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"The Wasteland" - How Central Planning Broke All Markets... And What We Can Do To Fix Them
In his latest ruminations in ruination, Diapason's Sean Corrigan does nothing short of a brilliant post-modernist collage of all the fragments of our broken economic reality and capital markets which, just like the defining 20th century poem by TS Eliot (further exemplified by the Flesch-Kincaid reading complexity of Max+1 inherent in both works), summarizes the terminal situation that we currently find ourselves in. And while in The Waste Land, Eliot focused more on the existential breakdown of society in the "entre deux guerres" period, Corrigan does the same for the trader/financial archetype of the 21st century. But all is not lost. Just like the Waste Land ended on a glimmer of an optimistic note by invoking the Three Principal Virtues of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (be self-controlled, be charitable and be compassionate) wherein according to the Nobel winning author the germs of social salvation lay in understanding of our own intractable and self-destructive complexities, so too does Corrigan provide an outcome to our mangled reality based on a trio of our own actions which may one day save us from the economic, financial and capital destruction we (through the creeping dictatorial pervasiveness of central planning, but not only) have brought upon ourselves. "What lies broken, we can surely fix, but only if we break in turn the habits of mind and the tyranny of the man-made institutions which we first allowed to break the things we value - our freedom of association, our independence of action, and our individual chance of prosperity."
Must read from Sean Corrigan
The Wasteland
So here we stand, exactly eighty years on from the collapse of CreditAnstalt, the run on the Danat bank, and the disastrous abrogation of Britain of sterling's gold status which turned and earlier stock market setback into an enervating slough of Depression.
Here, we stand, almost forty years to the day from Nixon's abandonment of the dollar's pivotal membership of the bastardized gold-exchange standard and the horrifying decade of rampant inflation which followed.
And here we stand, a week shy of four years after the Fed's first, tentative response to the looming CDO/wholesale funding disaster which would threaten to seep away not just those hooked up to the eyeballs in America's grotesque sub-prime bubble itself, but feckless borrowers and risk-insensitive lenders - both public and private -right around the globe.
So let us take stock of what we have wrought in the meanwhile by following mainstream economic exhortations to emulate what we thing the hallowed FDR may have enacted or the venerable Keynes may have ordained, were these two leading lights of cynical expedience and willful interventionism each alive today.
With over $2 trillion in excess reserves parked with the Fed, the ECB, and the BoE; with unsecured, interbank loans for anything other than the shorter of terms all but impossible to obtain; the the thirst for security sporadically driving rates on T-bills, general collateral - even deposits - below zero; with the benchmark LIBOR rates increasingly inoperative and their replacement OIS rates barely standardized - with the spread between the two varying widely and with the latter diverging from supposedly stable official base rates which they are supposed to reflect - it is clear that the money market is broken.
With even short-dated basis swaps between the major currencies wandering far, far from their near-zero normal levels, with countries like Brazil attracting peer group interest for imposing taxes on inflows into and bets on the appreciation of its currency; with the Swiss trying to stem a 7.8 sigma, one-in-300-trillion, two-week move in the currency by aiming to swell sight deposits by 10% of GDP and by showering hapless East European carrt-traders with precious francs; with EUR-USD risk reversals at their most extreme ever, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of underlying volatility - what can we say but that the FX market is broken.
With the DAX - for example - undergoing its own, 6.3 sigma, 7-in-a-billion chance, two-week move - one only exceeded in its compressed magnitude during the Crash of '87; with the peak five days of frantic selling seeing record volume, thanks in part to the less-than-benign influence of the high-frequency trading which hummed along the fibre-optic cabling at triple the normal rate and accounted for up to 75% of overall trades, according to the Nasdaq's biggest execution broker, it is no wonder the VIX doubled in only four days, a jump only exceeded by last May's HFT-led "flash crash." No wonder either that several European and Asian authorities saw fit to intervene, either to prop up prices or to outlaw short selling, or both. The only inference to be had - the equity market is broken.
With the ECB being forced to take drastic - and arguably illegitimate - action to cap the 3-month, 225 bps rise in the Spanish-Bund and the concomitant 270 bps rise in the Italy-Bund spread; with US Treasury bonds plunging amid the rout to record low nominal and negative implied real yields, all the way out to 10-Years; with record low mortgage rates forcing duration-hungry investors and hedgers to receive long-dated swaps at minus-40 bps; with record levels of junk issuance having been conducted at record low yields, before a frozen market saw spreads explode a 5.6 sigma, 218 bps to stand 50 bps wider in just ten days - to cite just a few instances of a widespread disruption - it is fairly evident that the bond market is also broken.
With the ratio between the two main oil benchmarks - WTI and Brent - having crashed from ts well-behaved, long-term, pre-crisis ratio of 1.07:1 +/-0.2, to hit 0.79:1; with gold trading to a 5% premium to platinum for only the second time in at least the past quarter-century; with base metals showing less and less correlation between price, curve shape, and visible inventory as funding games and warehouse manipulations distort trading patterns; with industrial commodities being driven more by CB inflationary-"Risk On" considerations than by the specifics of usage and production - perhaps we must admit that the commodity market is broken, too.
With the widespread frustration of the masses spilling out onto the streets of the Maghreb, Egypt, the Levant, the Gulf, Spain, Greece, Eastern Africa, Bangladesh, Chile, and others; with even the mighty Chinese Communist Party quailing before the popular wrath excited by the divisive symbolism of the high-speed rail crash; with 80% of surveyed US voters saying the country is "headed down the wrong track"; with widespread unease in Germany at the executive's dismissal of the citizens' understandable reluctance to bankroll the wider EU; with the emerging realization that three generations of an ever-encroaching, 'tutelary deity' welfarism have not only sapped the vitality out of the economic organism, but have bred out all vestige of responsibility and self-restraint from the teeming, unweanable mass of perennial dole-puppies it has whelped - it is therefore undeniable that politics-as-usual is broken too.
With the glaring failure to predict even the possibility - much less circumstance - of the recent Crash and with the even more foreseeable failure of its tired old, rehashed nostrums of ending the slump by means of an inequitable programme of corporate welfare, inflationary "unorthodoxy", and the unleashing of the debt-spewing monster of the state to gorge itself upon such things as individuals and private concerns no longer care to consumer, it should hardly be controversial to asset that mainstream macroeconomics - and the reputations of the many panderers to power who practice it - are equally broken.
Breaking the mold [or Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata]
Whatever our individual pre-occupations with the specifics of this collapse, we must bear in mind that, amid all the wreckage, there are countless millions of hard-pressed souls, each trying to earn an honest living by first identifying and then satisfying the needs of their fellow men in the best, most cost-competitive manner they can accomplish. In the attempt to do so, the overwhelming majority of these strivers cannot fail to provide a living to others, too - whether by employing their labor directly in their own factories and offices, or indirectly, by buying in the goods and services these latter work to supply at the workbenches and computer docks of other hirers of their effort.
In their constant struggle to peer into an uncertain future so as to estimate whether anyone will buy their output and, if so, at what price; and then to decide what they can afford to pay in turn for the necessary means to meet this potential market, they cannot in any way be assisted by the ramification of all the multiple breakages outlined above.
If they cannot trust the signals being sent to them about the cost of inputs or the acceptable charge for outputs; if they cannot assume a certain stability in the rent and availability of working capital, or rely on the calculus of securing longer-term funding; if they and everyone with whom they deal are being subject to wild swings in currency rates and commodity prices; if there is no clarity about the framework of regulation, the structure of legislation, or the outlook for taxation - but only a well-founded pessimism that none of these are likely to change for the better; if they begin to see themselves as the targets both of material expropriation and pseudo-moral condemnation - are they then likely to gove full reign to their innate spirit of enterprise, to fully express their characteristic get-up-and-go and, by so doing, give the rest of us a greater opportunity to sell our wares in the marketplace for skill and sweat?
Hardly, and therein lies the rub. For if we are to pull ourselves out of the quagmire into which we have stumbled, it will be to little purpose to take three short, backward steps before hurling ourselves deeper int the morass, not just with renewed energy, byt while carrying the growing weight of mud which clings to our clothes as the result of each previous failed attempt.
Debt cannot be the cure for over indebtedness, nor a more rapidly debased currency the antidote to its ongoing debasement. We must forgo the intellectual conceit that we can impose some higher order on the seeming chaos of the world and instead we must simply smooth the way so that its own emergent properties can seek out a better constellation of interconnections, all by itself.
We must recognize that there are no workable macroeconomic solutions which can be laid down: that everything is a matter of functioning microeconomics building things up; that the diamond takes on its lustrous geometry, atom by atom; that the masterpiece hanging in the Louvre came into being brushstroke by painstaking brushstroke.
Only get the microeconomics right and all else will follow.
Make labor once more affordable and its terms no longer and indentured servitude for the employer. Ensure that entrepreneurship is no more risky than it has to be and that it reaps the full fruits of its success - as well as seeing that it bears the full responsibility for its failure - by clarifying law, minimizing red tape, and, once this is achieved, by resisting the bureaucratic urge to tinker any further.
Set prices free to perform their function, insist that markets are able to clear, and see to it that titles to property are both secure and simple to transfer. Under such circumstances, we will each help to build a lasting recovery for the other, one job and one company at a time, much more certain of our success - however much patience will be required in its achievement -than if we were to heed the thundering decree of some sweeping, Collectivist Five-Year Plan emanating from the mouths of the tin gods who frequent the Platonic centers of world power.
Financial markets may be broken, politics and mainstream economics may be broken, but, fortunately the economy of men is a robust, highly redundant network, furnished with its own immune system and self-help mechanism, consisting of unhampered entrepreneurial search and action.
As Adam Smith famously remarked, "there's a lot of ruin in a country" - though, contrary to what our present rulers seem to believe, he was not issuing a challenge to them to seek to quantify its limits.
If we are to avoid that final ruin, if we are to properly rectify much of what is broken and not merely smother it in inflationary balm and patch it over with a plaster of false accounting for a further, brief, electoral, half-life, there are three things which we could and should usefully add to the list of the downcast and destroyed.
These are, namely: that unsound money which is truly the root of all evil; the unfunded mountains of government debt with which such bad money engages in a poisonous symbiosis of executive tyranny and political corruption; the duty-free but rights-encrusted Provider State which waxes fat on that unholy alliance of illusory finance and which not only robs Peter piecemeal to pay Paul, but empowers Pericles to oversee the theft, and so suffuses the commonwealth with a miasma of perverse incentives, ethical degeneracy, and irreconcilable conflicts of interest.
What lies broken, we can surely fix, but only if we break in turn the habits of mind and the tyranny of the man-made institutions which we first allowed to break the things we value - our freedom of association, our independence of action, and our individual chance of prosperity.
[Shantih]
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Very nice, Sean. Your analysis is coherent and I agree with it completely. We're up shit creek without a paddle. You can't trust bankers, economists and politicians. And the people are waking up to the fact of just what how much they've been screwed by the special pleading of vested interests.
Where I disagree is your proposed solution - you can't build a modern, vibrant national or international economy without central planning. What you're describing sounds like some Bakunin-esque anarchist utopia.
It might work if the US was broken into 100,000 feudal states.
What you're describing sounds like some Bakunin-esque anarchist utopia.
Ummmm, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure he knows the differnce between Labor Theory of Value and Subjective Theory of Value and diminishing marginal utility.
http://mises.org/articles.aspx?AuthorId=502
30-40 years of flat-to-declining wages, making debt slaves of the American worker, record corporate profits, a government bought and paid for by business, and the solution is to reduce wages further and extract more money for corporate profits? And the "real" indentured servant is the employer? Really? ROFLMAO!
If not for where this kind of bullshit continues to push us, it would be funny.
I wish I could write bollocks so beautifully. Does Corrigan understand entropy at all? I know it's a rhetorical question so he actually doesn't want an answer per se, but he suggests that what lies broken can surely be fixed.
Not always.
Sometimes it's better to start over again. Otherwise you'll be fighting entropy all the way, and Mother Entropy always wins enventually.
good point. my apartment is a living testament to the Second Law. i don't get that s.c. would be against a re-design, but the economic laws of which he speaks would not be subject to same, i wouldn't think.
they need to have their entropic crust sand-blasted away; be dipped in solvent, perhaps, cleaned, polished, re-affirmed, admired, celebrated.
other than that, smoke em if ya got em
.
Okay, you've made your point. Care to elaborate?
Ive never got the period posts either. Maybe some internet meme I missed. I didnt think I was that old yet, but I did have to look up TL/DR (too long, didnt read) that I read on here a while back and maybe I sould accept that in internet time I am already a few generations removed from the cutting edge....
I think it means, "period," "end of sentence," "case closed," everything that needs to be said has been said.
Kind of a waste of space if you ask me. A non-comment, but you get to see your name on the screen, so I get it.
A large central government is a failure for any civilization. It doesn't matter what form of government as long as citizens are righteous. Having a large infinitely growing central government inherently implies top down everything and bottom up nothing. Individual rights and freedoms are impossible when a central government is allowed to grow infinitely. Individual needs, rights and freedoms will always play second fiddle to the needs of government growth.
It doesn't matter what form of government as long as citizens are righteous.
That's the problem. There will always be wise guys like Capone ready to step in while everyone is busy being 'righteous'
You make the mistake that it needs be all or nothing. It IS a government's responsibility to slap down a thug like Capone. It IS NOT the government's responsibility to dictate what type of light bulb I and others use in our homes.
some preacher pimp on the religious channel TBN, on television is on there now saying that the believers in this country must prepare for those who are non believers to give them all of their wealth. he is trying to make a comparison to supposedly what happened when the israelites left egypt during the purported time of their captivity in ancient times. i tell you. these preacher pimps come up with some stupid ideas in these bad days. i think it will be fun to watch these television preachers go to zero in these bad days.
HPD #1558797 - More please... TBN website did not answer my questions. Which preacher? Would like to know this preachers approach. No mention of rapture? Some televangelists seem to be mouthpieces for TBTF. Your sentence wasn't clear. Believers will give their wealth to non believers? Or non believers will give wealth to believers? Thanks
1) i don't know
2) non-believers give believers get
3) non-believers lose believers win
4) the rapture doesn't matter this week?
5) you're welcome
1) i don't know
2) the believers give their wealth to the non-believers b/c
3) the believers are gonna get raptured
4) if you believe the first script, please continue to support my humble ministry with your full tithes
5) if you believe this second one, please drop off everything you own @ the chaplain's warehouse and don't keep putting it off, or you won't be able to be raptured
6) no more questions till after the offertory hymn
(signed)
chaplain ernest bilko
Ahhh.... Clarity! (sarc) Along a steep enough learning curve questions drop to zero.
We must forgo the intellectual conceit that we can impose some higher order on the seeming chaos of the world and instead we must simply smooth the way so that its own emergent properties can seek out a better constellation of interconnections, all by itself.
He's talking to the banksters.... lately, every time there is a Sean Corrigan (although it's been a while) trolls come out of the woodwork. I'm sure he knows exactly who he's talking to... the banksters giving up their scam? Hardly.
Inspiration there, Mr. Corrigan.
Hard to see what racist crap about the MTA has to do with it.
And now it appear it's going to be Perry vs Obama. Perry is a retard, and a "Christian" one, which makes it all the worse. The USA is going down. I want to get the fuck out of this country.
Brilliantly put by Mr. Corrigan. In a word "flush"! Tuco
what country are you in?
if it is the country coming outa your tv:
1) unplug everything and separate the sound system, tuner, and speakers, if you wish
2) get some good pruning shears and just
3) start cutting cables
4) drag the tv outside
5) arrange to transport it to an area we might call a "range"
6) blow the shit outa the tv; treat yourself; you've earned it!
7) dispose of properly
8) (optional) log in and tell us how it's going
if that is not the situ, don't let the door hit you in the ass...
In almost all cases, in a crisis, it's the reaction that determines the outcome.
Reasonable would then be to include the reaction in assessment of any event.
Yeah, they broke it. Can we determine the reason why?
nowadays....its cheaper to buy a new TV, then to fix an old one
That's how China wants it. Permanent hyperconsumption.
Problem comes if China sneezes, or catches diptheria, or terminal aids -- and the consumergoodies taps go off. Then modern civilization has a useby date 2-3 years later, because none of this chink e-shit lasts longer than that.
the Chinese have been waiting quite a long time for their moment in the Sun, no blame. unfortunately, like their Western brethren, they chose to sacrifice the Earth in order to satisfy their desires. there will come a time when the Earth says bùzài
yeah, if you don't like what's on your tv, just get a new one..........or something like that
education was just preparation for CORPORATE slavery ...total mass brainwashing......why should I work for someone to feed myself...I dont see independance here .....why should i always live in anxiety ....worrying about the JOB....and the so called growth and development..........fuck this system....this is totally THEIR creation ...everything.....i dont know about u gys but things so simple as mentioned above come to my mind often.....and if any of u havent thought like that i would say u have been totally brainwashed...
what fix system...wont they be in control of the new system too......the LUNATICS havent taken over the asylum...they have created it.......theres no use revolting......snap out of the system.....the more number of people become FREE and INDEPENDANT..the better.....
Tense Indian:
Dang, but I've seen it with our engineers who have made the transiion 1/2 of the world away (I've worked for some very senior folks who have done the same).
Negatory on the slavery thing, unless the individuals have a slave mentality--then we're off to a whole new discussion.
But, In my Humble Experience, the India natives, who have made the transition to American Business, well, they be excessively aggressive, political, and rather competent.
But, well, I'm working in a rather darwinian environment.
Your mileage has obviously varied.
- Ned
{And, well, I just don't really give a shit about the ethnicity of my boss, co-worker, associate, or whatever. For goodness sake, just be competent, able to communicate to a whole crew of folks that we can't predict, and ask questions.} {{\rant}}
{{{don't cha' know}}}
+1000. another one unplugs.
education was just preparation for CORPORATE slavery
Yes.
Pop Quiz: What are the three things?
Ok.
Number 1 is cardio.
Number 2 is if it's your 1st night at fight club you must fight.
I forget number 3, but 66.6 is still a passing grade.
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
this makes me feel very horny. I wish Orly were here she knew how to cook and I how to book a cooking lesson with her. Pity no cooking and the oven gets super hot without meat inside. All this world falling apart makes me feel like a character in the Decameron. Horns of Hattin I've already discussed and cussed. Horns, horns and more horns. I need to blow my horn like Miles but I'm no Davis.
I hope Orly shoots your nuts off with a 12 guage. Then you can whack off to something else.
To my knowledge she ain't a 12 bore expert, its not her style. So don't bore me with your sour smelling sliver.
Who ever knew that a tail can have a tail of its own? Maybe we should call these kinds of events a tail to the fifth power.
Stability is the key. Here, an economy ends if lacking, and here an economy is born if abundant. We have instability because government has broken down because it follows no rules. That aroma of smoking parchment you smell is the US Constitution going up in flames. To it we must return as it is such an incredible document that if America resets back to its meaning and intention it is close enough to perfection to restore stability to America. And as America moves, so moves the world.
The key is restoration of the foundation upon which our Constitution is framed. To wit: First, all legislation must be proposed, debated, then voted on in public. America has been without a budget for over 850 days, half the budget is determined by the Federal Reserve behind closed doors, now the other half is the realm of the 'Gang of 12', also behind closed doors. Our government is illegitimate and any debt it creates is no longer the responsibility of its citizens. Secondly, the Powers of the Congress as expressed in the Constitution are in reality, Duties to the shareholders that is comprised of all Americans, and Duties cannot be evolved upon second private parties.
This is the basis upon which the terms of our Constitution must be carried out, and if not, it becomes increasingly worthless as a compact upon which to hold the Nation together. Herein lies the rub and confirms that ours is an illegitimate government. And this illegitimacy has evolved to the point where our government threatens the entire Nation with bankruptcy, and that is the historic definition of Revolution.
Revolution is not only coming to America, it has arrived and no one gets to sit out a Revolution, it isn't allowed. So everyone is in, and if we hope to save ourselves it is simply returning the operation of the Constitution back to the two essence that comprise the foundation upon which the US Constitution was originally laid. I see it as an 8 point legislative agenda devoid of social issues and will share it with everyone soon.
Welcome to the New American Revolution.
Return to a Constitution that is interpreted to confer personhood upon corporations is guaranteed to lead us to where we are today.
Without addressing that fundamental disease, the New American Revolution will be nothing more than a blogging phenomenon.
Corporations were illegal under Roman law. The Christian Church was the first exception to the rule.
If a corporation is not recognized by the courts you better hope you live in a community where every need you have can be met by someone within that community because without the ability to defend itself in contractual disputes, no corporation will exist solely to meet your needs.
The problem, as I see it, isn't so much that corporations are "people," it's that while the rights and priveleges of personhood extend to them, they seem to be able to escape the responsibilities of personhood. And I don't mean that they should provide you with a living wage or health care or some such. If the corporation is willing to pay you "x" and you need "y" don't work for them, work somewhere else. That's their right and that's yours. No, I mean that if you were to go outside and kill someone, accidentally or otherwise, you will sit in the docket and most likely spend some time incarcerated. If, however, you are a corporation and kill 100 people through negligence, you will pay money. Monetary recompence and that alone will be the punishment bestowed upon a corporation.
How is it that all the rights of personhood descend upon a corporation but the right of the government to incarcerate a corporation doesn't exist?
That is the real crux of it.
The US Constitution is a document of self control, compassion, and charity. It's all there. Self-serving Fabian usurpers have incrementally stripped it of these qualities to empower the elites over self-government by average people.
"...we will each help to build a lasting recovery for the other, one job and one company at a time, much more certain of our success ...than if we were to heed the thundering decree of some sweeping, Collectivist Five-Year Plan emanating from the mouths of the tin gods who frequent the Platonic centers of world power."
On August 2, 2011 the tin gods doubled down with the Collectivist Ten-Year Plan known as the Budget Control Act of 2011.
“with the emerging realization that three generations of an ever-encroaching, 'tutelary deity' welfarism have not only sapped the vitality out of the economic organism, but have bred out all vestige of responsibility and self-restraint from the teeming, unweanable mass of perennial dole-puppies it has whelped - it is therefore undeniable that politics-as-usual is broken too.”
And next to it we getting something like that:
“With the glaring failure to predict even the possibility - much less circumstance - of the recent Crash and with the even more foreseeable failure of its tired old, rehashed nostrums of ending the slump by means of an inequitable programme of corporate welfare, inflationary "unorthodoxy", and the unleashing of the debt”
So what is our problem, “perennial dole-puppies” societies or “an inequitable programme of corporate welfare"? I’m a bit confused. Maybe government using "inflationary unorthodoxy" to pay for all that welfare program from top to bottom?
Funny you mention Orly. I miss her too. That is one smart person.
Centralization (concentration of power) is the problem. That is what ails us. The intentions of those who intend to tame the pain of Freedom/Liberty often begin as sincere attempts to right what is perceived as wrong/unfair.
It is not however unfair. It is reality and the reality is that equality is not achievable nor compatible with fairness. If the central planners let go then on a long enough timeline, more individuals would experience better outcomes. Central planners ALWAYS become addicted to power and inevitably abuse that power.
Human beings ought to be free. Freedom is our natural state. Individual Liberty demands that I am allowed to determine my own destiny and that you are not allowed to put me in a fucking cage. I acknowledge that free markets are likely to contain the same sort of sociopaths that are so clearly drawn to government. Fine. Let other free market participants deal with that.
Fiefdoms?
I'll take 'em.
nice post ISSEIT...to think that the world can be free from sociopathic behavior through control mechanisms is exactly the reason why the world is dominated by sociopathic behavior.
If the central planners let go then on a long enough timeline, more individuals would experience better outcomes.
absolutely agree with this. this is the point where i personally had to make a clean break with my brothers & sisters on the Left. the attempt to modify behavior through force & control only leads to an equal & opposite reaction of rebellion. what i can't figure out is why those on the Left can't seem to understand this, given that many on the Left wear their rebelliousness with pride. maybe it's the pride that has something to do with it, the "i know better the ways of the world than you and the only problem is that the rest of you are too simple & stupid to listen to me." (e.g. the whole 'teabagger' label and assorted attachments) arrogance was, is & will be the Left's Achilles Heel...until it isn't. of course, arrogance isn't limited to only those on the Left.
what is interesting to me is to figure out how to create buffers that can prevent sociopathic behavior from overtaking a collective. but i believe this can be only discovered on a microlevel first, and then find ways to scale up if and when necessary.
someone we all give far too much attention to for his dupliciousness did say something very wise once (even tho he stole it from someone else):
"Change does not come from the top-down, it comes from the bottom-up"
p.s. miss observations from orly too.
"but I believe this can be only discovered on a mircolevel first..."
With that thought sir, you have set yourself apart from the rabble.
The idea that the truth must be discovered, not invented, is the only hope that man has for continued existence. It is also the wrench in the works of every statist's dream of utopia.
arrogance is usually supported by choosing a side, which usually means having to defend your choice against the side someone else chose. it's duality, and hierarchical thinking that pushes arrogance to the fore.
divide & rank makes arrogance a recognisable tool.
aura, for this (and your reply to my reply the other day too), thanks for the reminder that we're all only mirrors of each other.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Da.
Add Japan and you've got 2 hat tricks. BTFD sell the rips
Sigma here and a couple sigmas there and you're talking about a lot of pain
Wasn't the leverage of the TBTF's based on 4+ sigmas not happening?
As Jamie said, every couple of years there's a bust. Well it's been a little over two since 666
Pretentious dribble at best.
Misery looks for company...worldwide...
"If we are to avoid that final ruin, if we are to properly rectify much of what is broken and not merely smother it in inflationary balm and patch it over with a plaster of false accounting for a further, brief, electoral, half-life"
This is the part that we all need to be telling our less-informed brethren. So succinct and easily understood that any man, woman and (mostly) child will get it.
Once again, in the Wasteland article, we are presented with the “free market” religion.
It is a religion, for it is based on faith, not fact.
It is a religion, for it insists that its path of salvation is not man-made, but god-made.
It is a religion because it discounts any suffering caused by the “free market” as a “necessary” plan for the “best” by the “economic god“.
The faith is that the best of all possible worlds will be created by the “free” and anarchistic micro pursuits of individuals.
Ignored is the fact that no individual pursuits are “free”. There will be laws, there will be conflicts with other individuals, there will be macro social costs to micro individual actions. Individuals will form groups and monopolies opposed to the interests of other individuals and groups.
Ignored in the blissful visions of past “free market” production is that the ‘productivity’ was historically based on slavery, wanton pillage of the environment, conquest of others, and worker exploitation.
“Free markets” are an intrinsic contradiction. For the purist vision of “economic freedom”, there cannot be government, there cannot be “human” intrusion on god’s plan. But without government, there can be no laws, no commerce, no property. So the “revisionists” concede there must be some government, some protections of their micro property and prerogatives, but minimally, just the ones they like (everything from taxation to patent laws).
Thus they admit there must be human “interference”, yet they deny its necessity and its existence in their utopia.
The law of profit is made by god, not man. Or so we are told to believe. Profit can measure the worth of everything and anything and be the ultimate guide to human conduct. Or so we are told to believe.
Never mind the profits made by ruining forests, rivers, and oceans. Never mind the profits from destroying the fisheries and polluting the air. Never mind sweatshops, child labor, and poisoned foods. Micro profit, it seems, does not measure the environmental losses to society, nor the debilitation and destruction of human beings. But yet, it is to be the ultimate guide to human conduct. Or so we are told.
A system based on maximizing work, maximizing production, maximizing consumption becomes outdated in a finite world. It values neither leisure nor the quality of life, human or other. The corporation is the apex organization of a misnamed and impossible “free market”. It is elitist, with a narrow goal, and disdainful of all that stands in its way.
Could a democratic government have rational central planning? Let us hope so. To relinquish ourselves and the world to the empty promises of the “free market” religion is no salvation.
I disagree with many of your conclusions....but that is fine writing!
rwe2late
The notion that the world's resources are limited is had only on faith. It seems logical, but it cannot be proven. Like many arguments on economics, you don't identify your underlying assumption, which is taken only on faith. Herein lies the reason everyone is floundering around trying to figure out why things are as they are--and making very little progress.
We have to start being honest about what we know and don't know. We have to admit the limits of our particular faith--otherwise there can be no useful discussion, no real exchange of ideas.
Zerohedge is good for the discussion--a civilized fight club where no one gets away with anything. Someone had to challenge you on this widely held belief that we know the world's resources are finite/diminishing. We don't know that. The planet is very large.....there is an amazing amount of energy hitting (fuelling) the earth's surface from the sun every day. We have no idea the extent of the world's resources.
Clint
good grief,
are you really unaware of the lost fisheries, the deforestations, the desertifications, the loss of arable farmland, the depletion of aquifers, the poisoning of rivers and oceans ?
Do you really contend this destruction can continue endlessly because the resources are inexhaustable?
You have to ask yourself, why is it that the hubris, arrogance, and overweaning pride makes anyone think they can make the tiniest dent in this planet?
When this planet gets fed up with human beans, it will simply kick their collective asses out.
And it will return to---- rather quickly--- its pristine state and our brief inhabitance on it will be as foot prints at the shoreline.
I don't worry one wit about the planet. It was here long before us and will be here long after we become extinct, barring any monstrous asteroidal collisions.
Your self-professed humility is no proof of your environmental beliefs. Assertions that humans cannot make the tiniest environmental "dent" on the planet, or that the planet is too 'big' for humans to cause ecological havoc or even completely destroy. . . are patently false.
Nor is "arrogance" the foundation of the opposite viewpoint, despite your allegation.
rwe2late,
good show. we've traveled similar roads.
unhappily, your train of thought will soon run into a brick wall. i'm not trying to provoke you, just follow your line of thought to its natural conclusions. i don't have the answers -- it's all very vexing. for now, i'm for this whole home-rule movement...but even there there's bound to be big trouble for us 'trouble makers' and question askers. but under such a circumstance, voting with the feet makes a powerful statement.
i'd say your thoughts on these things fail to factor human nature itself; don't get me wrong, i'm of course aware that you're addressing human nature. but to say that profit in and of itself is averse to the notion of human progress or even static utopia (whichever you prefer) is an enormously flawed predicate; and because you seem to undergird your arguments with a value judgment, and you really offer no complement as a viable alternative, i think you need to reassess this broad-brush condemnation of profit itself, and seek to graft some form of it into whatever calculus conclude.
profit is man's ability to project out into the future, to appraise, to protect, to value; it is at the very nub of what makes us human. to my mind, your views on profit run astride those of our puritanical forefathers viz. sex...it's not just about utility, sex, like profit, is there that you may have life and have it more abundantly. now, it shouldn't be as this zero-sum brinksmanship has brought us to american hegemonic, despotic and predatory 'capitalism'...and if you'll allow me to stretch the metaphor a bit further, that form of profit is akin to rape...except that it's far worse, and its destruction more complete.
we live in a grey world; goodness and badness are matters of degrees when it comes to the acquisitive human being.
stand in the place where you live/
now face north/
think about direction wonder why you haven't/
stand in the place where you work/
now face west/
think about the place where you live wonder why you haven't before,
janus
I was NOT referring to the meaning of “profit” in the broad sense, as in:
“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
I was referring to the meaning of “profit” in the economic sense as measured in money
( or measured perhaps even worse, in fiat dollars, for arguably that is not really even “money“).
This comment is much better than the article itself. There can be no utopian gov, because humans aren't wired for cooperation. They are wired to compete with each other for the limited resources.
Let's say we started with no government -- just a free market. Soon there would be a need for police and courts. But just a little. Just to catch murderers. But that wouldn't be enough. Soon smaller crimes would be recognized as a problem. What happens when the person owning the upstream land, poisons the water for everyone down stream? What happens when the careless idiot starts a fire that ruins others? Hey, they were just being free ON THEIR OWN PROPERTY.
And what about the common areas? We'll leave that ungoverned. Until some bright guy decides to kill every deer and rabbit for himself, leaving nothing for anyone else. Hey, he's just a hard worker in this free market. Right?
So naturally over time the law gets bigger and bigger. It's not evil, necessarily. It's just the inevitable progression. There will be corruption, and a need to police the police..
So it's a waste of time to dream up utopian governments. Perhaps the existing gov just needs to be torn down and rebuilt every few years, with every employee laid off and replaced.
If we want to protect resources and common grounds from over production, perhaps there should be a high tax that caps over achievement. Have a very low tax on income needed to live reasonably. But go over a certain level, and the rate jumps to 110%. Now the overachievers will either leave some resources for someone else, or they'll be donating it to society anyway.
"because humans aren't wired for cooperation"
so true. question is: is this genetic or epigenetic? and more importantly, it is possible for us to unlearn & rewire?
competition does have its benefits of course. but at what point does it become more destructive than creative?
Would you consider a mother-infant relationship non-cooperative?
That attachment is certainly the basis for human life.
Therefore, the question is how non-cooperative larger social structures are imposed after and atop this basic instinctual cooperation.
False inferences to nature from society are the biggest obstacle to accurate high-level cognition.
it's certainly the foundation for human life for sure, but there does come a time where in order for the infant to fully develop, it has to stop sucking on mommy's nipple. it seems like everyone just wants to retreat back into the womb, self included sometimes.
Good discussion all above. My point is that the push for central planning gains momentum whenever a big lie is told. If we're able to admit we do not have much of a handle on the extent of this world's resources and how to manage them, we'll be far better off because that eliminates another big lie the central planners want to convince us of. They'll have one less bullet in their arsenal to use to gain power, which is their ultimate goal. They couldn't care less about the "environment."
Tomorrow, August 15...the "Fiat Dollar" celebrates (as we mourn) it's 40th birthday.
Blow out the candles and make a wish...cause we is fucked.
STORY:
That's right: come Monday morning we will have managed to survive four decades of fiat money – though, given the chaos in markets in recent weeks, it is anyone's guess how much longer it will last.
On 15 August 1971, with the US public finances straitened by the cost of the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon finally cut the link between the US dollar and gold. Until then, the US Treasury was duty bound to exchange an ounce of gold with central banks willing to pay them $35.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/8699815/Abandoni...
McGadgets have a product life cycle. Apple will go into a spiral in near future, just like MS. Obama care was built on new job creation with the intervention of taxpayer funded support.
Century old studies were reconducted on medical redundancies and cheats. Ponzi monies were charted to determined taxpayer fleecing is necessary to spin a new shell company.
1. Condition an individual to believe in a lemming lie.
Candid Camera on The Power of Conformity (1960)
Milgram "Obediance to Authority" experiment
Judge Judy slams progs.
Obama Care is a shallow excuse to form new jobs.
I remember Milgram from my first year psyc class. Milgram took the experiment off campus to various locations. In all except one location 70+% of the subjects administered LETHAL doses of electro shock to the patient. Mostly these were educated people doing this. The anomoly to the experiment was skid row. The LETHAL number was still 50ish% but many of the subjects qiut the experiment in disgust, " fuck this I'm not tortureing anybody"
They took this research and inverted results. Teacher & patients are inversed. You'll understand in the future
Should we infer that the sociopathy which allows numbness to the pain of others is a good predictor for successful adjustment in a capitalist society?
Yes.
very much so.
and if you want to be really successful, believe that others only exist to be used.
Attitude is where its at. It's all in the "attitude"!
Techonology and Globalization. Fewer jobs are needed due to advances in technology. Globalization has lead to cheaper wages as everything crosses border snow seamlessly. This will mean lower wages for the West.
The West will see decades of deflationary forces I suspect.
Not a pretty outcome imho.
As long as the powers that be continue to worship at the alter of capital markets, while ignoring the real economy then the result will be more like:
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
What's the 411 on the uprising out your way?
Dear Mr. Sean Corrigan,
The right honorable gentleman upon whom you should bestow your elaborate musings has his residence in the following location:
31 Tite Street
The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea
SW3 London
United Kingdom
One may not agree with or like what the author is saying, but the economic sophistry (toxic financing/leverage) of present times aside, water WILL seek it's own level with little regard for our opinion on the process. Most assuredly the financial underpinnings of the world are broken and we can either stand aside and watch the unwinding of it all to it's bitter end or join in the process proactively. What we are about to experience whether we like it or not is an entire repricing of every conceivable "thing" in the world having a monetary value. You can put all the $1.00 stickers on an apple that you want, but if no one has more than $.50 to pay for that apple then that is what that apple will sell for, like it or not. The sooner we end our obsession with what is broken and begin to focus on what will actually WORK in these new circumstances to the benefit of all, the sooner we can reachieve equilibrium and get on with our lives.
Mr. Durden,
Sunday Mornin Commin Down INDEED! (johnny cash, nitwits) Goodness! It's like a sermon, only bettah (than most). and, fittingly enough, on sunday...who would've thunk it? this johnny cash fan came sniffin round for something; but did he expect a john-stuart-millsesque essay on money-liberty crossed with a brilliant systematic analysis of our current state of sordid affairs prefaced by a high and eloquent metaphor like you'd expect to find in the finest establishements? well, actually, the more janus loiters round this place, the higer his expectations have become.
have any of you ever wished you could stroll the athenian hills bestride socrates and his merry band of pranksters? well, this is about as close as you're ever gonna get. i barely consider myself a neophyte in this world (unfortunately i've developed a bit of a compulsion; no one is happy with me right now, and it's difficult to explain how important this stuff is to family and whatnot...but i cannot prize it from my mind -- i'm absolutely consumed by it), but i can say with certainty, the kind of certainty you see in the face of, say, an SEC football coach as he's taking the field against a non-SEC team, that ZH is one of those rare and wonderful things in life...one of those mysteries that animate their own initiative, something that cannot be planned or checked, something feral and ferocious, something most certainly of God Almighty (whether its owner/operator(s) realize it or not...and that's the way The Lord does things -- go and check The Record if you don't believe janus). ..but as always, i digress.
yes, it took janus a bit longer than four minutes. janus is apparantly feebleminded, and is therefore jealous of someone who could come to such sweeping and definite conclusions in a matter of miliseconds. that means he read the wasteland in three minutes and 35 seconds, and completed corrigan's essay in just a dash over a quarter-minute, metabolized the whole thing and then passed judgement with nothing but conviction to spare? he who shall remain nameless -- and i would HIGHLY recommend that that nameless person change their username, lest they make me make them cry their wittle eyes out -- shall atone. that, or come strong, bitch!
One final thing, but it's a biggie:
Mr. Durden, you are hereby inducted into a fraternity whose membership is occult, whose membership cannot be terminated or withdrawn, whose membership are not ranked in any heirarchy, and, finally it is a membership of which you have no will to deny -- you are heretofore and forevermore SYMPARANEKROMENOI...it's a big fucking deal. you should celebrate -- i'd recommend kierkegaard (either Either/Or or The Seducer's Diary (it's not what you may think)) or a nice red (both if you can hack it).
Okay, Mr. Corrigan, you have my attention -- and in a big way. Here's a tribute from another corrigan i favor fondly (some easy listening on an easy sunday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-KE9lvU810&ob=av2n
many thanks for all the hard work, gentlemen.
your student,
janus
pumpkin zero back at ya:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfLIqMavq3Q
its staaaartttingggggg........the common man looking............
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Sales-of-gold-up-on-eBay-amid-apf-2689007340.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=
i broke the dam
I wish we could get some politicians to read this. Pass this along to anyone you can.
The pen is mightier than the sword, just so damn slow.
fix? fix what exactly? America has become land of the absurd, in almost every conceivable sense of the word, absurd public and private debt, absurd bread and circus propaganda big media, absurd instant, on demand everything, absurd control freak massive central, state and local government, absurd individuality and self determination crushing, sheep herding "homeland security", absurd hive mentality social engineering media. go to any MSM message board, any of them where they get 12,000 or more comments on a "story" or jump on facebook or my space and one thing becomes obvious, despite everything that has and continues to happen, American's now CAN NOT, DO NOT and WILL NOT THINK FOR THEMSELVES, they want to be lead like cattle, they want their normalcy bias to stay intact and will do anything, give up any freedom or right to maintain it. just look at the fake right/left political paradigm, every one in mainstream culture is either a teabagger, a libtard or lumped into one political or ideological herd or another and those who are not in your herd are not just not American's, they are not even human's anymore. I defy anybody here to find one web site other than zero hedge where people's opinions amount to anything other than republicans bbbbaaaadddd, or democrat's bbbaaaaddd. have you ever tried taking to your average facebook junkie or cnn flash headline scanner, or fox worshiper, or media matters drone about what is really going on here? I have, many, many times, in person, on line whatever and do you know what happens? there eyes glaze over and they start spewing some pre-programed political propaganda, or they simply call you a extremist, nut case, ect. or they just switch the conversation to their kids soccer practice. THE SHEEP DON'T WANT TO KNOW, THEY DON'T CARE, THEY ARE ADDICTED TO THE BLUE BILL AND THE RED PILL IS A POISON TO THEM.
America can't be "fixed" because the majority of American's have completely bought the system, the matrix, the endless 24/7 Orwellian machine that tells them who to hate, how to think, what to buy, what gives there lives meaning and self worth, love is hate, peace is war and endless debt slavery is prosperity, and their vote still matters because it's important to choose which head of the beast will get to read from the teleprompter. lies, deception, illusions, manipulation, we buy poison food from big agro and then pay big pharama for the synthetic poison medication to deal with he illnesses we get from the foods in the first place...and nobody cares, nobody notices and America's, buy and large, bury their heads in their pile of fiat paper, there 180 cable channels, there on demand everything and assume that since "someone else" is to blame, that "someone else" will fix it and all they have to do is vote to make sure that some one gets into the white house.
you can't fix this...
+1
It can be fixed, just not in a way palatable to most people. I also believe, when humans do not choose to "fix" it, no matter which path is chosen, Mother Nature will fix it for us. Probably in a most undigestible way.
How far will real estate fall?
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/us-vs-japa...
"Does this mean a baseline of 1997 is where a true bottom will be reached? Hard to say yet there is little evidence to show for a rise in home prices. There is still over 6,000,000 homes in the shadow inventory that need to be liquidated at some point and will add pressure to home prices on the downside. "
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/heisei-boom-financial-trickery-centra...
Dr Housing Bubble confirms what Shiller writes....we have quite a way downward yet.
I'm glad I decided to buy a small condo two minutes from where I work.
Hello, somebody knows if silver goes up or down this week?
http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/
Thank you :)
I never read these rants...
The realizations of our quagmire are going mainstream. Decent piece for the times op-ed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Friedman-a-theory-of-ev...
War with China? With nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps a war on hunger seems more appropriate, maybe, just maybe, we could win this war.
Like we won the war on poverty and the war on drugs?
Either my eyes have gone crossed from the author's composition style, or I simply missed any mention of what is joined at the hip of big Central Planning Government: MASSIVE Corporate Influence.
Vidalia?
Those onions give me gas.
No, they are finding a way to make money; the satisfaction of their fellow men is an acceptable byproduct at best. Anyone who has dealt with customer service of a large corporation knows this to be true. You dont' "get what you pay for"..."you pay for what you get".
Phase 3: profit!
The purchasing power of the bottom 50% is at the lowest point since the 20s. It's not the cost of labor; it's you!
This whiny pathetic bullshit would be funny if I didn't think this mental midget was sincere about corporations needing even more hand-holding than they already receive. If it's this hard for you to do business successfully, find another racket!
I don't agree with your article because even in the beginning before the government tried to put much regulation on big business, big business was already treating the workers like crap.
I think we need some true democracy added to the government to combat the fact that when the few rule the many they are vulnerable to being bribed and threatened. Making the government able to shake those flees that are running it through threat and bribe off is the real solution. Then we can go about fixing the many problems that need fixing.
We really need many changes to fix what's wrong and to get back to an ethical and humane way of existing, but to get back without collapse would take many careful steps, which the people in charge are incapable of making. So, we will probably collapse eventually and then have to try to set up a better system after the collapse.
I don't disagree that government over-regulates business. I've had several small businesses, so I know first hand that they do. I think that they really have to with the corporate model though. When a corporations charter is to make money, and there is limited liability on the people charged with making money, it is a recipe for disaster. It encourages them to not be careful. It encourages them to load up the food with additives that will make it last for a zillion years and taste palateable even though it is really gross, but it is worse for the people. It makes them kill cows quick before they fall over, It encourages bad behavior when profit is the only motive and liability is limited. Then those regulations are imposed on the small business too, which does not have limited liability, and so is less likely to do the dangerous things the regulations are there to stop. And the really terrible thing is that big business actually lobbies for regulations on small business to hurt their competition.
If we simply shrink the government without doing something about the too big to fails with their limited liability, things will only get worse.
"And the really terrible thing is that big business actually lobbies for regulations on small business to hurt their competition."
Exactly.
And to stick with the food example, Monsanto operates to destroy small farmers globally, from India to New Hampshire.
War with China? With nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps a war on hunger seems more appropriate, maybe, just maybe, we could win this war.
Like we won the war on poverty and the war on drugs? - Amen to that brother, what was I thinking? This government, like most current governments, will not be the solution to any of our pressing problems!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc17sWdHDok
The thing with Alex Jones is he is hiding the true enemy.
I'ts not the the demobrats, repulseacans, pee party or any labeled group that will do what is necessary. It is the creativbe destruction of anarchy. Tear it all down like a succesful lymphocyte attacking a comples cancer molecule- break it down, and start over with community businesses. Miniscule economics, thein microeconomics, but never macro with its politicians, lobbyists, big banks, military-educational-medical industrial complexes. Tear them down and strat over.
The current problems arise from “central planning” done by and for a super-rich elite and the mega-corporations they control.
The politics of our government are fascist, corporatist. The government is dominated by financial racketeers, global corporations, and the MIC, all against the lower and middle classes.
Despite any palliative handouts downward, the flood of wealth is upward to an elite few.
Solutions are not to be found by "freeing" corporations from the imagined grip of “government“ central planning.
The corporations and the elite like to blame economic travail on excessive “entitlements” given to the lower classes. But those “entitlements”, upon inspection, turn out to generate backdoor largesse for mega corporations and the financial tycoons.
The health care system primarily operates as a racket to subsidize big pharma and the insurance industry. Social Security has been until recently self-financed by the working classes, and the surplus collected used as a regressive tax to pay for wars and bailouts. The SS retirement funds have also been raided to offload the costs of a disability crisis. Thereby the working class is handed the disability costs arising from domestic mal-investments and under-investments, a contaminated environment, debilitating work, degraded education, a neo-Prohibition war, overseas militarism, and the marketing of deleterious foods. Unsurprisingly, once the SS revenue surplus ended, the program’s meagre pensions became ‘excessive‘, and the ‘borrowed’ funds too costly to repay. Also unsurprisingly, once the health disaster became obvious, providing public health care became ‘unsustainable’, although fixing the major causes of the disaster remains ‘unthinkable‘.
Central planning should not be confused with totalitarianism. Central planning could be done democratically. Laws and programs for the common good, democratically arrived at, should not be greeted with contempt.
Currently, the corporatist government is not open, not democratic, and does not operate for the common good (same as a private corporation).
One should not be deceived merely because the state does not (presently) find it necessary to use the same heavy-handed repression domestically as it does abroad. The dominating corporatist rule is still there, and that is what essentially defines fascism
Our government definitely uses concentration camps, assassinations, and black site torture prisons abroad. The US government oversees the world's highest rate of domestic incarceration, extensively manipulates the media, and has created a vast Homeland Security policing apparatus in addition to a global military.
The problem is not that government administers plans,
but that corporations currently make the plans government administers.
The human dilemma is how to have the benefits organizations provide without eventually becoming oppressed by the power of those organizations and those who control them.
Central planning should not be confused with totalitarianism. Central planning could be done democratically. Laws and programs for the common good, democratically arrived at, should not be greeted with contempt.
Forgive me, but the foregoing statement is stupid in the extreme. There is no just law about which reasonable minds may disagree. Hence, central planning by any means is totalitarianism.
"There is no just law about which reasonable minds may disagree." ????
Having no law is most unreasonable.
The absence of planning doesn't work out well for cities, for nations, or the planet.
This piece should really be set to music, im thinking Barber's Adagio for strings, and then a good 3 hours in bed going cold turkey.
That was, quite simply, a description of conditions illustrated in 1957 by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. THAT is the only "must-read" in 2011.
********** Do Your Part - Rebel Against Tyranny!! **************
August 20 is Lemonade Freedom Day.
Please join us on August 20, 2011 and set up your own lemonade stand. We need to send a message to everyone who is listening. They can not shut down the kids lemonade stands. If you do not have kids or do not want to set up your own lemonade stand, please support a local kid's lemonade stand. Selling lemonade is not a crime! Follow us on twitter: LemonadeFreedom - http://twitter.com/lemonadefreedomNever thought I would live to see the day when a child operating a lemonade stand is an act of civil disobedience.
Tyler, What is Soros telling us in this article?
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/08/12/germany-must-defend-the...
I need your wise translation.
Finance: the plastic currency of plastic people. Value? Humanity? Balance? You eat and waste while I starve for 10% of your waste! Are we the human race or are we the human racists? The fed will feel a fraction of the hunger of the unfed, while the unfed starve and die. And we call ourselves human!!!
I am not socialist - just human: millionnaire many times - lawyers and accountants (invent nothing, rob everything) types took me for many rides: with regulatory approval. They keep the money very close, not even the jobs I created exist anymore! They took 'one deal' money: like killing the goose for one golden egg!
Politicians, bankers. lawyers and accountants all belong in the same place: the foundations of an offshore wind farm! Only there can they add value!
"voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells" (Eliot) bitchez!
Are we really able to think outside this box we have created? I was OK with this luxuriant screed until it said:
Once the system goes down, so do rules and niceties such as money for transactions. The individual goes into orbit around the universe.
"we think of the key, each in his prison
thinking of the key, each confirms a prison" - from the [original] Wasteland
i should have been a pair of ragged claws
scuttling across the floors of silent seas
'... the existential breakdown of society in the "entre deux guerres" period ...'
What Sean Corrigan describes is the existential breakdown of society in the "entre deux recessions" period ... now ending as Recession II take hold.
Trundling towards doom
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/855931-trundling-towards-doom
"R-Word" returns to our vocabulary
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/newsroom/newsroom.taf?function=currencyOfIdeas&blogID=325
Just what on earth are the politicians going to 'do' and crap-on about in this brave new world? Who will make the sound-bites!!! Who will bamboozle us with BS??? ...
Think of the children!!!
Great article though.
EDIT: Yes, markets are broken, but so is the very mechanism of investment, and the psyche of it. This takes a lot longer to attract money back, from mattress to ultra-disreputable 'marketz'.
Think in terms of decades.
As Frederick Sheehan pointed out in one of his excellent articles in 2009, the Waldorf was the last Hotel built in NY after the Great depressionary collapse - until about 1962.
i.e. 30 years for the RE bubble to clear last time.
Shows the world is full of clueless leaders and now the wars will start to show who has the biggest dick.
The Founding Fathers were distinguished gentleman of the enlightenment ! They tried to structure a democracy where we would be protected from ourselves in trying to pervert it ! It was a first attempt and they underestimated our capacity to corrupt the democratic process ! We need a self correcting governor mechanism which activates when one party gets too much prolonged political power.....kind of like term limits.....we need term limits if one party is in power too long i.e. the 80 years of the New Deal ! One party domination is proof of corruption ! We need to handicap the corrupt party which isn't playing fair ! The handicap will be removed when the corrupt party shares power ! Monedas 2011 And don't give me that bilge about the Founding Fathers owning slaves ! It was impossible for enlightened Europeans to consider the savages of Africa and the New World as anything that wasn't somewhat less than human ! To many, it's still an open question ! Happy Arab Spring !
STFU Asshole....whatever bits you may have actually have correct are overshadowed by your dumbfuck racism.
Kiss my black ass you sorry bitch.
USA needs more wars to keep th economy going period.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Doomsday-defense-cuts-loom-apf-1023728374....
All government employement must be proportional to the vote ! We can't have 90% liberals in government employment ! We may have to "bus" conservatives to their government jobs ! Monedas 2011 I personally don't feel other races are sub-human ! I believe it was a reasonable presumption at the time for the vast differences in living standards, canabalism, 300 word vocabularies, etc. !
The Wasteland is a video game that takes place in a post apocolyptic las vegas.
Do not see anything but utter ruination of the world as we know it given the present circumstances. There can be no peaceful political resolution. There must be a total collapse that takes down the PTB aftewhich, maybe, mankind can start again.
Don't forget the "Last Frontier"......Capitalism ! Let's give it 1/10th of the effort we invested in Scientific Socialism ? Monedas 2011 Anders Behring Braevik advanced the cause of post partem abortion for liberals ! Comedy Jihad World Tour
Goodbye to Berlin
http://www.economist.com/node/21525970?fsrc=scn/tw/te/rfd/pe
Corporate CEOs Won't Invest in America - Should You?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/214286-corporate-ceos-won-t-invest-in-america-should-you
Asia hitting resistance, damaged markets recovery aint that strong. Major sell signals ahead, nice huge volatility swings. Starting monday
just cuz... new order - ceremony
i think this is maybe the best piece i have ever read on ZH
Too big to fail. Ha! If this isn't a massive failure of the existing financial system and markets I don't want to think about what one would look like.