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"Who Do You Trust?"
Submitted by Ben Hunt of Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
? Immanuel Kant
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
? Joseph Welch, counsel for the US Army, confronting Sen. Joseph McCarthy (1954)
Trust Cramer!
– CNBC ad campaign
We are all wrong so often that it amazes me that we can have any conviction at all over the direction of things to come. But we must.
– Jim Cramer
Pro wrestling is not fake; it's sports entertainment. We go out there and we perform, and a lot of what we do out there is real, but we're not going to insult anyone's intelligence - there is a predetermined winner. It's just the fans don't know who it is, and that's what makes it so intriguing.
? Kurt Angle, professional wrestler
People never understood that there was a Brian and there was the Boz.They were two completely different people.
– Brian Bosworth, flamboyant pro football bust
“Ginny!" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain?”
? J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
Oliver Sacks is both a gifted neurologist and a gifted writer. I want to begin this note with a passage from his book “An Anthropologist on Mars”. It’s a long selection, but worth the effort.
He was, I noted, somewhat weak and spastic in all his limbs, more on the left, and more in the legs. He could not stand alone. His eyes showed complete optic atrophy – it was impossible for him to see anything. But strangely, he did not seem to be aware of being blind and would guess that I was showing him a blue ball, a red pen (when in fact it was a green comb and a fob watch that I showed him). Nor indeed did he seem to “look”; he made no special effort to turn in my direction, and when we were speaking, he often failed to face me, to look at me. When I asked him about seeing, he acknowledged that his eyes weren’t “all that good”, but added that he enjoyed “watching” the TV. Watching TV for him, I observed later, consisted of following with attention the soundtrack of a movie or show and inventing visual scenes to go with it (even though he might not even be looking toward the TV). He seemed to think, indeed, that this was what “seeing” meant, that this was what was meant by “watching TV”, and that this was what all of us did. Perhaps he had lost the very idea of seeing.I found this aspect of Greg’s blindness, his singular blindness to his blindness, his no longer knowing what “seeing” or “looking” meant, deeply perplexing. It seemed to point to something stranger, and more complex, than a mere “deficit”, to point, rather, to some radical alteration within him in the very structure of knowledge, in consciousness, in identity itself.
? Oliver Sacks, “An Anthropologist on Mars” (1995)
And now for an observation and diagnosis of my own.
About 3 years ago I was on a flight, sitting in an aisle seat, and I couldn’t help but notice the young couple having a mild argument one row in front of me, across the aisle to my right. As the woman settled into the middle seat, I saw that she had her husband/boyfriend’s name – Randy – tattooed on the back of her neck, and I saw that Randy had the letters T – R – U – S – T tattooed on the fingers of his left hand. When I saw this, I found myself thinking warm thoughts towards the couple. Clearly these were two people from a very different background than my own, but I appreciated the sacrifice and public display each had made to show a commitment to the relationship, and it reminded me of the (non-tattooed) commitment my wife and I have made to each other. I remember thinking, “you know, I bet these crazy kids are going to make it,” even though the argument never seemed to totally fade during the flight.
The plane landed and we all stood up to disembark, and I remember still smiling to myself as Randy and his wife/girlfriend moved into the aisle, still mildly arguing. And then I saw the letters tattooed on Randy’s right hand.
N – O – O – N – E
And just like that my internal Narrative flipped by 180 degrees. I didn’t know what this guy’s name was, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Randy. I didn’t know what they were arguing about, but I was pretty sure that this wasn’t a relationship built to last.
I’ve been thinking about that incident a lot recently, not just for what it shows about the malleability of the stories we tell ourselves, but even more so for a really troubling thought: I feel like we all have “TRUST NO ONE” tattooed on us today, and we are poorer investors and allocators, neighbors and citizens as a result. It’s an entirely rational tattoo, the result of years of both abject lies and the far more common (and ultimately far more corrosive) white lies that are at the heart of “communication policy” – the calculated use of public speech for behavioral effect rather than the honest exchange of information.
Bu it’s not just that we have lost the ability to trust, particularly when it comes to markets and investing. The larger problem is that – like Oliver Sacks’ patient who was blind to his blindness – most of us don’t even recognize that we have lost the ability to trust. Many of us create bizarre simulacra of trust – like the notion that the mass media persona of Jim Cramer is somehow deserving of trust in the same way as a flesh-and-blood financial advisor with a fiduciary responsibility to his clients. Just as Sacks’ patient came to believe that “seeing” meant constructing mental imagery to go along with audio stimuli, and that everyone “saw” this way, so have we come to believe that “trusting” means giving mental allegiance to a disembodied, mediated representation of a human being, and that we all “trust” this way.
I’m making a big deal out of the distinction between a public persona and a real person because it is, in fact, a big deal when it comes to questions of trust. The “Jim Cramer” we see on TV is not Jim Cramer, any more than “Hulk Hogan” is Terry Bollea, any more than “The Boz” is Brian Bosworth, any more than “Marcus Welby” is Robert Young. But while Marcus Welby was an outright fictional character, and he was clearly understood as such when he was called “the most trusted man in America”, all of the other stage names in this list are presented and re-presented as non-fictional characters, as somehow more “real” than Marcus Welby. And in a way they are more real. Certainly the stage persona of “Jim Cramer” draws heavily from the actual experiences and views of Jim Cramer, but I think the right way to think about this is that Jim Cramer writes the dialog for “Jim Cramer” and performs the role of “Jim Cramer” in a highly personal, improvisational way that Robert Young was never allowed with “Marcus Welby”. Jim Cramer performs “Jim Cramer” in the same way that Terry Bollea performs “Hulk Hogan” – as a serious, non-tongue-in-cheek (which separates these guys from how Stephen Colbert performs “Stephen Colbert”), yet highly stylized representation of a financial adviser and a wrestler, respectively. Both Cramer and Bollea are incredibly talented – if you can’t recognize that Cramer has got some serious market chops, the equivalent of Bollea’s crazy musculature, I don’t know what to tell you – but what makes them so successful in their chosen fields is the combination of these talents with outstanding showmanship and a phenomenal ability to project authenticity.

My point is not that mass-mediated financial advice is kinda like professional wrestling. My point is that mass-mediated financial advice is EXACTLY like professional wrestling. And I know that it must seem like I’m slamming Cramer and CNBC and the rest of the mass media financial guru-sphere by equating their efforts with professional wrestling, but I’m really not. I just want to call things by their proper names. I LOVE professional wrestling. Second only to professional politics, professional wrestling demonstrates Narrative creation and execution at an extremely high level of artistry, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. And it’s NOT a fake representation of wrestling in the way that an episode of “Marcus Welby, M.D.” is a fake representation of medical practice. Professional wrestling is scripted and choreographed, like a TV medical drama, but there are actual athletic feats executed here. It is “real wrestling” in that sense, where there is no “real medicine” being practiced in the filming of “House”. But no one in his right mind believes that professional wrestling is the same thing as Olympic wrestling or collegiate wrestling. Professional wrestling is its own thing – a marvelous and entertaining thing – and it deserves to be understood in that light.
Well … mass-mediated financial advice is its own thing, too, where Narrative creation and execution is the only thing that matters, and everything you see or read is driven by the economic diktat of driving the Narrative du jour forward. No one in his right mind should believe that mass-mediated financial advice is the same thing as professional, individuated financial advice. And yet here we are, in a world where the notion of trust has become so warped that every day, thousands of investors question the trustworthiness of their flesh-and-blood financial advisors and tens of thousands more act on their own because they trusted a piece of Narrative-driven advice they heard on the TV or read in the newspaper.
Why is it so important to distinguish between real people and mass media representations of people when it comes to matters of trust? Because in the wise words of J.K. Rowling, never trust anything that thinks for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain. I know exactly where an individual human being like Jim Cramer keeps his brain, but I have no idea where the brain of “Jim Cramer” resides. It’s certainly not (only) inside the human Jim Cramer, but also within the contract between Jim Cramer and CNBC, within the various humans who produce and executive produce the various shows on which “Jim Cramer” appears, within the corporate imperatives of Comcast and NBC Universal, and a myriad of other locations. The brain of “Jim Cramer” is a thoroughly distributed and hidden set of preferences, totally unlike the brain of Jim Cramer the person, and as a result it is impervious to the tools and strategies that game theorists use to understand and develop trust.
Game theory can tell us a lot about the construction and preservation of trust between individual decision makers. I can develop a rational basis for trust with Jim Cramer the person (if I knew him), because I can model the pay-offs associated with cooperation (the foundation of trust) and defection (the destruction of trust) within the parameters of a repeated-play strategic interaction (a game). So if I’m some Comcast exec negotiating a new contract with Jim Cramer the person, or if I were an investor in Jim Cramer the person’s hedge fund back in the day, I could use game theory both to measure how much I should trust the guy and to suggest ways to increase the level of trust between us (I won’t develop that idea in this note, but if you’re interested in the subject you should start with Robert Axelrod’s classic book, “The Evolution of Cooperation”). On the other hand, it is impossible to develop this notion of interpersonal trust with “Jim Cramer” because “Jim Cramer” is not a person and does not possess a person’s discrete, transitive, and ordered set of preferences … a brain. It’s hard for some people to believe this, I know, because CNBC (smartly) does everything in its power to suggest that everyone watching CNBC has a personal relationship with “Jim Cramer”. Well, you don’t. You can’t. “Jim Cramer” is real in exactly the same way that “Hulk Hogan” is real, and trusting in these mass-mediated representations of actual human beings to be somehow more than what they are makes you a sucker. Maybe you won’t see a “heel turn” out of “Jim Cramer” the way you did out of “Hulk Hogan” (the most thrilling 180-degree turn in a Narrative I have ever witnessed), but at some point you will find yourself on the wrong end of a Narrative shift if you trust and rely on “Jim Cramer” or any other mass media persona for your financial advice. I’m not saying that flesh-and-blood financial advisors are always right in how they think about markets and investing … of course they’re not. But they are worthy of trust, or at least eligible for trust, in a way that mass media personae of pure Narrative can never be.
Here’s the other thing, the darker side of a world where we all bear the “TRUST NO ONE” tattoo … it’s all well and good when mass-mediated representations of financial advice and ersatz authenticity generate characters like “Jim Cramer”, who I believe is relatively harmless in a larger political or social sense. But this is how characters like “Senator Joe McCarthy” are created, too, and they are anything but harmless. The flip side of a world where no one is trusted and nothing is believed is that anyone can be trusted and everything can be believed. I’ve recently experienced this modern-day McCarthyism and fear-mongering first hand. It makes me angry, of course (one day I’ll write an “Angry Ben” note on this topic), but even more than that it makes me sad. I’m sad because I see more and more intelligent, engaged, well-meaning people withdrawing from anything with a public face or function, asking themselves “why would I subject myself to this particular form of social torture”, and ceding the field to the McCarthy’s and their media stooges.

What’s to be done? I really don’t know. McCarthy was undone when an institution of overwhelming authenticity and popular trust – the US Army – challenged him directly and got the newspapers to print the story. I just don’t know if any modern institution, including the Army, still commands that sort of trust, and I’m certain that there’s no modern institution that has the broadly dispersed and widely available reservoir of authenticity necessary to combat the pandemic of mistrust that has swept through modern markets. Everyone’s an expert today, and we think nothing of dismissing the advice we receive from our traditional bastions of professional advice – doctors, lawyers, financial advisors – in favor of our own views, almost always channeled from some charming disembodied voice we hear on TV or read on the Internet. We’re all our own doctor and lawyer and financial advisor today, precisely because we mistrust so thoroughly, and as a result we leave ourselves open to false notions of trust. We need new pockets of authenticity, a disaggregated source of authenticity to combat the disaggregated McCarthyism that is bursting spore-like all across the country. In my more optimistic moments I look at the Internet’s ability to eliminate media intermediaries and gatekeepers, and I think that there must be hope in the vast array of blogs and comment communities and Twitter-verses out there today. But then I actually spend some time in these virtual communities and I start to despair.
I shouldn’t, though … despair, I mean. It’s amazing how messy community building and small-l liberalism can be, and the whole idea here is to let 1,000,000 flowers bloom, no matter how inane or misguided some of those communities may seem to me. Cream rises. Leaders emerge. It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be fast, but it will happen. In the meantime, I’ll continue to try to build my own community around Epsilon Theory. I’ve got a pretty good microphone now, and I won’t deny the emotional gratification of speaking to more and more people. But it’s time to deepen the personal relationships here rather than just broaden the readership, as it’s the strength of individual connections with outstanding people that builds trust and a lasting community. As Kant wrote, “number not voices, but weigh them.” That’s how I’d like people to evaluate me. That’s how I’d like people to evaluate Salient. And it’s how I’m going to evaluate the success of Epsilon Theory.
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"We are all wrong so often that it amazes me that we can have any conviction at all over the direction of things to come. But we must. – Jim Cramer"
And thus herd behavior was born. When you don't know what to do follow the herd. At least you won't stand out in your ignorance.
An animal in a literal herd is protected from predators by the size of the herd. The odds are in favor of any given herd member not being the one who gets eaten. In the case of the public herd, it works the opposite way. The bankers and oligarchs are driving us all over a cliff and the herd mentality is exactly what is going to do us all in.
My observation is that bankers and politicians are the cattlemen of the oligarchs. I'm just trying to stay off the oligarchs' dinner menu.
< Everything you know is wrong.
< Everything, you know, is wrong.
Firesign Theater
" It had more holes in it than Albert Hall. " - Nick Danger (Firesign Theatre)
Run, Forest, Run!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgnJ8GpsBG8
The markets are running for no particular reason....
The great inner fear of most is that they're dumber than those around them. They do whatever is needed to conceal it. Their decisions mimic those around them or some higher acceptable authority. They don't trust themselves to think, yet trust their own abilities to select whom to trust.
Self-ignorance is their fear, while trust is their security blanket.
The questions is wrongly formullated. It´s not "Who do you trust" - it´s "Why do you trust". Fucking trust has killed more people than ebola and the black plague and all the wars in the 20th century.
I trust Comrade Mao , I trust Comrade Stalin ,I trust Reichskanzler Hitler, I trust Presidents Johnson,Clinton,Bush and Obama and on...and on
There are a lot of not so funny descriptions from Gulags where party loyals continued their ideological bickerings while exclaiming...if only comrade Stalin knew....he would never allow this to happen.....! And that beat goes on right this day and the show will be restaged in the FEMA camps.
Trust - hell don´t even trust the moron who serves you dinner at the restaurant...did he really wash his hands...what does the kitchen look like...when in New York make a prayer that none of the ratpoison the liberally fling around in those underground kitchens didn´t get into your serving.
Better stay at home and cook your own food. If you know what I mean.
Sales 101
"Success is measured by hookers and blow."
It really is that simple. The only trading strategy that actually works is not trading at all...hence not merely the false narrative but he inherent "falsity" of the entirety of Wall Street. I mean seriously...CNBC is just pornography really. Perhaps very good porno...but nothing dispositive that's fer sure.
That would be the inherent falsity based under a fiat money regime I should add. Wall Street mattered when you had money backed by gold...and that gold was required by law to be in that bank and audited. Believe me...back then TRUST MATTERED.
What's a "bank auditor" in today's world? Bwhahahahaha. "Here's your payoff, shut the phuck up."
This country is very fortunate to have had a revolution in North Dakota over a hundred years ago which wound up taking away the "Bankster Function" and putting it under the authority of the State...or at least A State. A trillion dollars?!!! Bwhahahahahaha. Phuck you you PHUCKING Jews! Take the WHORE function off my television please!
I mean seriously....no one believes this is real money no matter how...ahem..."fake"...ahem...the debt is.
Japanese yields did rally on today's news of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" of course. I found that HIGHLY dispositive actually...
No one.
I just tried to explain to our children that there must be a net gain in overall candy inflow versus candy outflow. There is a limited amount of candy to be had and I expect net positive returns because there will be the dad eating half of your candy tax.
They just looked at me and said "What"?;-)
No better way to teach taxes.
Never a big fan of the flying suplex.
Love the suplex.
Hulk Hogan pushing Buff Bagwell's wheel chair bound mom, down the stairs of the staduim, was the greatest finishing move I ever saw tho.
we all inately trust no one. that'd why when trust is non-inately obtained from us and subsequently betrayed - we hurt real bad.
I thought Cramer was wearing a straightjacket, until I put my glasses on.
Edit: I don't trust my glasses.
I do believe that Joe McCarthy was more correct than not.
But, who are you going to trust?
The Offishul Version is a falsified story while the truth lies buried in a shroud of glory.......... Glory by KMFDM
Thank you! That was my first take. After FDR was done "packing" the federal bureaucracy with commies, the idea that McCarthy was some sort of traitor rubs me the wrong way. And it is still that way today. You scratch the surface of any federal operation and you will find it teeming with fellow travelers.
Actually. decrypted Soviet Intelligence communiques (that's a PRIMARY source, folks), confirm that the much-maligned Senator McCarthy, was not just "more correct, than not", he was indeed very close to 100% right.
He is an American hero.
That won't stop the Communist media and Red Hollywood, from continuing to malign him, and their other favorite targets.
Hey, isn't it time for another blockbuster featuring "Nazis", or gun-owning white Christians, as the villians?
Trust is hard. I had a boss once who claimed he didn't trust women. I asked him why and he replied, "I don't trust anything that bleeds for three days and does not die."
Trust is not something that is given, it is earned. What institution(s) in our current culture have earned even 'a smidgen' of trust? Catholic Church? Oops that ugly pedophilia thing. When deceit gets to the church level, no point in going any further. That was the last bastion of sacred trust.
"No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but.... but it might work for us."-Tobias Funke.
there’s no modern institution that has the broadly dispersed and widely available reservoir of authenticity necessary to combat the pandemic of mistrust that has swept through modern markets.
So after all this soul-searching,
the best the author can come up with is a desire for a single institution (/organization/leader?) appearing out of forgotten niches of authenticity, to combat and emerge victorious over all wrongs??
Yeah, that's were the "Occupy" movement ended up too.
The author sounds angry/bitter/deflated at the fact that more people don't think like him, and believe in the things that he believes in.
He clearly believes that there should be some sort of monolithic organization into which the general populace should be pouring its truth and faith. He's just sad that there isn't one.
He doesn't say it in so many words, but it sounds like he wants a MiniTrue to be telling us who to hate, who to love, and how big our chocolate rations will be this month.
Waiting for a cheesepope
"Give me a free Spiderman™ towel, or toaster, and I'll trust anyone." --------> Insert local politician name.
I like this trick or treating bullshit Yen. You should have seen that last MILF with her little tyke. Smokin hot. I didn't know she lived here but this place is huge.
lmfao.
Final report on candy is coming in.
Update: The actual candy return was pretty good margin wise but the candy pails were also filled with all of these pieces of paper promising even more candy next year if the kids would just give the candy they already had to the person issuing the paper.;-)
I trust MYSELF. Everyone else get VETTED. Bitchez.
Seriously... I trust the LAWS OF PHYSICS, and the Laws of Human Nature -- both of which are predictable.
Maybe 'not so much' when you account for them [re: Laws of Physics & especially 'Human Nature'] with added layers of dimensions JUST SAYIN'
I mean ~ do HUMANS really pass the 'smell test' of extra dimensional worthiness? The brief recorded timeline/track record on that doesn't bode too well towards an AFFIRMATIVE conclusion
I trust Cramer -- to be wrong. He is a long time bubble chaser and top ticker.
I like the idea of analogizing the markets to pro wrestling. There are predetermined winners (the Wall and Broad crowd) and the "spectators" are just too stupid to know that it works that way so they keep buying tickets. Shit, they don't even get as good of odds as they get in the casino. Where are the clients' yachts...indeed!
Got about 1/4 of the way through before I stopped and said: I can live with "Trust No One".
Useless pontifications....
Confirmed when he says there should be private and public personas. For anyone associated with free markets to say anything other than pure ethics via one self is just nonsense.
Ohhhh, the weekend has started on ZH. All explained.
Trust should be earned.
Anybody else see the irony in their rhetorical headline featuring quips from the ultra fuckface Cramer only a couple of posts below the FEATURED article written by Martin Armstrong???
So, ZH, WHO DO YOU TRUST?
*click, click, click*
it says on the notes "in god we trust".
let me check one.
yea, "one dollar bill".
it says it right there on the back.
at least ten times, it portrays "one",
"in god we trust" and some other stuff.
the front is full of other semiotic stuff
too.
atheists always have a hard time with it
all but if they are paying customers or
printers everything is just o.k..
.
and then banks are known as "trusts". doing
the work of, or filling in for, god itself,
the creator. man, are people just fucking
morons on the pile or what? that is what
money can do to a people alright. to use an
electrical analogy, it is like
an intellectual short circuit.
.
money (n.) Look up money at Dictionary.com
mid-13c., "coinage, metal currency," from Old French monoie "money, coin, currency; change" (Modern French monnaie), from Latin moneta "place for coining money, mint; coined money, money, coinage," from Moneta, a title or surname of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined; perhaps from monere "advise, warn" (see monitor (n.)), with the sense of "admonishing goddess," which is sensible, but the etymology is difficult. Extended early 19c. to include paper money.
It had been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man. [John C. Calhoun, speech, U.S. Senate, Dec. 29, 1841]
I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is the symbol. [Henry Ford]
To make money "earn pay" is first attested mid-15c. Highwayman's threat your money or your life first attested 1841. Phrase in the money (1902) originally meant "one who finishes among the prize-winners" (in a horse race, etc.). The challenge to put (one's) money where (one's) mouth is is first recorded 1942, American English. money-grub "one who is sordidly intent on amassing money" is from 1768. The image of money burning a hole in someone's pocket is attested from 1520s.
.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=money+&sea...
trust. "pay your ticket and take your ride". h.s.t.
Life is a carnival, two bits a shot
-The Band
Hey man, back off Tailgunner Joe and never, ever, ever forget the Soviet Bolsheviks were U.S. ALLIES for all of WWII.
F.D.R. invited tens of thousands of official U.S.S.R. stooges into the U.S. of A. and after the war?
THEY NEVER LEFT.
That was McCarthy's point and it's too bad he did not have the marketing/PR savvy of the Boslhies or the good sense to hire Edward Bernays.
If he had, history might be very different.
P.S.: The Boomers were likewise born and raised in Soviet anti-Nazi propaganda. That's why every and anything the ticks off a Boomer is called "A Nazi". Gee wiz already, will they ever get over the Battle of Stalingrad?????
don't forget project paper clip.
The truth was bad enough but he couldn't stop lying. The worst part was he was lying even when he was lying and that is what finished him.
" will they ever get over the Battle of Stalingrad?????"
Emphatic answer: NO. The evil evil Nazis and the evil evil Hitler are far too useful. Don't like what someone says or does? Just point at them and scream NAZI and watch them slink off in shame.
I totally trust Jim Cramer. When he says "buy, buy, buy", I sell and when he says " sell, sell, sell", I buy. Works like a charm every time.
I'd have an easier time trusting anybody if the world wasn't such a predatory place. As it is, we've been told "Trust us, we have your back." only to be screwed when that promise became inconvenient. Some recent court cases have made me doubt the sanity of the legal system, and those in it.
So, I have what I feel is an understandable reluctance to roll the dice anymore. I need more than trust, I need feel real FAITH again. I need a leader who makes me jump outta my chair and yell, "Hell YEAH!"
I'm looking out at the field of potential candidates...it isn't looking good. We need someone who brings that, what is it called? Disruptiveness...We need someone to disrupt the system, not fix it, not improve it. Shake it up, pull the rug out from under it, throw ice water in its pants.
Then, and ONLY then, will I consider trying this 'trust' you speak of.
"There are many people in my life I can trust,
but very few I can vouch for."
Dapper Dan 2014
I trust Cramer and the mainstream financial media..
..to be my last line of defense as to when to sell, or buy something. Whatever nonsense they are spouting, 80% of the time, doing the opposite works.
As for ZH, I have not made my mind up yet. I just know I find the information detailed in the articles tend to be more informative, and/or present a different viewpoint from the mainstream bullshit. I also like the commentors.
Oh.. well then... we are all so happy that you are happy... . STFU and stop wasting my time.. no one gives a fuck if you have not made you mind up yet.
Trust nothing, just look at observable facts, and verify all information bits.
Can't do that. Verification? That would involve work wouldn't it?
Trust your instincts.
Cramer has been generally bullish on stocks for the past 5 years abd Zerohedge has not been. Who has been right? Zerohedge is eventually going to be right but when? What year? I'm not trying to sound cocky. I don't get the markets either.
Cramer has ALWAYS been Bullish on stocks. You can't cherry pick shit. That's his job if you want to call it that. He is in the entertainment business. For God's sakes he screams, pushes buttons that sound like animals. If you want to cherry pick shit, cherry pick this from September 2014:
"Therefore, through the end of the year, I am pegging Twitter, GoPro, Tesla and Netflix as the four stocks that investors will find irresistible," Cramer said.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101964440
WTF: "We are all wrong so often that it amazes me that we can have any conviction at all over the direction of things to come. But we must."
– Jim Cramer
How the hell can dip-shit Americans listen to, support, and buy books from an apologist for Wall Street!
- He admits the System is Rigged
Fucking Cramer.
I wonder if Andre the Giant had a stock portfolio?
Sen Joseph McCarthy was exposing communists in the State Department who were secretly supporting China's 33rd degree Mason Mao. He was an agent of the EU Organized Crime Cabal that controls our Fed and secretly took over America in the 1913 Fed Act.
The McCarthy smear campaign was orchestrated to train American's to belittle Communist conspiracies as if they don't exist. The EU Organized Crime Cabal fhrough their Jesuit, Masonic and Zionist agents financed new enemies like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Osama in order to maximize public debt and Fed profits.
Follow the money. All these wars and enemies are a massive deception. We've been duped and chemically dumbed down so the public is incapable of even discovering the deception, much less challenging these massive scams.
" We've been duped and chemically dumbed down so the public is incapable of even discovering the deception, much less challenging these massive scams."
I agree with you on that and I constantly try to understand what's going on and who and what are behind it. But seriously, how could you possibly have any meaningful evidence for the plot line you adduce above?
The first goal in achieving financial security is to take steps that insure capital preservation. One thing has become crystal clear over the last few decades and that is the economic landscape is constantly changing this means we really are no safer today than in the past. One day you can be a hero and the next day a goat.
One of my largest reasons for concern is I feel that many of the numbers being presented to us do not make rational sense, the "numbers don't work." The article below delves into how all of us will be vulnerable if the current financial system breaks down and has to be rebooted or restarted under new or drastically different set of rules.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/11/capital-preservation-is-job-one.html
"To Serve Man"...IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!!!!!
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/05/charity-and-malice.html
Trust is like freedom .
You can measure your freedom exactly by saying "No" , and examining if you are willing to pay the price this entails .
The same with trust .
Remember the Struldbug Toast : " Long Life , and short memory" .
Only regrets are eternal .
On the last night on a business trip in the summer of the fall of 2005 to Dallas my IT group was being wined and dined to buy some expensive software by hi tech executives. After a final sales talk during the expensive stake dinner and a number of drinks we were whisked to a private club to try to finalize the sales details. Seated next to me was “the colonel” as he was called because of his prior military back ground particularly in Vietnam. When he learned I had been in Vietnam also it started an interesting conversation I never forgot.
The colonel said to me after some war talk as he sipped his whiskey “…do you know why this country is going to hell in a hand basket…” I replied “…no I don’t. Why is that happening…” He thought for a second and said “…well I will explain it to you as Dave Grossman did in his book on Combat that we were just taking about…”
He started to smile and said “…In our society people are sheep, sheep dogs or wolves. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision. …”
“…If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the protector’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door. …”
“…Well it is plain to see in America today the sheep dogs who watch the sheep are being bribed by the wolves. All of our institutions are coming under attack in America as the wolves are tearing apart America as the sheep dog feast on their bribes. It’s going to take awhile for sheep to wise up, if they ever do. By the time they do it will be too late because they trust the sheep dogs...”
I thought about what he said and within a year I retired from that high stress job. Like the rest of you I watch America burn and prepare for its inevitable end…
Excellent. And shows that there really is such a thing as military intelligence.