an all-too large reading list:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/anti-intellectualism/products/ref=tag_tdp_ptcn_istp
if 'Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe' as HG Wells said, then America is surely headed for catastrophe.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
When will Future Historians Say America Ended? Bush Election Coup 2000?
It seems to me that future historians will date the End of America at the coup d'etat of 2000 when the supreme court appointed George W Bush as supreme dictator, who then went on to help his rich buddies loot the treasury and start illegal wars of plunder and plunge the economy off a cliff in Sept 18 2008. After Bush's reign of lies and corruption and incompetence, no human on earth could possibly rescue America. So even though Obama will try for as long as Rupert Murdoch's fascist toadies cannot incite an assasin from the midst of their rabid ignoramuses, it is a lost cause. America is over. Bush finally got his deepest alcoholic self-destructive wish, to hit rock bottom with the whole country. I hope there's plenty of brush around his presidential library to keep him busy for the rest of his miserable life.
Friday, November 13, 2009
S&P P/E ratio literally off the charts
is it an artifact of zero earnings? or does it really portend the mother-of-all-corrections is coming? scary looking chart.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/161619-s-p-500-s-pe-ratio-of-139-isn-t-sustainable
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1. When excess liquidity starts to distort markets and economies, it starts with the easiest, most manipulable, target: financial markets esp. stock markets where Govt impelled perversities and asymmetries already exist. Bubbles and bubble makers do not care about P/E ratios or cash flow or revenues or any other valuation ratio: they care about the forced bidding up of targeted assets.Any market index, when divorced from investor rationality or asset pricing logic, becomes a metric of willful delusion combined with deliberate distortion and force fed by a vast amount of nearly free money concentrated in the hands of the most active(and politically anointed) traders.2. When ordinary investors have already experienced a lost decade,or worse, in their financial portfolios , are unable to get a return on cash or near cash assets and are very nervous about real estate investing , they become very susceptible to desperation about "making up" the loss in their financial assets(fear governs) and very anxious to find yield or capital gains somewhere, anywhere(greed governs). This is the case at present. Combine the fear and greed of ordinary investors with the manifold corruption and deceits of Wash DC and Wall St and the complicit propaganda of the MSM(big recovery already here: get in now, get in big or be left behind and look very foolish; investment opportunity of a lifetime: one and only chance to make up for the lost decade) and ordinary investors can be herded into a financial box canyon with laughable ease. Once in the canyon they can be conveniently and massively slaughtered-----yet again.
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ttc Fed chairman Ben Bernanke say the recession is “technically” over. This will be great news for the people living in the tent city under short finals who I fly over when I land at Buchanan airport. It means “technically” they will eat tonight. It will also be welcome to the 18% of the workforce who are now unemployed in California, the 1.5 million who are losing unemployment benefits in the next three months, and one million college students who ran up and average $30,000 in debt to graduated this year so they could sleep on their parents’ sofa. Traders celebrated the news by running the S&P 500 up to 1,054, a positively nose bleeding 58% above the March 9 low. Apparently, the stock market thinks Obama is the greatest president in history, rising some 40% since the inauguration, compared to a 30% drop during the eight years of Bush rule. That is some report card. Too bad we can’t annualize that. The only thing I approve of today is that this love fest took silver to a new high this year of over $17.
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http://seekingalpha.com/article/161619-s-p-500-s-pe-ratio-of-139-isn-t-sustainable
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1. When excess liquidity starts to distort markets and economies, it starts with the easiest, most manipulable, target: financial markets esp. stock markets where Govt impelled perversities and asymmetries already exist. Bubbles and bubble makers do not care about P/E ratios or cash flow or revenues or any other valuation ratio: they care about the forced bidding up of targeted assets.Any market index, when divorced from investor rationality or asset pricing logic, becomes a metric of willful delusion combined with deliberate distortion and force fed by a vast amount of nearly free money concentrated in the hands of the most active(and politically anointed) traders.2. When ordinary investors have already experienced a lost decade,or worse, in their financial portfolios , are unable to get a return on cash or near cash assets and are very nervous about real estate investing , they become very susceptible to desperation about "making up" the loss in their financial assets(fear governs) and very anxious to find yield or capital gains somewhere, anywhere(greed governs). This is the case at present. Combine the fear and greed of ordinary investors with the manifold corruption and deceits of Wash DC and Wall St and the complicit propaganda of the MSM(big recovery already here: get in now, get in big or be left behind and look very foolish; investment opportunity of a lifetime: one and only chance to make up for the lost decade) and ordinary investors can be herded into a financial box canyon with laughable ease. Once in the canyon they can be conveniently and massively slaughtered-----yet again.
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ttc Fed chairman Ben Bernanke say the recession is “technically” over. This will be great news for the people living in the tent city under short finals who I fly over when I land at Buchanan airport. It means “technically” they will eat tonight. It will also be welcome to the 18% of the workforce who are now unemployed in California, the 1.5 million who are losing unemployment benefits in the next three months, and one million college students who ran up and average $30,000 in debt to graduated this year so they could sleep on their parents’ sofa. Traders celebrated the news by running the S&P 500 up to 1,054, a positively nose bleeding 58% above the March 9 low. Apparently, the stock market thinks Obama is the greatest president in history, rising some 40% since the inauguration, compared to a 30% drop during the eight years of Bush rule. That is some report card. Too bad we can’t annualize that. The only thing I approve of today is that this love fest took silver to a new high this year of over $17.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Lloyd Blankfein's Vampire Squid Apologia
Maureen Dowd missed the point of Lloyd Blankfein's claim that he is on a mission from God - she didnt ask the question of whether they are REALLY in the business of financing real productive activity OR are they just the biggest casino on the Wall Street Strip, gambling like madmen on derivatives and other imaginary 'instruments' with pensioner's life savings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html
"The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.
“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.
But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.
Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.
“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”
When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”
Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism — except, of course, the Calvinists would have been outraged by the banks’ vicious — not virtuous — cycle of greed and concupiscence.
Blankfein’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society."
"Bill Appledorf
San Francisco
November 11th, 2009
7:53 am
Blankfein's "social purpose" is indeed to make capital available to businesses and consumers, but the derivatives and especially the credit default swaps that caused the collapse of the world economy serve no purpose whatsoever other than to line bankers' pockets.Packaging worthless loans and pawning them off like hot potatoes to hapless patsies serves no "social purpose" and in fact is a criminal enterprise. And insuring these bogus securities serves no "social purpose" other than to enable that criminality.Banks are indeed in business to facilitate business, but the bankers who ruined our economy treat banks like vehicles to make themselves as rich as possible at everyone else's expense, and of course there are no meaningful penalties for what they've done because money rules our government and bankers' shills administer it.
Recommended Recommended by 212 Readers "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html
"The Great Vampire Squid has gotten religion.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of London, the cocky chief of Goldman Sachs said he understands that a lot of people are “mad and bent out of shape” at blood-sucking banks.
“I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O., told the reporter John Arlidge.
But the little people who are boiling simply don’t understand. And Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who unforgettably labeled Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” doesn’t understand.
Banks, Blankfein explained, are really serving the greater good.
“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital,” he said. “Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.”
When Arlidge asked whether it’s possible to make too much money, whether Goldman will ignore the people howling at the moon with rage and go on raking it in, getting richer than God, Blankfein grinned impishly and said he was “doing God’s work.”
Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism — except, of course, the Calvinists would have been outraged by the banks’ vicious — not virtuous — cycle of greed and concupiscence.
Blankfein’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society."
"Bill Appledorf
San Francisco
November 11th, 2009
7:53 am
Blankfein's "social purpose" is indeed to make capital available to businesses and consumers, but the derivatives and especially the credit default swaps that caused the collapse of the world economy serve no purpose whatsoever other than to line bankers' pockets.Packaging worthless loans and pawning them off like hot potatoes to hapless patsies serves no "social purpose" and in fact is a criminal enterprise. And insuring these bogus securities serves no "social purpose" other than to enable that criminality.Banks are indeed in business to facilitate business, but the bankers who ruined our economy treat banks like vehicles to make themselves as rich as possible at everyone else's expense, and of course there are no meaningful penalties for what they've done because money rules our government and bankers' shills administer it.
Recommended Recommended by 212 Readers "
Monday, November 2, 2009
Rub These Brass Balls for Good Luck
they look pretty well rubbed to me!
interesting story behind the bull statue, unauthorized guerilla art as a response to 1987 crash becomes instant national icon and landmark:
artist Di Modica spent some US$ 360,000 to create, cast, and install the sculpture following the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of the "strength and power of the American people."[2] The sculpture was the artist's idea, not the city's. In an act of "guerrilla art", he trucked it to Lower Manhattan and on December 15, 1989, installed it beneath a 60-foot Christmas tree in the middle of Broad Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange as a Christmas gift to the people of New York. That day, crowds came to look at the bull, with hundreds stopping to admire and analyze the gift as Di Modica handed out copies of a flier about his artwork.[2]
The police seized the sculpture and placed it into an impound lot. The ensuing public outcry led the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to install it two blocks south of the Exchange in the plaza at Bowling Green. It faces up Broadway.[7]
The police seized the sculpture and placed it into an impound lot. The ensuing public outcry led the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to install it two blocks south of the Exchange in the plaza at Bowling Green. It faces up Broadway.[7]
As soon as the sculpture was set up at Bowling Green, it became "an instant hit".[11] One of the city's most photographed artworks, it has become a tourist destination in the Financial District. "[I]ts popularity is beyond doubt", a New York Times article said of the artwork. "Visitors constantly pose for pictures around it." Adrian Benepe, the New York City parks commissioner, said in 2004, "It's become one of the most visited, most photographed and perhaps most loved and recognized statues in the city of New York. I would say it's right up there with the Statue of Liberty."[1] In 1993, Arthur J. Piccolo, chairman of the Bowling Green Association, made the same point with the same comparison.[11] Henry J. Stern, the city parks commissioner when the statue first appeared in the Financial District, said in 1993: "People are crazy about the bull. It captured their imagination."[11]
The statue's popularity with tourists has a very international appeal. One 2007 newspaper report noted a "ceaseless stream" of visitors from India, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Venezuala and China, as well as the United States. Children enjoy climbing on the bull,[13] which sits "famously"[3] at street level on the cobblestones at the far northern tip of the small park. One popular tourist guidebook assumes that a visitor will want to get his or her picture taken with the statue ("after you pose with the bull [...]").[14] A popular Bollywood movie, Kal Ho Naa Ho features the bull in a musical number, increasing its familiarity with Indians. One visitor told a newspaper reporter it was a reason for his visit.[5]
In addition to having their pictures taken at the front end of the bull, many tourists pose at the back of the bull, near the large testicles "for snapshots under an unmistakable symbol of its virility."[15] According to a Washington Post article in 2002, "People on The Street say you've got to rub the nose, horns and testicles of the bull for good luck, tour guide Wayne McLeod would tell the group on the Baltimore bus, who would giddily oblige."[16] According to a 2004 New York Times article, "Passers-by have rubbed — to a bright gleam — its nose, horns and a part of its anatomy that, as Mr. Benepe put it gingerly, 'separates the bull from the steer.'"[1]
A 2007 newspaper account agreed that a "peculiar ritual" of handling the "shining orbs" of the statue's scrotum seems to have developed into a tradition. One visitor, from Mississippi, told the Tribeca Trib she did it "for good luck", and because "there’s a kind of primal response when you see something like that. You just have to engage it."[5]
The statue's popularity with tourists has a very international appeal. One 2007 newspaper report noted a "ceaseless stream" of visitors from India, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Venezuala and China, as well as the United States. Children enjoy climbing on the bull,[13] which sits "famously"[3] at street level on the cobblestones at the far northern tip of the small park. One popular tourist guidebook assumes that a visitor will want to get his or her picture taken with the statue ("after you pose with the bull [...]").[14] A popular Bollywood movie, Kal Ho Naa Ho features the bull in a musical number, increasing its familiarity with Indians. One visitor told a newspaper reporter it was a reason for his visit.[5]
In addition to having their pictures taken at the front end of the bull, many tourists pose at the back of the bull, near the large testicles "for snapshots under an unmistakable symbol of its virility."[15] According to a Washington Post article in 2002, "People on The Street say you've got to rub the nose, horns and testicles of the bull for good luck, tour guide Wayne McLeod would tell the group on the Baltimore bus, who would giddily oblige."[16] According to a 2004 New York Times article, "Passers-by have rubbed — to a bright gleam — its nose, horns and a part of its anatomy that, as Mr. Benepe put it gingerly, 'separates the bull from the steer.'"[1]
A 2007 newspaper account agreed that a "peculiar ritual" of handling the "shining orbs" of the statue's scrotum seems to have developed into a tradition. One visitor, from Mississippi, told the Tribeca Trib she did it "for good luck", and because "there’s a kind of primal response when you see something like that. You just have to engage it."[5]
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Bernine Madoff stunned SEC had no clue
yet another colossal 'failure of imagination' - 'I dont think anyone could have predicted' ...
when one phone call could have revealed the whole Ponzi scheme, when all of Wall Street knew for 20 years (!!!) that he was crooked as evidenced by their universal avoidance of investing in his scheme due to the obvious stench
obvious to all but the schoolboys in the SEC
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/31/eveningnews/main5477864.shtml?tag=contentBody;featuredPost-PE
"Hundreds of documents released on Friday by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's portray an agency at times skeptical or dismissive of evidence that the now imprisoned mastermind of the world's largest Ponzi scheme was up to no good.
At other times, it appeared the agency knew that goings-on at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC were improper but never followed through on their discoveries or on the allegations of chief whistleblower Harry Markopolos."
"by jadedpatriot October 31, 2009 11:34 PM EDT
My fellow Americans: Most of my adult life I've heard my fellow citizens decry some outrage, and then pronounce disbelief at the incompetence of the appropriate watchdog. Now, with the mountain of financial misdeeds of recent years, liberals point their accusatory fingers at conservatives, tea partyers point at liberals, party loyalists of all stripes defend their own, and rant at those other, mindless loyalists. Realize, you fools, that we are all being played by the power elite. A gigantic transfer of wealth is taking place right under our noses, and we're wasting our patriotic calories, railing at the guy who lives across the street! We peons are guilty of being led into a false contest of ideologies. If we weren't being raped of our assets by the elite, with the full complicity of government insiders, elected and otherwise, we'd have enough money to either save up for our infirmities and our retirements, the Republican way, or pay taxes and let public programs take care of our infirmities and retirement needs. Robbed blind, we'll have the money for neither approach. The intellectual war we must wage should be between the honest and the dishonest. It's clear that welfare trained some people to be disfunctional and dependent for generations at a time. Make no mistake, however: we, the taxpaying middle class are being manipulated by the power elite in every way possible. We are being systematically stripped of all of our gains of the past two centuries. The system isn't screwed up, it's not broken; it's working beautifully, precisely according to plan. The plans of the robber barons, that is.
Reply to this comment this-->
by nextgenman09 November 1, 2009 2:07 AM EST
How exactly do you plan on "waging" this war? With the Sheeeple of America, who spend their days watching NASCAR, American Idol and Oprah? Of what "Intellect" are you speaking?Its over. America has gone the way of the Roman Empire.
this-->
by bradkt1 November 1, 2009 4:26 AM EST
I think that you are missing a major point here. First and foremost, the incompetence of the watchdogs doesn't matter if they are kept on a leash by their masters...the political appointees who couldn't bring themselves to believe that Bernie Madoff could possibly be a crook and who wouldn't back them up. The grunts knew that they wouldn't be backed up by the people in charge of their agency. They are not going to dig into a hornet's nest with someone whom their masters have accorded special consideration and treatment because of his or her reputation. Bernie Madoff got preferential treatment because he was Bernie Madoff and for no other reason. Yes, it was unconscionable to put a group of rookies who had never investigated a case of this magnitude, but that is all tot often how the game is fixed in the first place. This all began with the mindset of the people in charge of the SEC that they weren't going to find anything here anyway because it was Bernie Madoff...and because he was politically connected, they certainly didn't want to do anything to offend him. So what did they do? They gave everything a cursory glance and said "Thank you Mr. Madoff." Case closed...despite the fact that an objective look at the evidence should have and would have tipped them off that something was amiss. That's basically what the SEC's Inspector General said in so many words. In short, yes it is about political philosophy and the way that those political appointees define how they should perform their jobs. If their view of the world is that government should stay out of the private sector and not keep an eye on the activities of the rich, the powerful and the politically connected, the Bernie Madoffs of this world will get away with their schemes every time. "
when one phone call could have revealed the whole Ponzi scheme, when all of Wall Street knew for 20 years (!!!) that he was crooked as evidenced by their universal avoidance of investing in his scheme due to the obvious stench
obvious to all but the schoolboys in the SEC
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/31/eveningnews/main5477864.shtml?tag=contentBody;featuredPost-PE
"Hundreds of documents released on Friday by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's portray an agency at times skeptical or dismissive of evidence that the now imprisoned mastermind of the world's largest Ponzi scheme was up to no good.
At other times, it appeared the agency knew that goings-on at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC were improper but never followed through on their discoveries or on the allegations of chief whistleblower Harry Markopolos."
"by jadedpatriot October 31, 2009 11:34 PM EDT
My fellow Americans: Most of my adult life I've heard my fellow citizens decry some outrage, and then pronounce disbelief at the incompetence of the appropriate watchdog. Now, with the mountain of financial misdeeds of recent years, liberals point their accusatory fingers at conservatives, tea partyers point at liberals, party loyalists of all stripes defend their own, and rant at those other, mindless loyalists. Realize, you fools, that we are all being played by the power elite. A gigantic transfer of wealth is taking place right under our noses, and we're wasting our patriotic calories, railing at the guy who lives across the street! We peons are guilty of being led into a false contest of ideologies. If we weren't being raped of our assets by the elite, with the full complicity of government insiders, elected and otherwise, we'd have enough money to either save up for our infirmities and our retirements, the Republican way, or pay taxes and let public programs take care of our infirmities and retirement needs. Robbed blind, we'll have the money for neither approach. The intellectual war we must wage should be between the honest and the dishonest. It's clear that welfare trained some people to be disfunctional and dependent for generations at a time. Make no mistake, however: we, the taxpaying middle class are being manipulated by the power elite in every way possible. We are being systematically stripped of all of our gains of the past two centuries. The system isn't screwed up, it's not broken; it's working beautifully, precisely according to plan. The plans of the robber barons, that is.
Reply to this comment this-->
by nextgenman09 November 1, 2009 2:07 AM EST
How exactly do you plan on "waging" this war? With the Sheeeple of America, who spend their days watching NASCAR, American Idol and Oprah? Of what "Intellect" are you speaking?Its over. America has gone the way of the Roman Empire.
this-->
by bradkt1 November 1, 2009 4:26 AM EST
I think that you are missing a major point here. First and foremost, the incompetence of the watchdogs doesn't matter if they are kept on a leash by their masters...the political appointees who couldn't bring themselves to believe that Bernie Madoff could possibly be a crook and who wouldn't back them up. The grunts knew that they wouldn't be backed up by the people in charge of their agency. They are not going to dig into a hornet's nest with someone whom their masters have accorded special consideration and treatment because of his or her reputation. Bernie Madoff got preferential treatment because he was Bernie Madoff and for no other reason. Yes, it was unconscionable to put a group of rookies who had never investigated a case of this magnitude, but that is all tot often how the game is fixed in the first place. This all began with the mindset of the people in charge of the SEC that they weren't going to find anything here anyway because it was Bernie Madoff...and because he was politically connected, they certainly didn't want to do anything to offend him. So what did they do? They gave everything a cursory glance and said "Thank you Mr. Madoff." Case closed...despite the fact that an objective look at the evidence should have and would have tipped them off that something was amiss. That's basically what the SEC's Inspector General said in so many words. In short, yes it is about political philosophy and the way that those political appointees define how they should perform their jobs. If their view of the world is that government should stay out of the private sector and not keep an eye on the activities of the rich, the powerful and the politically connected, the Bernie Madoffs of this world will get away with their schemes every time. "
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