporate goal. It's an injustice to any other candidates that are better-qualified for the task at hand.

I have the good fortune to live in Palo Alto, and - mercifully - I bought my house way back in 1991, which was three bubbles ago. Over that time, the house in which I live is worth nine times what I paid for it. Those outside the Silicon Valley might find perverse comfort in the relative bargains of their own neighborhood.

The Idiot Savant has had more than enough.  BDI has unequivocally decided to prick Big Bad Ben Bernanke's Bloviated Bubble Butt.  I have outlined below seven fine needles and six sharp scalpels that I shall use to slice and slay his sorry sagging ass:

I clearly have a very hard time reconciling a U.S. stock market making new all-time-highs almost daily, especially in the face of what most economists consider to be a weak domestic economy with negligible growth prospects.  Moreover, when you layover the thoroughly stalled and certainly weaker overall global economic picture, it’s even harder to rationalize.  Finally, throw into the mix the gravity of threatening geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the two nations with the largest stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons on earth, and the market actually welcomes it.  Something majorly does not add up, well, to this Idiot anyways.

The Likeness of God is to Create not Consume.  Ingenuity and innovation are hallmarks of our human creativity. Curiously, those marvelous characteristics unique to mankind, which have delivered the most astoundingly advanced technological productivity gains ever conceived, are now fast displacing a multitude of relatively menial jobs previously attended to by human beings, who having been anchored to unsatisfying and unfulfilling laborious routines, were less able to enjoy the free time and space certainly required to become more creative enlightened beings themselves.

For the New Year, it seems that SOH, that last true refuge for pensive brooding bears, has been overrun with pompous bulls peddling & pumping a new 21st century high tech plateau of permanent prosperity, that would make even Irving Fisher's rose twittering cheeks blush.  I wonder if old Irving would have Linked himself In or posted his rip roaring 20s rosy market views on a pretty pink Facebook page?

I have never been fashionable enough to conjure up surely one of the silliest startup ideas with, bar none, the worst name of all time: Fashism. I only know of this site because I read about its demise yesterday. Evidently Ashton Kutcher (who, for reasons wholly alien to me, is heralded as some kind of tech-savant investing genius) put $1 million into this dog.

The conclusions I have come to are somewhat threatening in the short term, but even more disconcerting in the intermediate term, as the developing image is exposing a crystal clear picture of the ominous resource wars looming directly ahead. Equally dismaying, are the "honorable distinguished gentlemen" presiding over this Middle East mayhem, which are showing themselves to be either grossly incompetent cretins or dangerous duplicitous megalomaniacs

It’s painfully clear for all to see that the majestic United States is now firmly caught in the rapacious stranglehold of financial elites which have completely captured it in a grotesque gamed monetary process.  Our country’s once idealistic and industrious free market economy has been hijacked and is undeniably being fraudulently and overtly financialized by the craven clutches and maniacal machinations of a contemptible self-seeking banking class. They have become nothing more than avaricious parasites disgustingly feeding from the grand trough of our treasured human ingenuity and self-respecting industry.

Here are some snippets from an interview from New Yorker magazine with the queen of trading on the cusp, 16-year-old Rachel Fox (as in Stocks; it rhymes, get it?), the shoeshine girl of the modern age. 

Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, your selfless Idiotic Savant servant, whom is securely chained to his desk, has spent a significant part of the long weekend, perusing nearly every finance blog on the world wide web for you.  Therefore, I can reliably report to the SOH, that the overwhelming consensus out there in the financial blogosphere, which has now reached a nearly universal feverish pitch, is boldly & proudly heralding that a most encouraging new economic dawn is finally upon us.  It seems, a pristine permanent plateau of prosperity has been patently perfected.

Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, although this will undoubtedly be a dreadful decidedly devastating disappointment to many of you, I have chosen to put away my almighty artistically asinine alliteration pen for this Sunday's super significant spectacularly special EP.  Instead of dazzling you with my proficient pathetically putrid pitiful prose, I will focus my alertly astute attention on a stupefyingly serious subject.

Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, you may have noticed that I have been completely turned upside down by this week's developments.  Let me be clear, my crazed compromised counter comportment has nothing to do with the fact that the sitting U.S. president was re-elected.  After all, every single national poll, swing state survey, and comprehensive electoral college considerations, had the President as the winner by a cushy considerably comfortable count.  In this age of definitive digital data mining, why anyone would have been surprised by the well known outcome entirely eludes even eye.  The only truly shocking surprise, would have been if the dastardly dog delivery dirtbag had beaten the coy corrupt community creep.  So what has utterly upset & upended your favorite Idiot Savant's uneven universe?

Back in the late 1980s, the entire business world was obsessed with Japan. It's no wonder that this was the case: here was a country which had emerged from the ashes of World War 2 and had become the world's second-largest economy. They made high-quality cars, consumer electronics, semiconductors, plus they seemed to have a management style and work ethic that put the "good old USA" to shame.

Well, my fellow Slope-a Dopes, your favorite intrepid seafaring Frenchman got blown out of the water by Benjamin Moby-Dick Bernanke once again.  I have to hand it to captain grey beard, for a guy with a curiously quivering lower lip, who seems so utterly unsure of himself every time he opens his moronic mouth, he sure does have some pair of ballistic brass balls.  Not only did he delivered on his QE3 promise, but he actually turbo charged it into a terrifying trifecta!  Boatswain BDI was left for dead, desperately drowning in a sea of red DOOMs (Deep Options Out of the Money).  So now that Moby Dick has breached and surged the equity waves to new highs, where do we sail from here?