A man finds himself totally alone, standing on an impenetrable floor that stretches out infinitely in all directions. There is no food anywhere on this floor. Unless the man does something to reach food, he will surely starve to death. The man walks around in desperation, and eventually he smells some food but doesn't know where the smell is coming from. It turns out that the smell is emanating from ground meat, and that it is coming from a level beneath him. He also notices that every hundred yards or so there is a giant meat grinder that connects the two levels. When he looks down into one of the meat grinders, he can see the level beneath him and a heap of ground meat. He also notices that every meat grinder that he stops at has a heap of ground meat beneath it. He cannot find a single one that doesn't. If he dives into one of the meat grinders he will be able to get to the level beneath him and to the meat that lies below. On his level, he will have no food till the end of all of eternity (or until the end of his life, whichever comes first). On the level beneath him, he will have enough food to last him till the end of all of eternity (or until the end of his life, whichever comes first). What does the man do?
Yes, it has once again come time for a good old fashioned witch hunt. I agree with Germany's Angela Merkel in her assertion that there are witches brewing up spells in the marketplace and speculating the Euro to the brink, for the sake of their own selfish greed. This kind of destructive speculation and willful market manipulation needs to be rooted out. And, yes, the witches need to be burned. Financially and legally, that is... with painful restrictions that tie their hands and make them cry over all the money they will lose or not get to earn on the suffering they intend to inflict upon the citizens of Europe.
It's time for a cleansing of the temple. The worthless speculators, who offer no true value to the system and only act as a siphon on our collective wealth, the likes of the mega hedge funds and conjurers of financial chicanery and deception, need to be expelled from the modern day temple that is our markets. This party needs to come to an end now, in a very serious way. If our governments do not act against them, their activities will ultimately lead to our collective ruin.
Everyone and their grandmother has been dumping stocks and buying gold just recently. This suggests that the gold price rally is about to come to an end. Once again, all those buying in late, at the tail end of a rally that has been manufactured and amped up by the manipulators, will be left holding.
The Euro debt crisis has been well exploited, with all the panic hype perfectly timed for the sell-in-May-and-go-away period (a self-fulfilling prophecy now, where market "wisdom" is concerned). Once the hysteria over the Euro has been exhausted, investors will once again be looking at market fundamentals, which aren't nearly as bad as the market selloff might imply.
The formula for stabilizing the markets is quite simple and involves the following key elements...
Just imposing these few conditions upon the system will quickly start to calm the markets and help to rebuild a healthy foundation that will encourage long term investment for the purpose of creating true value that can benefit society, rather than merely lining the pockets of the robber barons.
Just when we thought we were finally done with it and it was well behind us, subprime once again rears its ugly head. There is much talk right now about fears of a "European contagion" risking a fragile global economic recovery. We should take this opportunity to remind ourselves that this so-called "European contagion" is largely "Made in the USA", engineered by our very own financial sector. In that sense, it is really just the "American contagion" continuing to spread throughout the globe.
We have companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citi, and many others to thank for the current crisis that continues unleashing its waves of devastation throughout the global economy. It was advanced securitization and the obfuscation of massive leveraging of risk that allowed the poison to be masked and then injected into the system. How poisonous is the poison, and how much poison does it take to cause years of debilitating suffering for the world economy? Consider that only a tiny, split second brush from a tentacle of the tiny Japanese Irukandji jellyfish can cause its victim weeks of excruciating agony.
For what they have done to us, I believe it is time to identify the culprits central to this gigantic mess and dissolve them. They clearly did not do good with the power that we allowed them to accumulate.
The European Union might be inclined to interpret developments over past years as effectively a kind of economic warfare, waged by the United States of America against the European Union and the rest of the world, with Manhattan, New York serving as a kind of Central Command, and with companies like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and others serving as the weapons of mass destruction.
While the ratings agencies were ostensibly asleep at the switch (but probably more deliberately turning a blind eye) while the toxic financial rubbish that the financial sector was cooking up was spreading its contagion throughout the system and finding its way eventually into munical bonds and further afield into the balance sheets of countries like Iceland, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Spain, and others, they are now suddenly wide awake and ready to pounce on any and all foreign governments that even have the slightest whiff of those same toxic assets that they were somehow magically unable to even catch a hint of before.
There is the sense in the air that the hedge funds are having a feeding frenzy and willfully stirring up anxiety and panic over the woes of the so-called PIGS. After all, even if the stock markets have been generally rising of late, these investors aren't merely content to take the difference between where it was and where it will be - they want to take the difference many times over. Therefore, any opportunity to sow panic and stir up volatility will be seized at - especially if they feel they're in control of the volatility and can trade ahead of it.
All in all, I feel that things are not likely to end well for the US, since all this can easily turn around in the end and bite us in the ass. It may look like we're out of the woods as we see signs of an economic recovery, but a gigantic public debt crisis is looming. The more the situation is allowed to fester, the more likely the final outcome will be one of two possibilities: fascism, or socialism. To avoid extreme outcomes, I propose breaking the legs of the financial giants now and bringing them to their knees - right where the rest of us are these days.
It's time for Mr. Obama to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy and start ramming progressive policies down the throats of the obstructionist Republican Party. If the Republican Party is going to stand in the way of relief for the unemployed and the uninsured, purely for the sake of not letting the Democrats be seen to achieve a victory, and purely for the sake of disillusioning progressives like myself in the presidency of Barack Obama, then I have zero sympathy for them as they suffer in their role as opposition party.
Ok, so providing a necessary counterbalance is one thing, but preventing absolutely anything meaningful from being accomplished is shameful and running afoul of the spirit of democracy. Therefore, I have no problem with the Democrats resorting to reconciliation as a means of ushering in legislation, above the cries of foul play by Republicans. After all, who are the Republicans to be crying foul.
I truly, truly want to believe that Barack Obama can bring meaningful change that will serve America well for decades to come, but it sure looks like America's democracy is failing her citizens.
What a huge disappointment! I had such high hopes for him. So terribly, terribly sad. Where's the universal healthcare? Where's the sweeping financial industry reform? Where's the climate change commitment? Where are the jobs? Where's the Green New Deal? And, to add insult to injury, promoting nuclear power no less! That while we try to pursuade Iran that they should NOT be entitled to nuclear power.
What a bad joke this all is. This is not change I can believe in. YES WE CAN... muddle along spastically while accomplashing damn near nothing and while America continues on its road towards decline and ultimate decrepitude, while China, India, Brasil, and others rise.
So far, Obama hasn't earned my vote in the next presidential election. Sorry, Obama, but my assessment so far is a resounding FAIL!
You know the senate healthcare bill is a pile of bullshit when its passage causes stocks in healthcare sector companies to soar as a kind of sigh of relief. For them, it will continue to be business as usual. In fact, Sanofi-Aventis appears to be so excited about the future prospects for profiteering off of this nation of unhealthy citizens that it is agreeing to buy consumer healthcare company Chattem Inc for a sizable premium at a price tag of around $1.9 billion.
Analysts covering the healthcare sector are relieved that the healthcare bill will not be too damaging to companies in this sector. But, not "damaging" to the healthcare sector necessarily means damaging to the American public and their aspirations for healthcare coverage that is affordable to the nation.
Americans are still getting screwed. Republicans have a big hand in this, but this time it's happened on Barack Obama's watch. I am dismayed that he has failed to push through a public option. I see this bill is an abject failure, just like the recent conclusion to the talks in Copenhagen, which produced a hollow, substanceless, and toothless accord that is no more than a gift to the entrenched wealth.
Obstructionists are still holding us all hostage, and more Republicans will have to be removed in order to make any real progress. In the meantime, America and the world rots away.
Wall St gains on health stocks and M&A flurry (reuters.com)
More and more people are doing it. It's the only fair thing to do after what has happened. As taxpayers, we've already payed the banks preemptively for the cost of our collective defaulting. Now it's time for them to pay - big time.
By now you've probably reached the rather rational conclusion that the so-called "housing boom" of this decade was no more than a gigantic con, perpretrated on us all by the financial industry. Everybody who bought during the peak overpayed. If that is you, then the sad news is that you were ripped off. In fact, practically anybody who invested in anything during the boom was ripped off, because just about everything was overpriced in a world that was leveraged to the hilt by synthetic derivatives and other finance industry shell games.
That goes for securities as well. In some ways, underwater homeowners are better off than those who invested in the stock markets, because homeowners can walk away from value that they would lose over the long term. Those who lost in the markets cannot retroactively undo their decision to buy overpriced equities and lose a bundle in the nuclear explosion that went off in the last months of 2008.
The banks have brought us to our knees. Now it's time to return the favor.
Half of mortgage borrowers will be 'underwater'
Soon we will create an illusion of the future so compelling, that there will be little impetus to step out of the illusion for long enough to do the hard work to bring about that future. Moreover, we will create compelling illusions of so many possible futures, each one equally compelling in different ways, that we will not be able to reach a consensus as to which possible future should be made real, and instead we will be caught in a paralysis of inaction.
Stagflation appears inescapable now, looming just around the corner. The effects of recent spending should start hitting us over the next year. The only thing to help temper price inflation will be the recent credit bust, which is reducing the affordability of many big ticket items and should continue to reduce demand to such a level that prices of these items are forced into lower price territory for quite some time to come - perhaps a decade or more.
Over the past decade, everything has been overpriced. And so, everything must come down in price. This should mean reduced profits - and, in some cases, losses - for many mature businesses into the foreseeable future, and a general stagnation of economic growth. Were it not for the inflationary effect of government stimulus spending and bank bailout induced moneyfacturing, we could expect to actually see broad deflation. As it stands, there is minor deflation in certain sectors, and major deflation in the real estate sector. And entering deeper into the peak oil period certainly won't help to ease the coming stagflation, either.
We need to shed light on the dark pools of liquidity that are starting to grow like malignant melanomas - eating into our securities exchanges. Dark pools are where the elite meet to cheat. They wish to live by a different standard to the rest of us, and seek to profit by holding the upper hand and establishing an asymmetry of transparency.
Most investors are blissfully ignorant regarding the forces that are now working hard to distort the organic pricing behavior of the markets to their benefit. Such disparities between the majority of investors and those who wallow in the dark pools will act as a siphon on the public wealth - a de facto tax imposed on all those who participate in the markets.
As part of the Obama administration's reform initiatives, I propose that these opaque practices that distort and thwart the price discovery mechanism of the public markets be unequivocally outlawed - not merely regulated. Wading into the dark pools is a slippery slope for us all. This trend should be aggressively nipped in the bud, and there is no better time to do it than now - in the wake of one of the most spectacular market collapses we have seen in a very long time.
There are many wealthy parasites who wish to further gouge into the money invested in public markets by the legions of US 401k holders. Our government must protect the American people from such parasitization.
SEC May Force More Disclosure About ‘Dark Pools,’ Schapiro Says
The genius leadership at E-TRADE Financial decided to broaden the business activities of the company beyond their core competency of equities trading and into broader banking and financial services, including the issuance of home loans - just in time for the spectacular collapse of the housing market. What a bunch of incompetent morons. Now their business is poisoned, and investors in E-TRADE are poisoned along with them. The leadership should go. The company's directors and other executive management responsible for this spectacular strategic blunder should be kicked out on their stupid rich asses. Investors in E-TRADE would like to see blood flow.
They just can't seem to figure it out. It's a solution that is staring them right in the faces. It's a solution that is ready to deploy - NOW! It's a solution that is incremental and scalable. It's a solution that creates a wide array of jobs, many of which will be in the construction industry, and widely dispersed across the many regions of the United States. It's a solution that the people can truly own and be an integral part of. It's solar and wind power, and it's here and ready to be deployed.
And yet, we still have representatives on the Republican side pushing the agenda of a crusty old behemoth of an industry - the nuclear industry. Republicans seem to be all about generational theft and creating problems for future generations to clean up. Republicans seem to hate the people, in fact, and Republicans seem to hate any technology that empowers the people to do it for themselves.
You would think that solar and wind power would be technologies with an immense affinity with libertarian and true conservative modes of thought. Somehow the Republican Party has come to represent nothing truly conservative, but some kind of bastardized and distorted quasi-conservatism, with some token social conservatism brushed on like lipstick on a pig.
They're not really about being business friendly, but rather about being Big Business friendly. Now, if you're going to be a friend of Big Business, then Big Government is going to be your natural enemy. And, too, small business is going to be your enemy. You want to serve your task master, Big Business, and institute policies that will help them to eat up small businesses like a whale eating so much plankton.
Now I'm not a proponent of conservatism - I'm a proud liberal, through and through - but I believe the issue of distributed solar and wind energy technologies - like the issue of excessive government spending on ill-conceived foreign military escapades - is an issue where liberals / progressives, libertarians, and true conservatives can all come together. Power to the people means power to all people, regardless of their ideological leanings, and power solutions that truly EMpower individuals to become producers rather than merely consumers will empower us all against Big Business AND Big Government.
GOP goes nuclear in policy pitch
Contrary to the protestations of corporate leaders, there is no better time than our present dire economic predicament to impose fairer tax obligations on American corporations, and to clamp down on their elaborate, technically legal but nonetheless unethical tax evasion activities.
If we couldn't effect a fairer obligation from companies during the previous decades of America being so flush with cash and drowning in so much credit that we couldn't figure out what to usefully do with it all, then when can this ever be accomplished? Were the good times of the past decade the right time, then?
Barack Obama is right to be playing friend to small business and foe to big business. Too much power and too much wealth has been concentrated in the hands of too few, and this concentration of wealth has lead to the wholesale corruption of our democracy and the purchase of politicians.
I would argue that it is precisely during times when the economy is roaring along and money is flying in all directions that it becomes even less likely to increase tax obligations. First of all, do not underestimate the seduction of greed. Secondly, realize that all that money sloshing around provides a nice "budget" with which corporations can buy more politicians and employ more lobbyists to contort our democracy.
It is precisely now, when corporations are being brought to their knees and when many of the proudest bastions of greed are reduced to capitulation before the government, hands outstretched to receive Americans' hard earned tax money, that our government must seize the upper hand and drive through a fresh dispensation that will pay taxpayers back as the economy recovers over the next decade.
I reiterate my assertion: if big business is squeeling, our government is surely on the right track. To our government, I say "seize the day". You are in a position of strength, and this position should not be wasted by making the mistake of listening to the same big business leaders who misled us into the current crisis.
Intel, Lockheed Tell Obama on Taxes, F-22: Not in This Economy
If they're squeeling, our government must be doing something right.
The banking industry has become so accustomed to having things their way for the past few decades, that they have grown into indulged and petulent little brats who scream bloody murder at the first sign of any light being shed on their shady activities. So sensitive to the light are they, that they burn like vampires being exposed to the sun.
They are mortally allergic to transparency, but they're going to have to suck it up. If they squeel too much, perhaps we'll just have to nationalize the runts and put them out of our collective misery.
Squeel, little pig. Squeel!
Wells Fargo Assails TARP, Calls Stress Test 'Asinine'
They're already trying to come up with names for it. Now it's being dubbed "The Great Recession". We'll see what names they start coming up with after a decade of it.
"Great Recession" seen lasting 3 years, experts say (reuters.com)
This wasn't just some hiccup. We didn't just burp out a gigantic pocket of credit gas that was obstructing our intestines, and now we can go on stuffing more into our collective cake hole. This wasn't just some dead deer in the road that temporarily obstructed our path, and all we had to do was to sweep it off to the side and then carry on about our business as usual, putting pedal to the metal as we barrel down that road to our collective mass die-off.
No, what we saw was the last hurrah. This thing has been centuries in the making, and our denial phase has lasted thirty years - so classically epitomized by our leaders declaring the American way of life non-negotiable. Talk about arrogance! Well, it turns out that the Credit Crisis was equally as non-negotiable. Now we're left trying to negotiate our way through the mess left in its mighty wake.
Now we're in for a 20 year recession. Only, after a few years of it, it won't really feel like a recession anymore. Economists will be struggling to come up with a name for it. They might call it a lost decade, but it could easily be two... or three. Call it a hyper-correction, if you like. It'll be the new baseline, and we'll just come to accept it as the new norm. And as the good old times of recent decades fade into our distant memory, the lost standards will be quickly disowned by the rising generation as it commits itself to finding happiness in less. It's easy for kids to hate their parents, and the past few decades will prove ample justification for an entire generation to disown their parents' values.
Fortunately, as it turns out, finding happiness in less is not all that hard. After all, people in poorer parts of the world have been doing this with aplomb for quite some time now. The next few decades will be characterized by massive turmoil and readjustment of mankind, of a scale not seen since World War II. It will, nevertheless, be a dramatic and exciting time, filled with opportunities and new possibilities for those who venture beyond the stale conventions of the rotting 20th century.