Gambling

The profane alliance between big banks, big corporations, and big government has created the Big Brother surveillance society we are living under today. And 95% of the populace is either willfully ignorant or perfectly happy with a boot stomping on their face forever. We have willingly become hopelessly enslaved while believing we are free. A population unable or unwilling to think critically doesn’t comprehend the extreme danger to our civil liberties from the unwarranted intrusion into our private lives by a surveillance police state bent on bribing, coercing and silencing dissent, truth and First Amendment rights.

According to Goldman, the median company’s EV/sales ratio is now the highest in 35 years, surpassing even the dot com bubble.

The Fed’s serial bubble machine has not only bestowed massive speculative windfalls on the 1%, but it has also fostered a noxious culture of plunder and entitlement in the gambling casinos of Wall Street. After each thundering sell-off during the bust phase, crony capitalist gamblers have been gifted with ill-gotten windfalls during the Fed’s subsequent maniacal money printing spree.  In this context comes Bruce Berkowitz “scolding” and firing “salvos” at Washington from the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

• Frustrated by Karzai, U.S. Shifts Afghanistan Exit Plans (WSJ)
• Yellen Testimony Guide From Payrolls Report to Emerging Markets (BBG)
• Gold hits three-month high, shares up ahead of Yellen (Reuters)
• Tightfisted New Owners Put Heinz on Diet (WSJ)
• Senator describes "gruesome" bin Laden photos (Reuters)
• More reasons for the ongoing economic contraction: U.S. Winter Storm Seen Spreading Snow, Sleet Across South (BBG)
• Barclays Cuts Up to 12,000 Jobs as Quarterly Profit Falls  (BBG)
• Boeing Considering 787-Size Medium-Range Jetliners (WSJ)
• AOL Chief Apologizes for ‘Distressed Babies’ Comment (BBG)

• Emerging-Market Rout Seen Enduring on Low Real Rates (BBG)
• After rocky January, markets eye data and central banks (Reuters)
• Europe will feel the pain of emerging markets  (FT)
• Lloyds delays dividend prospect after mis-selling charge (Reuters)
• Snow Set to Snarl New York Commute as U.S. Flights Halted (BBG)
• Rate Decision to Drive Yellen's Early Agenda  (Hilsenrath)
• Thai protesters move to downtown Bangkok in bid to topple PM (Reuters)
• China says Japan's 'hype' on air defence zone spreads tension (Reuters)
• Hedge funds seek 1.8 billion euros damages from members of Porsche's owning family (Reuters)

Over the past couple of hundred years, the State of the Union has been enjoyed by pamphlet, radio, TV, and webcast and each and every year, the citizenry has sat avidly awaiting their 'word' to come up on SOTU Bingo or for the bets they made on the average length to be confirmed. So while the drinking and gambling man has plenty to do; it is perhaps dismal to report that the thinking man will be under-utilized. Sadly, the State of the Union speech has been getting dumber and dumber.

6 CONSERVATIVE Reasons – Based Upon CONSERVATIVE Values – For Making Sure Inequality Doesn't Spiral Out of Control Even More

Two Las Vegas casinos will become the first known US gambling premises to accept the increasely popular cryptocurrency. The co-owned Golden Gate (Las Vegas' oldest casino) and The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel will begin accepting bitcoins on Wednesday as payment for hotel rooms and related purchases, but, as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, state regulators are unlikely to allow casinos to exchange chips for bitcoins any time soon, according to A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Perhaps the most amusing and curious aspect of this entertaining summary of the Mississippi Bubble of 1720, the resulting European debt crisis (the first of many), how bubble frenzies are as old as paper money, the man behind both - convicted murderer and millionaire gambler, John Law, what happens when paper money's linkage to gold is broken, and how everyone loses their wealth and hyperinflation breaks out, is who the source is. The New York Fed. Perhaps the Fed-employed authors fail to grasp just what their institution does, or have a truly demonic sense of humor. In either case, the following "crisis chronicle" highlighting how banking worked then, how it works now, and how it will always "work", is a must read by all.

In yet another indication that the US consumer is tapped out and rolling over, a report from the "Vice Index" reporting firm SouthBay Research which tracks spending on gambling, liquor sales and prostitution, says that "spending on vices wasn’t very strong in December, a sign that overall consumer spending was weak, according to the latest reading of the Vice Index from SouthBay Research’s Andrew Zatlin" as the WSJ reports. "The Vice Index for December points to stable but subdued consumer spending," according to SouthBay's head Andrew Zatlin further predicting that retail sales slipped 0.1% in December from November.  And while the split between "the 1%" and "everyone else" was evident in the faster decline in beer sales compared to wine sales, as well as gambling where the low-end contracted while the high end expanded, nothing says a recovery for the 1% like the following sentence: "High-end escorts successfully raised prices,” Zatlin wrote in the report. “Lower-end escorts did not.”

Contrary to ongoing attempts by the administration to refocus the public's attention on such focal points as guns, an imminent external cybersecurity threat (until it was revealed that the biggest cyber terrorist is the NSA itself), and climate change, the three still remain, pardon the pan, at the cold end of the spectrum when it comes to what issues most concern the US public. On the other end, for one decade and counting, the "top priority" for the US public was and continues to be "the economy", stupid.

Nothing can be a more pungent metaphor for today's investment climate than the headline, “Macau gambling revenue hits record $45 bn in 2013.”

All the pundits who preach an economic recovery in the US always fall strangely silent when asked to share their thoughts on the following chart (taken from the St. Louis Fed), showing the annual change in real disposable income per capita in the US. What seems to stump them most is that aside from the 2012 year end aberration (due to accelerated distribution of dividends ahead of the 2013 tax hikes) is that in November the series finally posted its first Y/Y decline (-0.1%) since the Lehman collapse. But as the chart notes, the data is "per capita" and as everyone knows, under the New Normal, some "per capitas" are more equal than other "per capitas." Enter the billionaires. As Bloomberg summarizes, "The richest people on the planet got even richer in 2013, adding $524 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 300 wealthiest individuals. The aggregate net worth of the world’s top billionaires stood at $3.7 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according to the ranking. "The rich will keep getting richer in 2014," John Catsimatidis, the billionaire founder of real estate and energy conglomerate Red Apple Group Inc., said in a telephone interview from his New York office.

Risk is an ever-present characteristic of life; it cannot be eliminated, it can only be masked or hedged. We know this intuitively, yet we blithely accept official assurances that risk can be eliminated by the monetary machinations of the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. To confuse masking risk with the elimination of risk is the acme of hubris and the perfect setup for disaster.

Many Ponzi schemes work for a while, but it is only a matter of time before the tide goes rolling out to Sea.