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A Disparate Place
Submitted by Mark J. Grant, author of Out of the Box,
The world is a disparate place these days. It is dislocated. Central bank money buoying all of the markets; equities, debt, commodities while the underlying economies languish or dissipate. Month after month the division widens while even a slight whisper that the monetary creation might cease or falter hits the markets hard and then the leaders of the central banks assure everyone that it will go on ad infinitum and the markets all bounce back and begin to breathe again. The markets might be characterized as “Pucker and Sigh.” “Over the Rainbow” plays on non-stop in the media and those of us with a more skeptical eye are long past “If” and on to the “When.”
I am watching the situation in Cypress with care. It is not the amount of money nor the money laundering issue which holds my attention but the recent statements that the Cypress solution might involve tagging bondholders and depositors. Now the markets have short memories and are often played as either speculators or evil-doers by the Europeans but I remember what they said. “Never again” was their mantra and if they tag these two groups then they are liars; simple as that. Then if they engage in these tactics we shall all know, with assurance, that they do not keep their word and if it can happen in Greece and then Cypress; it can happen in any country on the Continent and so the value of the bonds of the European Union must decline against American ones as a matter of trust. I watch and wait.
My other current focus is Italy. This is decidedly not politics as usual and if new elections are called then I think Mr. Grillo’s hand strengthens. Much is bandied about to try to make fun of this fellow and depreciate him but I am not in that camp. I have great respect for what he has accomplished and what he is trying to do and the buffoon image, projected by many, is not appropriate for what he actually is or is trying to do. It is not that I agree with all his positions but I do applaud a man that stands up and fights for what he believes and will not get co-opted by an Italian system and an EU that is trying their best to do just that. Beppe Grillo has earned my respect and I state that publicly.
Do not discount the discussion of Currency Wars as a minor affair. It is happening and will continue to happen because it is the easiest way out and, therefore, the way that will be taken. The central banks will lie to us, lie to each other, and lie to their own citizens but they will continue. The other way out of our current malaise would be Inflation but that game carries too much hair for the participants so it will be a game of currencies as the bright boys on the back benches try to figure out how to get them to all decline at once. You see if the Dollar was worth eighty cents and the Euro ninety cents that it would all be better. How this is accomplished, how the sleight of hand is played, will be interesting to watch because it will certainly be tried before this is all over.
I watch the “Bank Bonus” issue with some sadness. I have not commented upon it before because it seemed like a trivial pursuit but a more expansive view has changed my mind. There was a time when Wall Street was an opportunity for many, coming from little town or little country nowhere, to better their positions. These rank-and-file people were not banksters or fraudsters or all of the other words appended to people on Wall Street these days but just normal guys trying to make their way. If you could get in the door then you could get as far as you could by standing on your own two feet and fighting the good fight. Now, if things go the way that politics is demanding, Wall Street will be left with the mediocre, the also-rans and the mundane. The best and brightest are already wandering off into other pursuits and it is an unnecessary solution and a wrong solution for the problems. I am hopeful that innovation, re-invention, will emerge and change things because if not; the Days of Wine and Roses will be gone and New York and London will much the worse for it.
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro - Hunter S Thompson
Even Hunter S. Thompson could never have imagined just how 'weird' things would actually get as armed surveilance drones patrol the skies, DHS buys bilions of rounds of ammo and 2,700 'Afghanistan purpose built MRAP vehicles to patrol the streets of america.
Get ready people, the Shitnami is cresting fast.
Welcome to a 'Desperate Place'...somebody pull the cord already, I can't stand the suspense anymore...
The Big Event Tonight
Looks like Krugman is gonna be on Charlie Rose tonight squaring off against Joe Scarborough (sp?) and supposedly he's already Blogged that his performance was not up to par because he was tired.
More like tried ideas, maybe.
Check your local time and stations.
I may have bad info as I'd only turned on the volume when I saw the 'preview"
Enjoy!
Maybe he should get some sleep instead of posting meaningless re-posts ad nauseum on ZH....
knukles it goes up against "millionaire matchmaker" by me. Sorry Krug, that is non negotiable.
Cyprus is spelled C.Y.P.R.U.S. and not "Cypress". I used to live there for 11 years and it pains me to see it so often misspeelled [sic] like that.
"Now, if things go the way that politics is demanding, Wall Street will be left with the mediocre, the also-rans and the mundane. The best and brightest are already wandering off into other pursuits"
I don't approve of the tactics, but I'm not shedding too many tears that the "best and brightest" are seeking opportunity in other (and likely more economically beneficial) industries instead of cramming into Goldman and figuring out new and inventive ways to fuck over retail investors.
If? It is as sure as the sun shines.
Green light, Ben!
Fun, fair, synchronized diving where there is no need to keep score because every central banker is a winner!
Yep.
The best and brightest need to be at NASA, or bio technology, or anything other than financial fraud.
Right on Toady, my thinking exactly. It's a sad day for humanity when all the best and brightest of USA can look up to is the height of Manhattan skyscrapers and not the stars.
NASA? Private industry, please!
"The best and brightest are already wandering off"
That shit Killed me. I'm not sure my ass can take another x years of the "best and brightest" fucking us over with impunity.
Personally, I think it's much more painful with all those periods and caps. Is it an acronym?
Would "See Why Pea Are You Ess" be more readable to you than C.Y.P.R.U.S.?
Spellcheck idiots?
Grammar much?
Pedantry is apparently its own reward.
I guess the irony is lost on you. It was meant as an ironic rebuttal whereby I counter the misdeeds with another misdeed. Common folk would identify this as humourous but not folk who are pendants. LOL! Oh the irony is killing me today.
Puppet vs. puppet moderated by a puppet. I wonder what they want us to think.
The difference is that puppets are pulled by strings from above, while us muppets are manipulated by fists from below.
That interview was last night and it will make you barf...
I watched it last night Knuk's - it was pathetic. Well, I actually liked watching Krug squirm. JS kept bringing up how Krug's position on debt and deficits changes with the wind (or depending on which party is in office). It was nice that Charlie Rose didn't step in to 'save' the Krug and let JS point out that PK is a fucking weasel.
Well....he did eat a bullet. Not ready to do that just yet.
I actually want to see how crazy this gets.
Could be he DID see how werid it was really gonna get!
Another great of the Good Doctor's was "It's just not weird enough, yet."
"the Shitnami is cresting" ...
"if it can happen in Greece ...
it can happen in any country ..."
Our well known seller of gold at 8:30am showed up again and shorted at $1,585/oz...not good.
Wish he was still here to comment first hand on this crap-filled slog hole!
I was hoping this was a longer article. I need to print something to take to the shitter.
Agreed-
Here I sit all broken hearted,
Tried to shit but only farted.
"I watch the “Bank Bonus” issue with some sadness. I have not commented upon it before because it seemed like a trivial pursuit but a more expansive view has changed my mind. There was a time when Wall Street was an opportunity for many, coming from little town or little country nowhere, to better their positions. These rank-and-file people were not banksters or fraudsters or all of the other words appended to people on Wall Street these days but just normal guys trying to make their way. If you could get in the door then you could get as far as you could by standing on your own two feet and fighting the good fight".
Oh my lord Mr. Grant. Something tells me you just came from the outside and shot past simon black as most hated guest poster. Enjoy slappy!
I was reading the article and when I read the end it was like I was tricked into eating Monkey Brains.
WTF is he talking about? Best and brightest?
Wall Street has been merely a skim game as long as I have been alive. So he is saying that he wants better skimmers?
I have the same feeling I had when I got to the end of The Crying Game.
<shudder>
pods
It is disturbing and awesome at the same time because it is good to see the truth come out in people. This guy Grant is just another desperate asshole clinging to some relic of a moment in history that he needs preserved in his mind to maintain his self esteem. The bottom line is that time frame he is so fond of is the exact time frame where everyone set up the rape of the natural world that is now occuring. Grant desperately wants some correction to occur so a crash does not, and we could somehow go back to his glorious version of the world.
Agreed. We can't get back to Kansas. Most people are very narrow minded. They are not stupid. They just can't see what is happening. When I look at housing, or autos, or other products, the experts and managers all believe there is pent up demand. They are correct. The population is expanding and they need housing, autos, etc. The average age of a car is around 10 years old. People need new ones. What none of these experts is grasping, yet, is that the consumer has no way to buy these things. They just aren't grasping that income is shrinking and that fuel and food prices are inflating. I am having conversations with computer professionals that are wondering out loud if they can still work from home efficiently if they reduce their internet bill by dropping the speed from 20 to 10. These are people being paid at the high end of 5 figures and are trying to save $25/month
Insanely please tell me which is the dumber fucking comment by this nutbag.
1) "Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire former CEO, said on his weekly radio show Friday that he agrees with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer that working from home is not productive.
"I've always said, telecommuting is one of the dumber ideas I've ever heard," said the media mogul mayor.
"Yes, there are some things you can do at home," he went on. "But having a chat line is not the same thing as standing at the water cooler. And standing at the water cooler is where you get a lot of ideas and information and it's a euphemism for a lot of interpersonal dialogue."
2) "Furthermore, while saying the federal deficit does indeed need to be curtailed, Mr. Bloomberg argued the United States could owe “an infinite amount of money” and there is no specific amount that would cause the country to default. “We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money. … Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.”Infuckingcredible.
Bloomberg thinks that the world wont stop buying our bonds and bills when IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING?
How'd that guy get so rich being so fuckingstupid?
The Federal Reserve is buying the biggest chunk of the US debt these days and it wont be too long till they buy most of it.
What happens when the Saudis stop insisting that buyers pay in USD? What about all the other commodity markets where the USD is the only coin recognised for the market?
Bloomberg is a gun-grabbing fascist nutball.
Remember Jim, he's a politician.
Nothing but shit and lies spew out of their mouths. They know better.
We have always been selling bonds to EastAsia.
The end of the article and the beginning of it sound like someone doing a complete 180...
It's as you say, Wall Street has been nothing but wealth drain scheme its inception. The best and brightest only go there to figure out how to extract their pound of flesh from the morons who dump their money into the sinkhole.
IS THAT GUY FUCKING KIDDING?!
Three metaphors mixed into a single short sentence! That's a record, I think.
I'm getting better: Had this pegged as a Mark J. Grant article just from the first two lines of the summary. Where on earth did he learn to write like that?
Awh don't worry the 2,700 lightweight DHS tanks, 1.8 billion hollow points, 7,000 DHS machine guns and armed drones will keep us safe after the controlled nuclear exchange with China takes place to decrease the world population latter on in the year. China will move its surviving population into the currently uninhabited cities and the US will move into the upper northwest states due to the New Madrid fault which is expected to fracture and destroy all nuclear plants along the mississippi river.
just great....then Yellowstone will erupt causing volcanic and techtonic chaos and California will split from the mainlaind.
" Now, if things go the way that politics is demanding, Wall Street will be left with the mediocre, the also-rans and the mundane. The best and brightest are already wandering off into other pursuits and it is an unnecessary solution and a wrong solution for the problems. I am hopeful that innovation, re-invention, will emerge and change things because if not; the Days of Wine and Roses will be gone and New York and London will much the worse for it."
You mean the best and the brightest may have to wander off and find something actually productive? Oh the horror.
Exactly. The BEST it can turn out for them will be some kind of Russian gulag economy...they're placing the noose of their own demise around their own necks in a last desperate act.
Hunter was one of the smartest men, ever. Which is why he pulled the trigger.
I often sit at my desk each day wondering wh yI don't do the same after each decline headline beams off my brain (yet the DOW goes up).
It's happening again. We are doing the same shit, over and over.
Bloomberg had a chart this morning showing how when the stock market is up, unemployment falls. The did throw in the caveat that it is correllation not causation. However, I beg to differ. In the past unemployment fell as the stock market rose because people were being employed. Currently, unemployment is falling because the unemployed are no longer being counted. It is a big fucking difference!
Bankers have gone the way of peace officers. Now there are paramilitary assault sqauds called "law enforcement officers," to whom everyone is a suspect, and there are the psychopathic banksters who would steal from their own grandmothers, let alone their muppet clients or taxpayers at large.
But Obama said the police are being outgunned.
it's CYPRUS, duh!
Yup, that automatically relegates the article to third rate category no matter what the message is from that point on.
It's similar to the 1990s when everyone knew Greenspan was creating a debt bubble, but no one wanted to be that guy to call him out, remove the punch bowl, and ruin the party.
Fast forward 20 years. It's not one man, but a kabal of central bankers. All central bankers know they are trying to reflate another debt bubble, but no nation state has the balls, or the economic viability to be independent of the G-20, post Bretton woods economic order.
That's the beauty of Math, and thus accounting. 2+2=4. It's true whether you believe in it or not. If you Ignore the stock market, the economy is shit for 80% of the population. It's true whether you believe in it or not.
The 1990s euphoria ended with a calamity, so too will this.
The classified Von Neumann journals have nothing more to say.
All paper promises are dying, period. With the great many paper promises out there, this may take a while. It won't change the outcome one bit. Nothing will change until the supply lines start breaking and then the world will "take it to the matresses" to settle things. Some things never change. The good news is those all that fiat currency is still buying real things. Unfortunately, this time around there is no way to raise rates when the inflation waves start hitting.
I can't believe anyone would worry about bank bonuses and financial innovation. Financial services have innovated us onto a financial system of thin ice, while the government bureaucrats fret over their next job, counting how many black faces are in the office, and their next seminar. Not an adult to be found.
dup
The whole sytem is a fraud!
Anyone who is not able to spell the name of the country they are talking about correctly clearly does not know what they are talking about. To spell Cyprus as Cypress, THREE times is sloppy.
The Bubbles -- housing, stocks, etc -- are pumped a little higher each day instead of allowing them to stabilize or correct. The Frauds are Fast & Furious with no control. The ending will not be good.
I admit, I am getting tired of the yellow journalism. Cypress? The FED bailed out AIG (more than the GDP of cyrpuss) in a weekend without breaking a sweat.
In a world of competitive currency devaluation, how can any one county gain advantage over the others?
And "Do not discount the discussion of Currency Wars as a minor affair. It is happening and will continue to happen because it is the easiest way out and, therefore, the way that will be taken. ... The other way out of our current malaise would be Inflation but that game carries too much hair for the participants..."
How does a currency fall significantly in value without significant inflation as well?
Cypress?!
DavidC
meh.
Long Blue Pillz!
In Soviet America, the blue pill makes you long.
Dow Jones is going to hit an all time high this week. Dow Weekly below.
http://bullandbearmash.com/chart/dow-jones-weekly-finishes-closes-14198-...
One has to wonder what sort of rotting diseases are building up inside Ben and Barry as they contain their personalities to what's really going on.
Barry was a smoker - probably still is - is probably chaining them these days.
Pls let this be the TOP, followed by a long fall reaching a natural floor of stability.
Come on, market - shake the chaff
sigh press repeat Is 40 miles from Chicago downtown too close to make a stand when SHTF? If the house were up on a hill and not surrounded by others I would at least have rifle ranges for a perimeter. That not being the case we are down to 12ga with slugs,,,,, 100 yards. Buckshot in close. Good to know your neighbors and their thinking. If the grocery stores go empty truly I think nowhere close to a big metro area will be a good place to be.
When the SHTF 40 miles seems too close. You will not have zombies, but rather something worse - hungry mobs with weapons going door-to-door. Money becomes worthless, and food, medicine, ammo and yes, cigarettes, become the must have items that the mobs seek. 40 miles is walking distance- too close unless you have your own team.
Mark, you should have left out the last paragraph, it makes you sound like an asshole.
eddiebe thank you for summarizing in so few words, what it took me so many to say above.
I agree. Very very few resources should be allocated in society to Wall Street activities, as they are generally totally counterproductive, wasteful, wealth extractive, and only create dishonesty, greed, and ultimately fascism.
Mission accomplished, fucker.
Now pay up!
Mark, you shouldn't have lit up that cigar on your author profile picture at amazon, it makes you look like an asshole, too.
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/d6/03/4f681d32495a0ad8986...
Crediblity completely lost with that asshole end comment - agreed
In the time that I come from, the idea of the best and the brightest creating value by innovating in financial services is as quaintly and obviously wrong as phlogiston chemistry.
Wall Street, the financial 'industry' in London -- all of that is gone.
Just gone.
What replaced them?
There is no need for capital markets?
Banks are little more than clearinghouse utilities. The functionality that resided in the great capital markets of the late 20th and early 21st centuries to a great extent still exists, but is distributed across large peer-to-peer systems.
The idea, for instance, of a COMEX or LBMA 'market' where prices are centrally determined seems as bizarre as trying to make a 'center' from which the internet is 'run'. An obvious holdover from times when the fastest means of communication involved horses, and an obvious focal point inviting statist control and fraud.
Functions like state regulatory agencies have been replaced by many competing private auditing firms.
'Fiat currency' is a phrase that I learned in a university course on Pre-Collapse Economics.
I would argue this is a positive thing that Wall Street is no longer hoarding the brightest/smartest. They are leaving and actually going to do research that benefits society and not small percentage of it.
Never in the brief history of facist police states has there been one with a heavily armed populace. America may look and feel like a facist police state, but when you tear the paper thin facade down, there is a civilian with a rifle in his (or her) hands on the other side. Thank you 2nd Amendment for putting the power where it belongs.
I'm not so sure.
All these folks with "a rifle in his (or her) hands", including those here at ZH and yours truly, stand by and watch enemies foreign and domestic rape our country, and wait in hopes that someone else will go first.
I am sure it is infinity worse than we can imagine, Mi Naem!
America has an abundance of weapons of mass destruction, which make all the rifles and bullets combined be relatively trivial in comparison. That is why there is no sane way out than can be imagined. While the established systems of force backed frauds systematically screw people down, there is no way to imagine how anyone could "fight," after the existence of weapons of mass destruction. IF one was serious about a violent revolution or civil war, then capturing weapons from the government would become a priority. However, what the hell does one do, if one captures the control over any weapons of mass destruction??? Join in the insane threats to commit collective suicide, unless someone else does what we want them to do? Most of the practical goals of a violent civil war have become equally insane as world war with weapons of mass destruction. In the past, successful revolutions became possible when significant factions of the military decided to join it. However, there is NO coherent theory for real war with weapons of mass destruction, and NO coherent theory for real revolution after those kinds of weapons actually exist!
As Albert Einstein said,
"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
That is even more true now, after one adds biological weapons, or automated nanotechnology weapons, etc.! Therefore, more and more and more, the actual state of America, and the rest of the world, is that we "drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
WE DRIFT THAT WAY BECAUSE THERE ARE NO COHERENT WAYS TO STEER ANY OTHER COURSE ...
The combined murder/money system is force backed frauds, while there are NO practical ways to compete in either area!
They are COWARDS who make big talk but do NOTHING.
And when the shit hits the fan they will be worse than cowards - they will be lackeys of the ultra elites who will convince them to turn on the few good Americans that remain and murder them.
Guns and ammo guns and ammo... yippity yappity ... shut the fuck up about your stockpiles of guns and ammo UNLESS you intend to use it on those who are fucking you
So that we might emulate your ingenious courage, please share how you "use it on those who are fucking you".
Otherwise, then I suppose you will "shut the fuck up"?
The best and the good wandering away from Wall St., that's surely a good thing? I don't see that happening yet - go to a graduate recruitment seminar at any 1st class institution, and it's full of pock marked zitty young people dreaming about Goldman Sachs. Still.
I think Wall St and the City have poached enough talented physicists and mathematicians away from useful work to create bs derivatives, algos, and dirty options. Don't you?
So, if intellectual attrition on Wall street reduces it to a quasistatic utilities function;
What's not to like about that?
Maybe then we could put the capital of the commons to work, rather than to play.
Maybe then wealth could be based on produciton of real things, rather than the produciton of scams, thefts, ponzis, and frauds.
Who cares when the fraud-press is going night and day.
Fuck Ben Shithead Shalom, END THE FED.
Good comment on Grillo, I think this is spot on. The more the central banks shills attack him, the more he grows as a symbol of resistance. I hope the central banks and associated lickspittles continue to underestimate him, for it is not the man himself that is important here, it's what he stands for and the people behind him that are the true threat. This man got in as the anti-EU, anti-Euro vote and fine well they know it.
And yes Herr Schauble, that is democracy for you.
It took a lot of lying, fraud and deception to get where we are today. Do you think that was EASY?.....
You're falling for the red/blue behavioral economists Hegelian dialectic. It's not a "currency war", it's a war on currency... war on terror... war on drugs.
http://tradewithdave.com/?p=15335
I'm sad because American capital markets have been dead for quite awhile now.
Perhaps the saddest thing to me is that I don't know if the equity markets will ever be allowed to do their job again.
That spells a great loss of opportunity for the common person in America.
I agree as I am watching it happen in real time. We are already going on 3-4 years of a restrained market for VC investments which will result in a gap of new entities offering market opportunities down the line...
"Now, if things go the way that politics is demanding, Wall Street will be left with the mediocre, the also-rans and the mundane. The best and brightest are already wandering off into other pursuits and it is an unnecessary solution and a wrong solution for the problems. I am hopeful that innovation, re-invention, will emerge and change things because if not; the Days of Wine and Roses will be gone and New York and London will much the worse for it."
GET FUCKED!!!!
The best and brightest have been wasting their time inventing financial bullshit not aimed and improving the world but that generates more commissions for their masters.
Banking needs to revert to resembling a utility - taking in deposits and making loans - simple as that
And the best and the brightest should be headed off to engineering school where they truly can gain skills that allow them to improve the world