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Howard Marks: "Common Sense Is Not Common"
As usual, Oaktree's Howard Marks cuts to the chase in his latest memo. Much as we just discussed the seeming complacency and drop in risk perception that currently exists, Marks scoffs at the 'It's Different This Time'-argument noting "there’s sure to be another cycle, another bubble and another crisis. There’ll be another time when people overpay for exciting investment ideas because their future appears limitless, and then a time of disillusionment and price collapse. There’ll be another period when leverage is embraced to excess, and then, consequently, a period when it gets people killed. And there’ll certainly be another time when people can only imagine the possibility of gain, and then one when – after huge sums have been lost – they can think only of further declines." Touching on the extremes of dysphoria and complacency that summarize the herd of global investors, he nails the reality of the crowd: "common sense isn’t common. The crowd is invariably wrong at the extremes. In the investing world, everything that’s intuitively obvious is questionable and everything that’s important is counter-intuitive."
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Stock market is up.....that's good right?
AP Headline "Sales of previously owned houses shows continued strength"
Rally on and spend spend spend Frederal Government!!
"History is a gallery of pictures in which few are originals and many are copies." - Alexis De Tocqueville -1909
Perhaps this hot blond can help: http://www.break.com/index/blonde-chicks-explains-mph-2310483
Apart from the Chinese market, which has started to roll over in the last month on a slowdown over there. I'm sure the US will wake up to this at some point, oh and the oil price shock, and European recession/lower Euro, which will all be earnings negative too.
This just in:
(http://www.cnbc.com/id/46808343)
Buy now or you're a fool.
I guess Goldman couldnt find any in-house suckers! and they are now advertising for ourtside sales / suckers to buy into this market at a FAUX 13K!
Buy the Top! so Goldman can sell the Top!
How much QE is Priced in? $750? and that is not looking forward.. so $1.5t is needed for last year and next? to continue this LIE?
How much offset will the other Central Bankers offer? with the FED funding thier OMO (Open Market Opperations)??
It amazes me how all the things that are truely important to structuring a portfolio in this market are NOT! taught in any schools.. or for that matter any of the Brand Name Institutions.
I guess a LOT of People (sheep?) are at risk...
I guess a LOT of People (sheep?) are at risk..
The proper term is "muppet."
Hell yes. Spot on.
Common sense - does not exist for anything or anyone no matter what the case or situation. It is only relevant in the mind for the one who is requesting it because they think that their thinking is ‘common sense’ - when in reality, it could be just as fucked up and uncommon as mine.
Who pays for this garbage? When you keep hearing the LIE " S&P p/es are in low double digits", stuff this up their ass.
Crowd is Ben Bernank's computer. The Ben Bernank never wrong. The Ben Bernank computer chased crowd away. No one can anticipate the Ben Bernank. The Bernank has the power of Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Vaporization at his finger tip. If we can get the prick into prison we might be able to anticipate again. The f'ker has taken our anticipation hostage.
As long as we willingly surrender our sovereign being, our true inner power, to the false authors of power (aka the authorities) we will be both captured by, and a willing participant of, the herd mentality.
As difficult as it may be to accept the following, the only way the elite 1%, or even the top 20%, can 'control' us is by our willing consent. Part of the control mechanism is to create the illusion (followed by our near total buy-in) that we are controlled, rather than that we allow ourselves to be controlled.
The mechanics of the control Mechanism are such that one need only control a simple majority of the population in order to develop the policies that are necessary to broaden and perpetuate the scope of control; the desired result being punitive measures from both the sheeples and the State on the part of the nonconforming individual members of society. Until "we" is a majority, the illusion will maintain it's hold on society.
CD, Fear of the future (as a result of ignorance), used properly, is a BADASS MOTHERFUCKING WEAPON!
I agree.
If we were to look deeply within we would find that 'fear' is the source for many emotions, even some that we believe are positive, and that 'fear' is the control mechanism.
For example, while that new toothpaste commercial may tell you that the world is wonderful when you use their product, what they are really saying is that you will be rotten undesirable scum if your breath is bad and your teeth discolored. You will be rejected by society and even your loved ones.
FEAR
Isn't the problem that common sense has become subject to interpretation?
That.....or maybe we allow ourselves to be reduced to the lowest common denominator by way of the idiot box and state/corporate controlled education (which gives rise to the herd mentality "common sense" approach such as SOL testing).
On a lighter note, I always 'see' Shit-Out-Of-Luck when I read about SOL testing. :)
Thus, contrarian investing.
Always drink upstream from the rest of the herd.
If? No doubt. When? Let's put it this way, if you are diagnosed with cancer at age 50, and the Doc says "this cancer is going to kill you". And you live a good quality life and die of the cancer..... 50 years later, did the cancer matter?
The evil/genius of Buck Fernankie seems to be his abilty to keep the guy with cancer alive for 50 years.
"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to do"
I hope everyone knows why there is no substantial homage paid to Thomas Paine. Because his age of reason and the following quotes that call out all the religions the keep us in turmoil today. His words were the truth and the powers that be tried to scrub him out.
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church" (Age of Reason).
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit" (Ibid.).
"Each of these churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God, the Koran, was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of these churches accuses the others of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all" (Ibid.).
"But some perhaps will say, Are we to have no word of God, no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a revelation.
"The word of God is the creation we behold ... It is only in the creation that all our ideals and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech, or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
"Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the creation" (Ibid.).
"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith" (Ibid.).
"It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene" (Ibid.).
"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism -- a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up Chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is an near Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade" (Ibid.).
The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests ... By devices of this kind true religion has been banished, and such means have been found out to extract money, even from the pockets of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief" (Letter to Camille Jordan).
"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to do" (Ibid.).
"Who art thou, vain dust and ashes, by whatever name thou art called -- whether a king, a bishop, a church, or a state -- that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and his Maker?" (Rights of Man).
"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system" (Age of Reason).
"To do good is my religion."
"I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow- creatures happy" (Age of Reason).
Paine's unbelief was life-long. In his "Age of Reason" he says: "From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair."
"His words were the truth and the powers that be tried to scrub him out."
Noble lie: In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony.
"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.
WRONG, it teaches us the depravity of the natural Man.
"To do good is my religion."
"I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow- creatures happy" (Age of Reason).
The exact same things the Scripture teaches................. but you first must read it to understand it,with the Holy Spirits help, the greatest teacher, the natural man cannot ever know the things of God.
?Evidently Mr. Paine was a man of good deeds, and yet did not ever really know GOD.
+1 For taking retard to biblical proportions.
Payne started out as a minister....he knew the level of corrpution went deeper into the church. He fought banks, big institutions his whole life.
It's funny when Glenn Back was touting some of his stuff, and that asshole actor during the Tea Party times, who only used some of Payne's words to fulfill their own fascist agenda.
Payne was probably one of the world's freest of free thinkers. His story (which I've worked on in a screenplay) is really one of the most fascinating in his era.
They of course, don't teach this in school (minus the op-eds he wrote for Franklin's newspaper back in Colonial Philly).
Payne was a believer of a people backed currency. That's why Robert Morris tried to kill his ass.
+1 for a comment nearly as long as the inane confidential memo.
Well, well, well, someone's been reading Spinoza...
Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will always be ready to devalue the dollar and pump the market up by flooding it with infinte fiat money. Keep on jacking up US deficits. From 16 trillion to 26 trillion next time.
It's Zimbabwe economics 101. Some day, when the world looses all faith in the US dollar that will be the wakup call.
Let's not forget; that which is common is seldom of any value.
Well said.
This is a great Read!