Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Nevada – A Ground Zero For Wall Street’s Mortgage Fraud – Files Suit That Jeopardizes Obama’s Dirty Banker Deal

A follow up to Taibbi’s original Obama’s Dirty Banker Deal post.   Will the pressure mount for more state AGs to follow suit and subvert Obama’s dirty deal?   Let’s hope so.  You might consider contacting your state AG and expressing your desire for them to follow New York and Nevada’s lead and not give criminal cover to bankers. 

Interesting that a few commenters to this ProPublica story have remarked as I have for quite some time that Wall Street should be prosecuted under RICO organized crime laws.   If we ever see a return to functioning democracy, that very well could eventually happen.  Wall Street corrupt racket is exponentially more harmful and more systemic than any organized crime syndicate in this country’s history. 

posted by TimingLogic at 7:54 PM

Amazing: Justice Department Sues Crooked Investment Bankers And Corporate Thugs To Stop AT&T – T Mobile Merger

It’s almost unbelievable but the Justice Department just slammed the hammer down on this nonsensical oligopoly/monopoly deal.  Democracy ain’t quite dead yet.  Is this finally a demarcation line drawn in the sand against Wall Street criminals and corporate hegemonic power?   If this deal falls, it will cost enormous sums of money to banks and the corporations involved.  And if that starts a trend where major corporations are now being forewarned, this could become a major tipping point against mergers & acquisitions.  If we could finally get someone at Justice and within our government to start breaking up the massive firms in every industry in this country or at least get them off the government welfare dole so they have to compete in a working market using merit rather than by buying off politicians to rig markets against competition, this could start to force a longer term shift in our economy. 

We wrote on here soon after starting this blog that many people believe corporate power and monopolies helped create and sustain the Great Depression.   It’s an esoteric topic that is seldom discussed but there is no doubt corporate hegemony kills working markets.  And we see the exact same environment today.  We have highlighted countless times the aberrations that these entities create in an economy and how they destroy working markets and competition.  If you have some extra time, this is an easy to understand but prescient set of videos against this merger. 

Remember, we have uniquely written countless times this environment could be classified the end of big.  The unwinding of massive corporations and large bureaucracies such as the EU and the war state are coming.   It is already starting with Kraft and Cisco being two examples.  And it would have happened to Wall Street if their political stooges didn’t bail out JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wachovia, Bear Stearns, etc. 

This dynamic of the end of big must come for the economy to recover.  Large corporations have not created a single net-new job in this country in nearly forty years.  Working markets needed to create jobs will eventually make all major corporations irrelevant as time goes by.  Most invention does not happen in major corporations.  The mergers & acquisitions game has simply allowed mega corporations to buy that innovation rather than have to compete in a working market against it.  Do you want to own the equity of these massive corporations given that dynamic?

Let me tell you a little secret that you won’t read anywhere else.  Well,  at least you won’t read it anywhere until it is plagiarized from here as many of our other rantings have been.  We can’t start a new bull market.  It’s impossible.  Because the companies haven’t yet been created that will drive a new bull market.  The companies today are keeping that from happening by bribing our government and rigging regulation and turning beneficial regulation into red tape to keep out competitors and destroy working markets. 

Unfortunately, Obama and both political parties are corporatist shills or anti-working market toadies who are blocking economic recovery and working markets.   Ayn Rand ideologist or political progressive, it matters not.  Both the Ayn Rand Institute and progressives are clearly against corporatism.  The only ones advocating it are President Obama, Republican leadership and the countless idiots in the political class and in the major corporation board rooms.    Obama begs multinational corporations to hire American workers.   This is pathetic and ridiculous and shows how clueless he is about economics.  If we had working markets, we would have innovation and new companies hiring American workers and there would be no corporatist begging necessary.  But, then if Obama and Republicans supported working markets rather than corporatism, they wouldn’t be able to coerce their corporate masters into giving both parties billions of dollars for their next rigged political campaigns and elections. 

This is a huge win for the American people against Wall Street criminals and the mergers & acquisitions Ponzi schemes.  

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 3:49 PM

Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index Implodes

2011-08-29_1814

I really don't follow the Dow Jones Industrials at all.  No one trades it and its makeup is completely irrelevant to the original spirit of the index.  And I only anecdotally follow some of the components of the  Dow Transports. With the Transports making new highs before the 2008 collapse, many were using that to call for a new bull market.  Contrarily, at that time we wrote that the Dow Transportation Index also made a new high in 1929 right before the markets fell 95% and that the new high did not mean the start of a new bull market.   Even if the Transports didn’t make a new high in 2011, the railroad and trucking indices did.   Once gain, who cares?  

I follow the direction of some sub-indices for particular clues as to the original intent of Dow Theory but anything to do with equity markets is only marginally useful as long as we have a runaway financial system, a destroyed economy and indices comprised of stocks that don’t reflect its original intent.   And this has been the case far longer than the last few years.  Since at least 1995 we have seen the U.S. economy crumbling underneath the financial thievery of Wall Street and the corporate lobbyist bribery machine. 

The Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index, ^CYC on Yahoo Finance, is a much better industrial index than the Dow Jones Industrials. The Dow has become a ridiculous index comprising financial, consumer, corporate welfare and war state companies. If you want to get an idea of industrial companies who actually and substantially serve the American economy, the CYC is a much better barometer than the generally industrial-less Dow Jones Industrials. 

The CYC peaked just about the time we wrote that we were bearish again on bank stocks early this year. And it has formed what is looking like a massive double top with the 2008 peak. (So has the Transports if one wishes to consider these two indices under the original intent of Dow Theory.) 

The CYC index has essentially not made any progress in eight months just as the banking index has failed to do. And the industrials within the CYC are down much more than the major equity averages. The CYC fell over 30% and is now in bear market territory.  (Greater than 20% decline) From peak to trough the CYC has retraced about 40% of its rally gains in a watershed collapse. And, it is now sitting just above the precipice of a substantial topping process that occurred over a multi-year period from 2006 to 2008. If it eventually fails here, we could see another watershed decline wiping away most of its gains since the 2009 bottom.

Remember, it is the direction of the market that matters.  It gives us an indication of the state of the status quo.  And that’s about all it tells us.  There is NO value in any generally-held equities based on any intrinsic measurement as we have ranted incessantly.  Intrinsic value for the S&P is closer to 200-450 and the Dow around 2000-4000.  We are at these elevated price levels because we are in the midst of the greatest financial bubble the world has ever seen.

I am seeing a preponderance of bullish leveraged bets being placed in equities, albeit on low participation rates.   We have a massively more overvalued equity market than was so in 2008.  Some stocks have made substantial new highs beyond 2008 with so much leverage and free Federal Reserve money being thrown at liquid assets. 

The status quo believes this market is headed north and that we are in the midst of a double bottom here.   Numerous data points indicate few institutions are  selling.   We have written on here since well before the 2008 collapse that these markets will move well too fast for people to get out.  So, instead what we have seen is people holding major declines, hoping the market will recover.   And now we have another psychological factor weighing on the mind of investors.  Many sold with substantial losses in 2008 only to see the market recover.  I’m sure some true believers will attempt to just ride out any future volatility, anticipating that 2008 will repeat itself.  In other words, see a substantial recovery in liquid asset prices. 

I think one must consider that another outcome is possible.  That is, financial markets as we understand them may cease to exist in the future.  Or that prices may not recover to these levels.  Ever.   We are at an enormous inflection point that has never been seen in our country’s history.  That means riding this pig down again could mean a permanent loss of wealth.  Permanent is a long time.   The reality is we don’t need a stock market as it exists today to have a thriving economy.  In fact, I could make an argument there is a much more elegant democratic solution for corporations in need of public funding.  And I will share that some time in the future. 

Remember, one of our theses is that the investor class is going to get butchered.  They still believe they are going to get bailed out because of the same fraud that bailed them out countless times while allowing them to thieve endlessly from the rest of society.   That mindset works until it no longer works.  Fraud eventually causes systemic failure with no recovery.  History is replete with this timeless truth.  

posted by TimingLogic at 10:37 AM

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Michael Greenberger - Secret Exemptions Allowed Wall Street & Hedge Fund Manipulators To Distort Commodity Futures Markets

WATCH THIS!  This is what we have been harping on for years.  Everything discussed in this video interview has been discussed on this blog.  Except it is coming from a VERY credible and honest political insider in the United States. 

I know I remark of this from time to time but for new readers, The Real News is quite possibly the best source for serious journalism in our country today.  It’s on my blog link list and it is the source of this story.  I don’t read anything out of Wall Street, I don’t read any mainstream financial bloggers and I sure as hell don’t watch any news on the television except public television.   I would encourage you to watch and, if possible, support The Real News. 

Excessive speculation by Wall Street crooks is causing an inflationary bubble.  Those are the words of Michael Greenberger (sans the crook label) as he is again in the news.  As we have highlighted before, Greenberger is one of our favorites to speak out in the search for reason and truth against the corrupt financial machine and its enabler, the corrupt political engine.

We have uniquely been writing about this since before the 2008 collapse.  This is quite possibly the most criminal of all financial activities of Wall Street.  It is the same dynamic as Enron’s manipulation of energy prices.  I repeat, the same dynamic. 

Greenberger points out what we have said for the last six years.  That is, it is corrupt Wall Street speculation that is causing price gains in commodities.  It is NOT inflation.   People who equate Federal Reserve money printing to  inflationary price increases HAVE NO IDEA what they are talking about.   There is NO inflation problem.  There is NO money printing problem.  There is a MASSIVE financial corruption problem associated with manipulating commodity prices.   And that corruption is killing people around the world and causing untold numbers of impoverished children to suffer by going without food.  To repost what we have said numerous times, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods.  90% of Americans have little to no money.  There is not too much money chasing too few goods.  What we are seeing is too much money, leverage and speculation in futures markets causing aberrant price behavior that is causing massive pain and suffering around the world.  Thank you Republicans and Democrats.  Thank you Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama. 

As we have said numerous times, every financial firm in this country should be banned from trading in all commodities markets.  Period.   By the way, so should large commodity trading firms in the agri-market who prey on small farmers, especially in poor countries as we noted many years ago.  Of course, we would have neither issue if we had a public banking system and we enforced existing anti-trust laws; two of our major concerns on here.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:11 PM

Entrapment As Government Policy – The FBI Goes Rogue

I was going to let this story pass.  Mother Jones did the investigation but their web site and story were unclear and disheveled.   It is a somewhat poorly organized and confusing account of some good investigative journalism.  But CounterPunch does a much better job of dicing the Mother investigation and presenting it in a coherent and easily understood format. 

If you are a Muslim in America, you have ever reason to believe you are being targeted and spied on by the state.  Whether you are the 99% of citizens who are peaceful or not really doesn’t matter.   The state needs a boogey man and shit happens.   Tag.  You’re it. 

This environment has all of the makings of countless state-based witch hunts.  In the U.S. we just do things like lock up innocent Japanese Americans during the war.  But, we don’t do the same to German Americans.  As George Carlin would say, that’s because we only target brown people.  This is a favorite standup  of mine from George.  Funny but disturbingly true.  May he rest in peace.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:54 AM

Wikileaks Latest - Politicians AKA Science Illiterates From Both Parties Shill For Their Corporate Masters

Politicians and political appointments are seldom public servants.  They are more often whoremongers and charlatans for the lobbyist machine and fascist state. 

It’s good to know both Dummycrats and Republikaaners are using America’s power and influence to shill  foreign countries into purchasing genetically-modified Frankenfoods for their corporate masters.   An effort that essentially enslaves poor people who historically have saved their own grains for next year’s planting.  Now they have to buy what many researchers believe are very unsafe seeds with known and unknown health and environment sides effects from predatory  corporations. 

Change you can believe in.  

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:29 AM

Monday, August 29, 2011

Is The War State’s Homeland Spending Blitz Paying Off?

Well sure it is.  For the for-profit war state and both political parties who are minting endless financial benefits.  For the citizens of this country?  Well, who really cares about you?

In a world of state-based insanity, I thought this quote from the LA Times article was more than prescient.  We could be fixing bridges, fixing our educational system, fixing the housing mess, providing health care to people needlessly dying or frankly, just giving the American people back their own money rather than pissing it down the Orwellian war state’s endless for-profit spending apparatus. 

American people can’t find a job, can’t afford decent health insurance . can’t afford to pay their mortgage and often times can’t afford to feed their children, but Dummycrats and Republikaaners can find endless supplies of money to enrich their favorite lobbyists’ for-profit war state projects.   I feel so much more safe knowing my community’s police force now is armed with battle tanks and the latest spying technology.  Who gives a shit whether anyone can feed their children.  I mean seriously.  Who cares? 

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

posted by TimingLogic at 3:48 PM

The World Of Energy Pollution And Its Impact On Life

Let’s follow up our last post on industrial pollution with one about electromagnetic pollution.   That is, cell phones, portable electrical devices, the wireless revolution and other electromagnetic energy sources invading our personal space. 

One of our long term theses on here is that we are in a  cycle of volatility.  While I have not discussed my theory surrounding this statement, I have made countless remarks and many posts that should encourage your imagination to consider a world beyond current views of generally accepted ideology.  Ideology that often is portrayed as science but clearly is nothing of the sort. 

We remarked some years ago in our Chaiten volcano post that I believe electrical and electromagnetic  energy forces of extraterrestrial origin could very well be a root cause in cycles of volatility.

If one considers beyond the generally mechanical and chemical view of life, one recognizes that the human body and all life on earth is driven by electrical and electromagnetic energy.  The human body is nothing more than a battery of electrical potential contained in a salt bath.   (Another myth portrayed as science is that natural occurring salts are bad for our health.  A ridiculous notion disproven by the very scientific community who advocates this nonsense.  We may not want to ingest copious amounts of processed sodium chloride contained in the industrial food chain  but without the salt bath within our body, our entire electrical nervous system, heart and brain would cease to function.  This is akin to the cholesterol myth we will talk about on here at some point as well. ) 

Because electromagnetism is the foundation of life, one must consider that cell phones, other portable electric devices, wireless infrastructure and the entire community of electrical infrastructure in our modern world is going to impact the proper operation of the human machine in some fashion. 

So, in addition to the corporate state protecting environmental polluters and deregulation that is destroying our ecosystems, one must consider that there are equally impactful outcomes of energy pollution.  And that there is science supporting these concerns but that a government driven by profit and bribery has declined to consider these impacts for the sake of profit motive. 

As always do your own diligence.  There are literally hundreds of research articles and books I could point to, including much incredible research that was done in the former Soviet Union, but I’ll keep it simple and point you to this source first.   Maybe I’ll dig deeper into this at some point in the future.   At this point, there are often more questions than answers but as time passes, we shall see this become a very substantial issue that cannot be swept under the profit rug forever.

Electromagnetic Health

posted by TimingLogic at 12:06 PM

Friday, August 26, 2011

Possible Death, Cancer, Infertility & More And New Studies Tell Us It’s Pervasively Now A Part Of Our Entire Ecosystem

As we have remarked before, the industrial food monopoly is just as detrimental to our society as is the financial monopoly of Wall Street.   The corporatocracy exists across all aspects of our society and its negative influences on all parts of our lives is systemic. 

I could probably have an even broader topic list of blog posts if I focused exclusively on the industrial food monopoly, myths about nutrition, safety-related issues about our food, impacts on society and more.   It’s no exaggeration to say that on some level we are killing ourselves.   And if you realize the depth of the problem, you know this system is going to come tumbling down over the next decade as awareness spreads to its systemic risks and consequences.   All of this is enabled and even subsidized by the same captured government under the same dynamics that created the economic and financial freak show before us.  But, the food monopoly is not the primary focus on here.  Well, another reason I don’t post more on this topic is because the food monopolies and their legion of lawyerly stooges have gotten laws passed that often make it a crime to speak freely about the toxicity and unhealthiness of the goo they produce.    Apparently many lawyers don’t have a problem trading in their constitutional oath for one to intimidate and threaten democracy, subvert the rule of law and protect corruption on behalf of the corporate state’s interests.    What did Shakespeare say?  I am just kidding.   The insanity is so severe, you have to joke about it or become insane yourself. 

Let’s just make a broad observation that our society is most often eating food with zero nutritional value or worse.  That is, food that harms your health.  And this food is almost always produced using unsustainable methods that often threaten the ecosystem or our own well being. 

By the way, the FDA food pyramid is a joke.  Some of the items on the food pyramid probably shouldn’t even be ingested by humans.   At least not in large quantities as it is today.  An example is the largest component in the good pyramid, grains.  Some studies show Americans get up to 50% of their calories from grains.  There are many scientific arguments that we shouldn’t be eating grains at all or at least should only be eating them in minor quantities.  But grains, as an example, are the number one cash crop produced by the industrial food monopoly.  So, guess what?  You are going to eat them in massive quantities and suffer any consequences regardless of evidence to the contrary until we overturn corporate personhood and the endless legalized bribery of our government.    Healthy food isn’t expensive.  It’s just not subsidized for Soviet overproduction.  The same Soviet overproduction that drives the war state.  If our government was subsidizing carrots, grass-fed beef and broccoli instead of corn, wheat and oats, we’d see the prices of carrots, grass-fed beef and broccoli plummet. 

As always, think for yourself.  Do your own research rather than believing the endless propaganda of profit-driven government and corporations. 

Our environment is becoming pervasively poisoned by unregulated corporate activity and corruption of our government.   That isn’t just an issue with the food monopoly.  It is an issue with all industry waste.   It’s one reason corporations love emerging markets.  They are “open for business”.  That means local bribes make it possible to dump the world’s most poisonous chemicals out the factory’s back door and into the ecosystem.  Privatize the gains and socialize the losses.   Corporate welfare is systemic around the globe as  fascist capitalism expands  Is there literally any place to plant or harvest food that doesn’t register some level of manmade toxicity in the final product? 

Well, from this recent scientific study in the government’s own PubMed database, it appears Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide and its degradate is pervasively in our air and our rain.  And as the article link points out, the potential known and unknown consequences of this are extremely disturbing.

The fascist state lives.  And it is killing you in more ways than one. 

posted by TimingLogic at 8:59 AM

Update On Collapsing Bee Populations

posted by TimingLogic at 8:30 AM

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

The best president money can buy.  Change you can believe in.  Democrats or Republicans.  It’s all the same.   

posted by TimingLogic at 2:09 PM

Monday, August 22, 2011

The Fullerton Police Beating Death Of A Mentally-Ill, Homeless Kelly Thomas - Our Society Is Self-Destructing Under The War State’s Propaganda Glorifying Aggression And Aggressive Personalities

(City updated.  My mind is failing me.  Also this is a Monday repost from Sunday’s original post because I am having some technical difficulties with a feed.)

I’m not going to turn this blog into a site exposing police abuses and brutality but cheap handheld video devices and sites like Youtube are now helping to turn the tide against illegitimate authority.  In the case of police abuses, society is now able to demand greater accountability for unwarranted and often criminal police behavior.  This in turn has caused many municipalities and government entities to seek increased limitations on police transparency.  This story is so heinous, so inhumane and so indefensible that I want to use it to highlight  a topic  we have talked about before.   That is, the U.S. has become a police state.  

The U.S. surely isn’t comparable to third world police states where people disappear in the middle of the night.  Our constitution hasn’t been completely dismantled.  But, let’s be honest.  The CIA, as just one example, is carrying out those exact policies of abduction and extraction (illegal/irregular rendition) outside of our borders.  In other words, outside of the view and authority of the United States Constitution and its associated liberties, our government is abducting people without a warrant, without due process, and often with the intent of torture and state-sponsored assassination; something many today, including a few brave souls in Congress, cite as state-sponsored murder. (If you can watch this video and not be stirred to defend against  brutality, well, then you might as well quit reading this post.  Because you are so consumed by the war state’s propaganda that I would anticipate you hold its cold and calculated views on human life and dignity rather than the views held by a reasoned society embracing the rule of law.) 

Without due process or the rule of law, any killing sponsored by the state can truly be classified as nothing other than murder.  Is this practice really any different than lynching?  Or Nazi Germany’s abduction of state enemies?  It is savage brutality surrounded by endless calculated state rationalizations.

It’s quite obvious to me that the U.S. police state is a direct consequence of the for-profit military-industrial complex and the associated war state.   Our police often are armed more like paramilitary troops than peace officers.  And who benefits from this endless sale of weaponry, intelligence gathering technology and paramilitary training?  Of course, the for-profit war machine - the military-industrial complex who lobby our government for the endless overbuying of the war machine’s goods and services.  We buy and buy and buy.  Then  we buy even more.  We buy so much that we mothball or park current technology because we can’t afford or rationalize keeping all of the purchases within the active military.   In other words, there is no rationalization for a substantial amount of for-profit military-industrial complex expenditures beyond lining the pockets of for-profit military-industrial complex.  As we pointed out before, we have the world’s second largest air force mothballed in the desert.  And much of that is current technology overproduced by the state.  This is no different than the state-based production quotas of communist China and the Soviet Union. 

Now with the government outsourcing of war and security to for-profit entities, how many thousands of new for-profit contractors are involved in the bloated bureaucracy of the security apparatus, Afghanistan, Iraq, war state and beyond?   And what does it say about the war state’s values that we are the leading exporter of machines that serve no purpose other than mass genocide and murder?  And that we sell most of this technology and associated services to corrupt or often brutal regimes who share none of our society’s democratic values?

This same war state dynamic has infiltrated our peace officer ranks.  As David Stockman recently pointed out, U.S. defense spending is 60% higher in real terms than under Eisenhower during the Cold War; a shocking statistic.  (The Cold War was also a fear-based propaganda policy of aggression by the U.S. war state.  I’m not saying the Soviet Union posed zero threat to world stability.)  And, if one adds in the cost of Homeland Security, hidden and off balance sheet budgets of nontransparent spying & intelligence activities and the massive bubble in peace officer spending for arms, training and paramilitary equipment, the U.S. war machine spends not only more than every other country’s military on earth combined but they spend more than most governments on earth combined.   And this overspending on aggression often forces other states across the world to spend substantially to keep from being bullied by the U.S.’s military policy of global aggression. 

And tell me how does this massive overspending and militarization of our society serve democracy?  Educate our children?  Solve poverty?  Provide sustainable economic opportunity?   Perpetuate democratic ideals around the globe?  Lead to human development and the perpetuation of democratic ideals for our citizens?  It serves the for-profit Wall Street banks who finance it, the politicians who take bribes in one form or another to endorse it and the for-profit military-industrial complex who becomes rich off of the endless debt our society is saddled with to buy it.   We are going broke not because we cannot afford Social Security or national health care, but because we are a nation of aggression and corrupted our leadership.

There is little doubt that the for-profit military-industrial complex and countless associated acts signed by Congress and Presidents over the decades have eroded our constitutional liberties and given unprecedented powers to the war state, the police and to intelligence or spying bureaucracies.   And those acts were often presented as safety measures that were pushed through our legal system using state-based terror, fear and propaganda to gain support.   Propaganda that served the for-profit military-industrial complex and political bureaucracies seeking more power and control.  The driver for many, if not most of these laws were primarily profit or power and therefore, corruption of our democracy.  (The same terror and fear technique used to bail out Wall Street with our money without holding them accountable as to how they used it, whether they were accountable for crimes that created that need or whether its management teams should be sacked or imprisoned for incompetence or criminal negligence or outright criminal acts.)

From Kelly Thomas’ beating death story in Fullerton (links below) and countless other examples of police aggression, it’s obvious we are screening and/or training many of our peace officer positions using failed criteria.   It’s obvious because the aggression we see in our peace officer ranks is now comparatively common and well too often shockingly disturbing.  And that aggression is substantially endorsed by the state’s militarization of our peace officer corps . (Watch this video!)  

There is no way any human being could literally beat to death a small-framed, unarmed mentally-ill man crying out for his father to help him without being incredibly unstable and unqualified to be a peace officer or to serve society.   These are not mistakes in judgment.  These acts of aggression point to very substantially unstable personalities.  There is simply no defense for what has happened in Fullerton and in countless other cases of police aggression that are on the rise over the last few decades. 

Humans exhibit four generalized personality types.  Passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive and assertive.  Only assertive is possible of becoming completely healthy.  And, by the way, it is most assuredly the least common personality type.   Because most people, through life’s endless dysfunctional experiences, never learn how to be assertive or emotionally-healthy without consciously seeking personal transformation.   Aggressive personality types are the most overtly unstable and egomaniacal  comprising such examples as narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, aggressive personality disorder, sociopathic personality disorder, etc.  Even when aggressive personalities don’t exhibit all of the traits of a personality disorder, they still exhibit a substantial emotional unbalance that manifests itself in unwanted and destructive behavioral issues.  In other words, someone might not be full-blown psychotic, but they exhibit many of the personality traits of severe personality disturbances.

Much of the violence in our society is a result of how the military-industrial complex, our political leadership and the endless military propaganda glorifies aggressive behavior.   It transcends every aspect of our society.  We then see this endorsement of aggression trickle all throughout other elements of our society.  That includes the corporate state’s glorification of  aggression we see on Wall Street and in major corporations who embrace exploitive, predatory and ruthless corporate and economic policies.   And who often exploit and prey on our citizens.  It also manifests itself through the acceptance by many of extremely aggressive cult-like religious leaders who seem to rise to levels of authority as fear and hate mongers.   Cult-like figures who manipulate their followers to exploit the often innocent in our society.  It manifests itself in the hyper-competitive behavior parents encourage in their children.  (By the way, as we have noted before, the hyper-competitiveness in our economy encourages citizens to turn on citizens in a bout to win the limited economic opportunity that exists in our country.)  The impacts of the glorification of aggression are endless.  And so are the unintended consequences.  We once had an economy that often sought to encouraged lifetime employment, a living wage and economic opportunity for every American.   And a religious community that encouraged community, empathy, inclusiveness and kindness.   And at one time our children were allowed to  be children.  

Here is my point.  When people in authority, who set the tone for the type of society we encourage, glorify aggressive behavior, we essentially are condoning the type of  neoliberal economy we are now experiencing, the  political corruption and uncivilized political hatred we now witness, the Orwellian predatory corporate cultures we now accept as normal, the hyper-competitive childhood development and associated dysfunctional emotional impacts we often see, the endless military aggression we now glorify, the religious fundamentalism we now see and the aggressive behavior of peace officers and their associated abuses that is now common and even accepted.   And with the glorification of aggression, that means the very people who often rise to the level of authority are people who exhibit the most aggressive behavior.   In other words, those most willing to throw their fellow man under the bus have a substantial advantage in the neoliberal economy and society.   Mind you, aggressive personality types are clearly the most destructive and unstable minds amongst us.  I won’t go into a long oration into the litany of personal characteristics of this type of unstable individual but needless to say controlling, narcissistic, self-centered, manipulative, violent, predatory  and lacking in empathy are a few words we can use to describe aggressive personality types.  

This system recursively reinforces itself until it eventually self-destructs under its completely false and unsustainable belief system.  The belief system of an uncentered mind. 

Do we wish to have a society based on reason, community, justice, virtue and compassion or control, manipulation, narcissism, exploitation, violence, lawlessness and predation?

As we have ranted incessantly, this is not a financial crisis.  It is an economic crisis.  And economics is at its core a social science.   While that may be lost on the current curriculum and clearly junk theory and junk science taught in university economics curriculums, it is not lost upon reality.  Our economy and institutions meant to serve society are now instead being abused by aggressive authority.  And that is why these institutions and our economy are collapsing from within.   They are collapsing in substantial part because authority glorifies aggressive personality types and all of the destructive behavior that go along with them.   A fundamental driver of this dynamic is the war state, the for-profit banking system and the for-profit military-industrial complex.   It’s no coincidence all of these are monopoly and predatory bureaucracies run by predatory personality types.  Predators have risen to the level of leadership in a society that glorifies their aggression.

By the way, women, being the primary decision maker in forming relationships, play a substantial role in the perpetuation of an aggressive society as well.   If women’s beliefs are also affected by the war state and authority’s propaganda, men are often rewarded in the pursuit of intimacy by exhibiting aggressive behavior.  (Never to be confused with assertive behavior.)   This dynamic then perpetuates itself in the encouragement of aggressive or dysfunctional behavior in intimate relationships and then aggressive and dysfunctional behavior passed onto children. (Isn’t there an old biblical discussion about the sins of the father being passed to the children and grandchildren?  Ahem.)   

At our core, we are social beings and we learn through observation and mimicry as we have remarked in some lengthy posts.  Additionally we have used the novella Marching Morons as a comparison to events in our society today.  Society is essentially one giant experiment of never-ending mass delusion.  When one realizes this, it is impossible not to be a contrarian with regards to most social beliefs.  Or at least beliefs held by crowds.  You know, like political crowds, Wall Street crowds, the war rationalization and glorification crowds? 

Obviously most people are not aggressive personality types and this dynamic doesn’t apply to everyone,  but to some large degree, we are an unstable and leaderless economy and society because the propagandized beliefs and values of the war state encourages completely unsustainable emotional dynamics.  Unsustainable emotional dynamics translated into unsustainable socioeconomic dynamics.  Our society and our economy are not meeting the emotional needs of most Americans or even worse they are assisting in the creation of uncentered emotionally dynamics in our society.  Unnecessarily, might I add.   Contrarily it is meeting the needs of aggressive personality types in positions of authority who have a primary intent of control and power.   An intent to feed off the productive ability of our citizens while robbing them of a living wage, economic opportunity and democracy when they can. 

As we have remarked before, our economy and our society are simply the manifestation of the unstable mind of those within self-granted authority positions.   In other words, we are living out the torment of the aggressive and unstable mind through their twisted, unreasoned, lawless policies.   Aggressive personality types who now dominate much of the roles of authority in our society have created their own hell on earth through the impression of their unstable minds upon society.  And through their manipulation of our society, our rule of law and our government, we are now effectively living out their hell with them.    And a prime example of this is the  comparatively common occurrences of brutality, arrogance, and aggression exhibited by peace officers.

Kelly Thomas’ father is a retired police officer.  He remarks that the police engaged in what is known in law enforcements circles as ‘contempt of cop’.  In other words, regardless of the rule of law, or whether anyone has broken any law, the citizen did didn’t do what the cops wanted so they bullied and eventually murdered him under the color of authority.  (His words in the video below.)  This is substantially representative of pathological behavior.  And, if this is a term well known within the peace officer community as he remarks, then we have a systemic pathology crisis within our peace officer corps.  

Obviously I don’t want to throw many of the good-intentioned peace officers under the bus, and I know there are many, but what kind of persona are we hiring into our peace officer corps that daily acts of aggression are a regular occurrence?  And terms such as ‘contempt of cop’ have become accepted figures of speech within the police community?  This type of aggression is arguably something that many in impoverished and underprivileged communities have dealt with through unwarranted harassment for decades. or in some cases for more than a century.  Yes, aggressive personality types always seek to infiltrate authority.  Even well before the war state existed.  But the war state has made social endorsement of this behavior a mainstream phenomenon just as slavery once made endorsement of the same behavior mainstream.

The war state and the permeation of its aggression within our society are collapsing.  The role of our military will be restored to national defense with the intent of protecting democracy.  Whether that is a conscious decision or whether the war state’s values cause it to self-destruct is irrelevant.  The war state’s socioeconomic impact is a self-fulfilling prophecy that will take care of itself if we don’t have the moral clarity to dismantle it.   We can see this impact in failed society’s throughout history who also were primarily driven by aggression.   That includes all of colonial Europe and countless examples over human history.  Aggression is an completely unstable and destructive state of the human mind.   And so are the war state’s bureaucracies of aggression.   The United States, to some degree, is collapsing for the same reason the Soviet Union ultimately failed.  And a major part of that dynamic is the war state.

As part of that dynamic, we need to seriously rethink the role of peace officers in our society.  And the psychological competency exams required to become a peace officer.  There is well too much violence and too much aggression within this area of public service.  The role of a peace officer is to protect, under a rule of law, all people in our society.  Kelly Thomas was denied that protection by the officers who brutally beat him to death.  The victims of aggression within our society are endless.  And so it goes with innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere who are denied that same basic human dignity in lieu of rationalized aggression by the war state.   

Salon article on this story

Youtube interview with murdered Kelly Thomas’ father. 

Youtube video of local news coverage of this event.  (Do not watch this video unless you are prepared to see gruesome images.) 

By the way, in closing, the Tea Party is a manifestation of legitimate anger within the American population.  But anyone identifying with the aggressive behavior that has come to define much of the Tea Party are supporting the same type of outcome we have been experiencing for the last thirty or forty years.   They are electing the same aggressive personality types who will produce the same unstable outcomes. 

The way out of this crisis is not achieved through the belief that government is evil so therefore we should dismantle it and leave anarchy and destruction in its place.   Doing so is essentially endorsing the same behavior perpetrated by the war state.  

The way out of this crisis is by restoring the moral clarity of democratic institutions in this country.  And the only way that will ever happen is through the restoration of democracy, a democratic economy and a democratic rule of law.  That will only be accomplished by electing and hiring public servants who exhibit qualities of moral clarity; empathy, community, reason, virtue and justice.   Those are the timeless virtues of sustainability, stability and democracy.  

posted by TimingLogic at 1:24 PM

Friday, August 19, 2011

Senator Bernie Sanders Releases Government Secrets – Wall Street Manipulates Energy Just As Enron And The Regulatory Agency Responsible For Oversight Kept It Secret

“After reviewing confidential data on the holdings of oil speculators during the 2008 spike in oil prices, Sanders said, the report "clearly shows that in the summer of 2008 when gas prices spiked to more than $4 a gallon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other speculators on Wall Street dominated the crude oil futures market causing tremendous damage to the entire economy."  He added, "the CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years.  That is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today."  -- Senator Bernie Sanders

Well, it’s not like I told you so.  I could write a book on this.  It’s the exact same dynamic as Enron.  But instead of electricity, it’s oil. 

Peak oil is bullshit.  We have more oil reserves today than we knew existed the last time we were told we are running out of carbon energy.  Some day, maybe.  But today is not some day.  Instead, Wall Street hyped the oil bubble while it manipulated prices and literally created a dynamic around the world where people had to choose between energy and food.  Between energy and shelter.  Between energy and clothes for their children.  Just like they did while manipulating food commodities.  Criminals on a far greater scale than Enron.

Transparency and sunlight is the great disinfectant.  The idiot from the Futures Industry Association cited in the article who argues that releasing government data hurts client confidentiality is the biggest line of bullshit I have heard since Enron executives fed us their line of rationalized swill. 

Financial institutions should be completely banned from commodities trading.  Period.  That includes hedging for their clients.  Because Enron too made itself part of the electricity supply chain by hedging for clients as it was manipulating energy prices that killed people in California during heat waves.  Hedging while manipulating prices is a lucrative business.    In fact, let’s just ban Wall Street.  They serve no purpose.  

Notice where the Republican Party stands on all of this Wall Street regulation as cited in this article and countless other issues?  Not that the Democrats have any moral authority.  Their view of regulation is more red tape to ensure their corporate cronies lock out competition and keep markets rigged.  Like we wrote of the 2010 financial reform bill. 

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 6:16 PM

Madoff Whistleblower – Banks Are Ripping Off Pension Funds

As we have remarked before, those who believe Wall Street corruption was limited to the housing bubble are delusional.  We have highlighted so many methods of Wall Street ripping off society and people around the world.   Schools, municipalities, corporations, citizens, our government, each other, foreign countries, impoverished people around the world and on and on and on.  Wall Street makes money by ripping people off.  It is a criminal racket and needs to be prosecuted under the RICO organized crime laws.  Seriously. 

As a democracy, why do we have a banking system that primarily serves to enrich a handful of people rather than with a primary intent of human development and democracy?  Democratic banking should be a public utility.  We need a public banking system.  Period.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 5:57 PM

Moodys Ratings Agency Rotten To The Core With Corruption

posted by TimingLogic at 5:50 PM

Goldman Sachs VP Changes Name, Goes To Work For Congressman To Block Regulation Of His Former Employer

I want to encourage readers to email me at the link provided on the front of the blog if there are stories out there you think might be of interest to other readers. 

This most recent story is sent by a good friend and reader.  In order to appreciate the substance of this most recent report by Think Progress, one might consider reading a prior article on Issa’s troubled past by The New Yorker.  The New Yorker story is incredibly disconcerting and almost unbelievable were it not based on investigated research.  Now this new story is equally disturbing and its implications need to be answered on behalf of society.   

Is this one citizen, one vote?  Or is this just an endless example of massive fraud in Washington?  We don’t have working markets because our government is pro-business.  One of our positions on here is that we are pro-markets and most clearly and incontrovertibly not pro-business.  These two positions are diametrically-opposed.  We don’t have jobs because our government is working on behalf of business to subvert working markets.  Pro-business is the antithesis of working markets.  Nazi Germany was pro-business.  Communist China is pro-business.  And fascist America is pro-business.

As Cheech and Chong, two of society’s greatest philosophers, once told us, “Looks like dog shit, smells like dog shit, feels like dog shit, tastes like dog shit. Must be dog shit.”. 

The New Yorker article.

Think Progress article

posted by TimingLogic at 10:22 AM

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Unmanipulated Advance-Decline Data Approaching March 2009 Crash Lows. Will Price Ultimately Follow?

 

2011-08-15_1932 (1)

Back in April of this year we showed this graphic of the daily unmanipulated view of advance-decline data.  What has happened since April is highlighted in the blue box above comprising the rest of April through August.   We wrote that the data had been collapsing for months.  So, not only on the weekly chart did we see that, but it was even more evident on the daily chart as we noted at the time.  Using this data, does this look like a market that is having a normal correction? 

I am going to highlight much of that April 7th post in italics below.  Because we essentially forewarned of exactly what is happening today.  From April of this year:

“Since the flash crash, for the first time in modern history this data point (the unmanipulated advance-decline data) is hugely divergent from market direction and remains terribly weak.   Comparatively, the manipulated NYSE advance-decline data is making new highs.  Of course, it also was making new highs before the 2008 collapse.  The strength of the NYSE’s advance-decline data is simply a manifestation of the completely unsustainable financial freak show we see before us.  Couple that with some stocks in the Dow trading at 5x what the average stock was trading at in 1929 before the collapse into the Great Depression and one gets the sense of the scope of such unprecedented financial lunacy in our country.

In some manner, we can already state that the market has once again started a new crash as of May of 2010.  Price has yet to crash but unmanipulated data has crashed. 

To rehash some points we have made before, the most obvious conclusion I believe we can draw from this is that market direction since May of last year has been determined almost exclusively through the use of derivatives and algorithmic trading, all of which are funded by endless money at zero percent interest.   This is confirmed by the highest correlation between markets and the S&P since the 1987 crash we cited last year (derivatives trading), the countless low volatility up days with an often immeasurable average true range and the low contract futures-driven higher opens which often fall back or make no meaningful intraday advances.  Effectively, the only buyers are manipulators aka Wall Street and hedge funds.  Mind you, this dynamic also exists in commodities as we have hammered incessantly as well.  It is important for one to understand, this is exactly what happened with the mortgage trading mess.  Ultimately, Wall Street was the only buyer left as counterparties evaporated.  We have uniquely written numerous times of this dynamic coming to pass in financial markets a year before they collapsed and the commodities and equity markets over the last two years. 

Markets are permanently broken due to massive Wall Street fraud and corruption.  Wall Street is the dumb money as we have said countless times.  There are no counterparties left  and there hasn’t been since the 2000 economic collapse.  Counterparties have either been traded out of the market as we have said either has or would happen, or they are unable to participate due to economic circumstance or they are unwilling to participate because they recognize the massive financial market corruption and rigging that both the Democratic and Republican parties wholeheartedly endorse.

Wall Street has spent tens and tens of billions of dollars building this financial freak show and convincing society of its incontrovertible brilliance.  Yet for all of society’s money that was pissed away, without the consent of the governed or those who are supposed to rule this country, building this Soviet-style monolith we affectionately call Wall Street, did anyone within that massive bureaucracy tell you that their system was diverging from reality just months before it again crashed?  And for all of the tens of billions of dollars spent building this freak show, did they tell you on a free blog?  

Systemic incompetence, Soviet style.

posted by TimingLogic at 8:43 AM

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Rick Perry vs. Ben Bernanke - By Surrendering To Wall Street, Obama Has Made Right-Wing Lunatics Look Like Legitimate Critics

Taibbi’s choice of words leave me with nothing else to say.  I really can’t add too much to the above statement.  Link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 2:08 PM

Is The SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? Whistleblower Contends SEC Shredded Records Of Thousands of Crimes.

I hammer incessantly on the corruption on Wall Street.  I’m not sure most people appreciate how absolutely corrupt and criminal Wall Street is.  Or how much this corrupt and criminal element destroys our form of government and our economy.  This isn’t something new, by the way.  Private banking has always been the source of destroying human rights.   As I have also hammered incessantly, we need a public banking system that serves democracy and human development.  And, no that doesn’t mean a banking system under the authority of political idiots. 

I think there is a very reasonable chance given the changes in technology and the general awareness by the public (which is greater than at any time in our history) and the scope of the crisis that criminal banking is now exposing, we could very well be seeing the end of Wall Street.  I mean it could completely go away.  Forever.   I have harped on this for years and that is because I appreciate how much systemic rot is in the system and that it will eventually be exposed and lead to its ultimate demise. 

I am going to run some very unique posts on money and the role it plays in society in the next six months.  And those will generally refudiate everything the gold advocates believe to be true.  Gold is not the answer.  Gold solves nothing.  The status quo wants a return to gold so they can lock in the value of what they have stolen from the 90% of Americans who had their economy, their savings, their high-paying jobs and their government stolen from them. 

We have no transparency into our government any more so I clearly suspect much of what Taibbi is writing could very well be true.  In fact, it could be substantially worse than he is reporting. 

If this is true, then all of Wall Street would again be open to criminal prosecution for cases they supposedly settled in civil court.  I think we are going to witness some absolutely shocking events in coming years.  Shocking.  This may just be one of them.  And so might our remarks that we would see Nuremberg-type trials in the United States.   The game is up. 

On a final note, this whistleblower’s attorney is also a former SEC whistleblower whom we wrote about five years ago for being muzzled in another Wall Street criminal case.  Karma?

Link to Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone here.

posted by TimingLogic at 2:04 PM

Jon Stewart: Why Is The Media Ignoring Ron Paul?

While I find all of the current presidential contenders, including the one currently in the White House, unappealing at best and absolutely laughable at worst, at least Ron Paul is a breath of fresh air with his honest views of the massive corporate welfare bloat, the out of control military-industrial complex, our corrupt banking system and the police state.  (His economic ideology is just this side of bat shit.  We’ll discuss that more generally on Labor Day.  And his association with documented hateful and bigoted comments has never been clearly addressed with anything more than a sound-bited ‘I dunno or I can’t remember.’)

Paul is being completely shut out by the mainstream media after coming within a few whiskers of winning the Republican Iowa Straw Poll.  Given the government hate speak and bigoted comments out of the winner, I’m not sure that is any great accomplishment anyway.  (We need to fix government not abolish it.  Government haters made our government corrupt and incompetent.  Electing more of them to continue the trend of dismantling programs that serve We The People won’t solve anything.)  The modern day Republican Party is just this side of crazy and shares absolutely nothing in common with the party of Lincoln. 

I have never seen anything like this.  It’s like he doesn’t even exist.  And the effort seems concerted across all television media.  There is no doubt the fascist Republican leadership does not want Paul to get anywhere near the White House.  He would completely decimate the legions of special interest bribes and campaign money the fascist money relies on to grease its corrupt skids.  I don’t know if the national Republican party leadership is pulling strings or calling in favors behind the scenes or if media corporations share a fear of a Republican Party not beholden to corporate money or what.   But this Jon Stewart clip is completely bizarre.  And given Paul is the only Republican candidate who appears to have a modicum of transformational common sense in his message, I feel compelled to give him some free air time in some small effort to beat back the endless supply of stupid served up by the fascist donkeys in the Republican Party.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:59 AM

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

European Central Planners Propose Resurrecting Soviet Union To Solve Eurozone Crisis

Needless to say, I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I read this.   Has any political bureaucrat ever met a new political bureaucracy they didn’t like? 

To some degree Europe is dealing with the same dynamic as the U.S.   That is, central planners in a far off land have inserted themselves into a pan European bureaucracy that subverts local self-rule and therefore democracy.  Now, they believe the answer is to make that completely failed bureaucracy even bigger.   They are proposing a model that has failed in ancient Rome, the Soviet Union, is failing in the United States and was the very reason the American states sought sovereignty against the far off central planners in London.   More central planning has never solved any social or economic problem anywhere in the history of humankind.

The European countries are essentially equivalent to states in the U.S. and the people in these countries are chafing for a return to state’s rights, self-rule or local sovereignty as is happening here in the U.S.  

Overly powerful central governments destroy community, connectedness, local economies and democratic self-rule through the use of endlessly stupid ideas dreamed up by neoliberal idiots.  Endlessly stupid ideas that create economic suffering and severe unintended consequences.  Endlessly stupid ideas that aren’t vetted against peer review or the competition of reasoned ideas that democracy is founded upon.  Endlessly stupid ideas that are the result of the policy corruption and bribery of a single point of contact that is such an easy target in concentrated bureaucracies.  (If economic power were held at the local or state levels in the U.S. instead of at the national level, how successful would elites and lobbyists be in bribing every elected official in every municipality, city and state?  There isn’t enough money or coordination of corruption to do that.  And states & local governments, entrepreneurs, citizens and business leaders would provide competition of ideas and policies that we don’t see in a single monopoly national bureaucracySuccessful ideas would then be replicated by other localities.  That is what Europeans too are fighting for.  Sovereignty.  And keepers of the status quo – bureaucrats - can only muster failed and outdated ideologies in their solutions.  Just like here in the U.S.)

Does anyone believe the people of Europe are so stupid that they are going to relinquish more of their personal liberties and sovereignty to the same idiots who are behind their current crisis?   My God, Merkel and Sarkozy are even more stupid than American politicians.  Well, maybe not.  This “Super Congress” coming out of the manufactured debt crisis is essentially recommending a new bureaucracy to deal with our manufactured crisis as well.  If you thought buying off the hundreds of members of Congress was easy, wait to see how easy it is for lobbyists and elites to bribe just a handful of bureaucrats in the Super Congress. 

Story link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:48 PM

Need I Say This Is Exactly What I Was Talking About In The Last Post

A political demagogue who has no idea what he is talking about yet he is pandering to society’s anger and the political terrorizing and fear mongering surrounding it. 

Bernanke, for all of his foibles, and the Federal Reserve for all of its enablement of corruption, hasn’t printed any money.   And, as one of countless examples, if we had thousands of banks fail and the FDIC ran out of money, and the Federal Reserve didn’t print money to replace it, then you would end of destitute, homeless and possibly even starve to death.   You know, just like in the Great Depression when banks failed, we didn’t have FDIC insurance and the Federal Reserve didn’t fulfill its charter of backstopping banks.  

The last thing we need is a pandering dimwit elected to public office.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:18 AM

What Happened To Obama? Maybe The Question Should Be What Happened To You?

I’m going to refrain from getting inside the president’s head or making too many comments with regards to this article.  It is well written and the last page in particular highlights some of the doctor’s perspectives.  I have actually thought about attempting to profile the president and wrote a long post doing just that.  But I ditched it. 

Let me just say that people seek positions of authority for many reasons.  We truly never understand anyone’s intent because people who seek authority almost never share their true self.  Instead we get a cleansed view meant for public consumption.  A cleansed view that is a result of the massive marketing and image consulting that goes into our broken political system.  Effectively, the intent of any politician is to game the American people.  That is most often how politicians get elected.  And the enabler for this dysfunction is the two party monopoly that hand picks politicians who will be subservient to party ideology.  Just like the Nazis.  That may sound severe but is the dynamic any different?  Because of the two party monopoly, we are then left with little truth to rely on in our decision making. 

I would like to make an observation about the doctor who wrote this article and for many of the disillusioned or disappointed citizens who supported the endless charade of what almost always turns out to be some degree of useless politicians.  Politicians are the result of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing and image-making through mass media.   Other than cheerleading about topics they almost certainly know nothing about, demagoguing to win votes, pandering to special interests and photo-ops kissing babies, what do you really know about Obama or any other politician? 

What happened to Obama as the good doctor asks?  Nothing happened to Obama.  He was the same unimpressive, detached rhetoratician (aka talker) before he got elected.  And the doctor’s article simply confirms this.   Contrarily, what happened to you?  You assigned your beliefs of what you expected this president and countless other politicians to be.  And your beliefs were created by an endless stream of propaganda that you believed if you are disillusioned or disappointed.  Of course, the same could be said of Bill Clinton, George Bush, Ronald Reagan or countless members of Congress over the decades or even centuries. 

Whenever society moves towards a post-political world, be that in coming decades or one hundred years from now or whenever it happens, we will finally elect people whose primary intent is to serve.  Because, with politics and all of its gimmicks gone from the public service arena,  there will little for elected servants to gain other than service to humanity and society.  And we will therefore be informed about the moral clarity of the people we are electing rather than trying to fight through the endless propaganda of politics.  And, as part of that post-political world, we’ll quit exalting public servants as saviors or figures larger than life.  (A severe defect of the human condition.)   And that means we’ll quit asking what happened to Obama. 

Public servants are completely imperfect people with all of the same foibles and shortcomings as everyone else.  And because there is so much power to be gained by being a politician, I would argue that the type of persona attracted to public office or to the CEO’s office are ultimately the exact opposite of people our society should be trusting to run our companies and our government. 

We’ll get there.  The process may not be pretty but both the economic and political system as they are structured today are on their last legs.      

posted by TimingLogic at 9:59 AM

Monday, August 15, 2011

The Endless Babbling Out Of Humpty Dumpty Wall Street On What Is Causing Financial Market Volatility And An Update On The Volume Cycle Count Algorithm

Here we go again with the supposed financial experts attempting their after the fact analysis of what happened over the last few weeks.   It’s deja vu all over again.  And, by the way, this was(is) a collapse.  We had a handful of down days that were as bad as any ever seen including  the 2008/2009 implosion.   And it was far worse than the “flash crash” of April/May 2010.  There is compelling evidence this is far from over.   And just as 2008 started with Wall Street wildly bullish, so too did 2011 start the same way.  And we highlighted both instances with posts early in 2008 and 2011.   Is anyone really listening to Wall Street anymore?  Seriously? 

Any time there is a post-event analysis by politicians and banksters, the world is often relying on dubious and faulty conclusions  being fit into dubious causational theories.  These theories are almost always tied to activities that correlated with an actual event.  Or as we wrote some years ago, does the Fed cause Christmas?  (The same fundamental analysis used by politician Al Gore to convince us humanity is the source of all planets and moons in our solar system experiencing the same warming we are seeing here on earth.)  We see this nonsense with endless post-event analyses of supposed financial experts and politicians.  

Trying to assign correlation with causation as is most often done in cases like this, is complete and utter nonsense.  In an environment where the global financial system and economies are more interconnected than ever, and where neoliberalism relies on growth in emerging markets to sustain its corporate profit bubble, why have countless international markets not made new highs since April/May 2010?  Over the last year we have shown some international markets rolling over since the April/May 2010 peak.  Many never made new highs after that date.   We wrote early on in this divergence that money was likely being repatriated to the U.S. and that was why the American equity indices were divergent in making new highs.  And, then later we wrote that once the capital flow data became available, that is exactly what was happening.   So, once that money was repatriated, without substantial new fundamental demand in U.S. equities or new Federal Reserve programs to drive financially-speculative assets higher, eventually U.S. markets were going to follow international markets. 

Without going back and looking at the exact day, I believe we called the April/May 2010 date to be a turning point for equity markets about a year in advance of that date.   By the way, the banking index in the U.S. never recovered and exceeded that market top either.   That was an ominous signal in itself and again something we pointed out more than once.  The signs were there and the nonsensical correlations of debt downgrades, concern about the future economy or European debt crises have little to any relevance.  Markets are not the economy as we have written countless times over the years.  If they were, we never would have had a substantial rally off of the 2009 lows because the economy never recovered.

There is some level of reality of why markets just crashed that you will never read in the financial press – because it was just that time.   No one understands the factors that drive time elements; although I may attempt to use esoteric factors to gain some advantage in determining what they are.  

Remember, one of our long term theses is that we are in a cycle of volatility.  And as we remarked before the 2008 crash, Wall Street’s self-assigned financial brilliance was pure delusion.  We wrote that Wall Street cannot tame markets.  And that the temporary appearance of low volatility achieved through quantitative finance was purely an illusion.  And we actually showed how compression and volatility was building underneath the calm exterior of markets.  And that calm would eventually unwind and be replaced with volatility.  Today’s environment is no different.   

Some weeks ago we showed the unmanipulated advance-decline data when the market was within a few points of the market peak.  And its behavior had clearly changed and showed solid measurable proof that the underlying market demand had a mini collapse while the market was trying to make new highs.  Some weeks later, price followed the data south into this crash. 

Below is the volume cycle count algorithm we have shown numerous times.  This is a weekly occurrence.  We showed its confirmation of a rally off the 2009 lows, we showed it collapsing in early 2011 on the daily graphic and a few times other times in between.  It has predicted both the 2008 crash and this crash by heading south well in advance of price action. 

By the way, the volume cycle count algorithm reached its most extreme upward reading in April/May of 2010 of any time in the last handful of decades or as far back as the data is available that I need to calculate it.  I guess on some level this would make perfect sense because never have we seen such a level of extreme market leverage and manipulation through the use of free Federal Reserve money, government bailouts of financial crimes and criminals, derivatives, dark pools, quantitative finance, computer trading, rigged trading results at Wall Street firms, etc.   Never in the history of humankind have we ever seen such massive financial speculation and fraud that serves absolutely no purpose to enriching democracy, human development or our lives. 

We have never in the history of humankind seen anything like the financial Frankenstein that exists today.  This is a completely new monster and no one has any experience dealing with it.  It’s like a coming tsunami that no one has ever experienced, and therefore, no one believes possible.  Except this is a financial tsunami.  And just like in Phuket, that means no one will be prepared to deal with its devastation.   Instead of planning to avert a crisis by limiting the financial system’s rigging of our economy, our government and our society, or dealing with the crisis when it showed its head in 1989 or 1994 or 1998 or 2000 or 2001 or 2008 or 2009 or 2010, politicians and financial clowns with nary a concern about what is best for society or democracy simply let the rot grow unchecked instead of heeding the warnings this unstable monster clearly signaled countless times 

Regardless of all of the rationalized pablum spewed by politicians and financial clowns, we have no idea how this market will act under extreme stress.   We have no idea of the devastation it will eventually cause.    No one person or firm or computer can factor in every possible input, every possible turn of events and every possible outcome.   We have no idea because we have never seen this type of market or financial storm before.  We are not only living through history but we are also making it.  The system could and should have been dismantled years ago but instead corruption and appeasement of evil allowed it to continue to grow in absurdity and complexity. 

Remember, over the last six months we have written of our concern about a coming market crash quite a few times.  And I said that while it may never happen, I would not be surprised to wake up one day and see the Dow down a few thousand points at the open.  No one can honestly tell anyone what to expect other than it could be more devastating than anything we have ever imagined. 

…….Or maybe we will come to our senses before that happens.  That will only happen if we push aside the banksters and a corporatist political stooges and restore economic democracy and the rule of law before the system completely implodes.  

2011-08-14_1913

posted by TimingLogic at 7:11 PM

United States Courts Clear The Way For Torture Trial Against Donald Rumsfeld

Quite some time ago I wrote that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nuremburg-type trials in the United States in coming years across a multitude of issues.  I have no particular perspective on whether that would be corruption, treason, war crimes, torture or any other unsavory activity by political elites.  (We also wrote that we can expect to see shocking revelations about our government in coming years as the system of corruption unwinds.)

This case does not yet rise to that level of which I believe is possible, but some years ago, who could have ever imagined this was possible?   This completely unreported event (in the mainstream media) could have enormous implications and become a tipping point as society demands accountability and the application of the rule of law to politicians and the military-industrial complex.

The Russia Today video is more telling of what may be possible given this court decision.

Russia Today

Democracy Now

posted by TimingLogic at 10:26 AM

Friday, August 12, 2011

It’s That Time Again – Perseid Meteor Shower Tonight

NASA has a live chat all night tonight as well as a live video feed of the shower.  Unfortunately, if it’s left up to the political dummies and elites in this country, (who seldom seem to care about anything other than effing the rest of us over) some day we might not even have a civilian space program.   That’s okay.  I’m sure the free market will do a better job.  You know, that free market that Wall Street will do anything to avoid yet tells the rest of us it’s perfectly fine to fight over gruel and scraps they don’t want.  

posted by TimingLogic at 12:23 PM

A Few Timely Remarks About Some Of Our Long-Time Macro Calls On The Global Economy

Going into the weekend, I just want to highlight a few remarks around a handful of our anticipated outcomes to the global economy.  All of our anticipated macro outcomes were made months to years in advance of the 2008 collapse.  Many have already come to pass.  Many are in play as I type this and many more will.  We have spent the last two years discussing and reinforcing these themes while waiting for the  coming storm.  Unless someone in the status quo has some transformational ideas, this could very well be the beginning of that storm.   

Even though I might not share endless charts and graphs, (mostly because I blog for enjoyment and I enjoy writing not to fidgeting with graphs) all of my analysis is based on reason and qualitative & quantitative analysis of data.  Ain’t no useless opinions in our macro economic calls.  I just saw one of those on Yahoo’s home page the other day where a consistently incompetent Wall Streeter compared this environment to 1987.  Talk about useless opinions.  1987?  WTF?   How about Orwell’s dystopian  1984? 

If I am wrong in any of my macro calls, it is because my interpretation of the data is wrong.  Contrarily, most everything in the Orwellian world in which we live that is put out for public consumption is based on ideology, beliefs, speculation, self-serving manipulation, half-truths or hearsay.   Reason and factual analysis never serve the goal of any dynamic where money or control are the motivating factors.  And, because we are in the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen, it’s all about money and control.  There is no other primary motivating factor.   In today’s world, even if facts are presented, they are presented under the duress of money or control.  That means they are used for one purpose – to twist reality into some manipulation serving some money-driven goal.  Or as Mark Twain famously wrote, “Lies, damn lies and statistics.”.   I think we’ve all had enough of the endless supply of useless, uninformed opinions and political commentary of 24 hour news and the supposed Weekend at Bernie’s propaganda experts propped up for public consumption.

The reality?  No one is listening to anything out of Wall Street or Washington anymore except politicians and Wall Street.  Who actually remains invested in this economic or political environment?  As we have remarked, fewer and fewer people remain invested and that means we are nearing the end.  Months?  Years?  Some of the status quo will fail in months.  Some may take a few more years.  But it is game over.  As we have remarked time and again, that world you knew just a few years ago is gone forever.  It is never coming back.  And never is a long, long time.    

On to a review of a few timely long-time macro outcomes we have been waiting for.  By the way, most of which would have been laughed at by Wall Street and politicians when we first wrote of them.  Ain’t nothing to laugh at now: 

  • --We are in the biggest financial bubble the world has ever seen. E-V-E-R. 
  • -This could very well be the beginning of the end of Wall Street as we know it.  Wall Street could actually cease to exist as new and better solutions become apparent to democracy’s financial and developmental needs.
  • -Hedge funds go bye bye.
  • -Investment banking goes bye bye
  • -Private equity goes bye bye (Essentially all of the  financial masters of the universe we were told to worship were in fact fucking idiots,  criminals or anti-christs who simply controlled the microphone because society entrusted them with control of our savings and our capital to keep safe.  Instead they ultimately destroyed our society, our savings and our capital stock through their systemic and endless incompetence and corruption aided and abetted by Ivy League universities and the political class.)
  • -Ivy League finance MBAs are going to be working at McDonald’s serving up Quarter Pounders with cheese.
  • -A financial crisis will then lead to economic crisis.  One reason why economists never see these events coming is that we don’t have recessions anymore.  We have financial crises that lead to economic crises.  That is because the system as constructed is inherently unstable.  That anticipated outcome came true in 2008 and it will be true again.
  • -The Euro zone is headed for a major restructuring or the entire euro financial system could collapse.  We said this while even people like Marc Faber were remarking that the euro was a sound currency and  the dollar was illegitimate. (Yeah right.  Most opinions are based on biased and unsubstantiated beliefs rather than qualitative and quantitative analysis of the facts.)
  • -Germany would ultimately be damaged the most in the coming euro zone chaos. (Just as China will be damaged the most in coming global chaos.)
  • -Global finance is dead.  Need I say more?  The world’s financial institutions are on fire as the completely unstable global financial network eventually shatters. 
  • -Globalization is dead.  It will be replaced by localization and by local finance initiatives. 
  • -State’s Rights, an important check in our governance system against a distant national government (the colonies didn’t want a repeat of the English throne in Washington) will (already are) going to rise against Washington hegemony and corruption and more importantly their inability to impact local economies through Soviet-style or king of England-style central planning. 
  • -Supply chain shocks would develop in the global economy and because of the bullwhip effect countries/companies that are substantially reliant on globalization would suffer disproportionately.
  • -Even though this crisis was kicked off in the U.S. in 2008’s collapse, the vast amount of future economic crises will happen outside of the U.S.  We are starting to see this come to pass. 
  • -Emerging markets are going to experience substantial and disproportionate economic distress or even busts
  • -The back end of this crisis will be much worse than the first shock in 2008 and it will polish off the status quo.
  • -All wealth created since 2000 in the global economy could very well disappear.
  • -Today’s equity market valuations are many times higher than 1929 before the market lost almost all of its value.  Equity market valuations have no foundation in any type of reality.  Those who see value in this market are simply seeing their own self-delusions.  The myth of large sums of corporate cash is met with the reality of the highest corporate debt levels in history and the lowest capital spending in recorded history.
  • -Finally, one more outcome that we have beaten the drum on incessantly is that our downside target for the S&P remains 200-450 before this crisis is over.
    I’d say most of those calls are starting to look pretty good right about now.  And they were made years ago.  By a hick.  A hick with no formal education in economics or finance.  Not by Wall Street masters, Ivy League economics professors or Washington royalty. 
    I think maybe our president and his neoliberal beliefs (The way out of this environment is that we graduate everyone from college.  You know, like those brilliant economics and finance professors, Wall Street masters and Washington royalty. ) needs a little adjustment.  (By the way, the baseless position that we need to have more people graduate from college for our economy to recover may be born out of a narcissistic belief that more people need to be like the ego espousing that belief.) We already graduate more per capita from college than many other more productive nations.   What we need is everyone to have economic opportunity.  And in a democratic economy, that should not be predicated on pissing away a few hundred grand on a college degree that is often unnecessary.  But, then college degrees are often just tools of the corporate state – economics, MBAs, finance, business, etc.   As the corporate state implodes so do their demands for these college degrees. 
    A merit and market-based democratic economy would determine the educational needs of society.  Not a bunch of bureaucrats sitting in Washington trying to centrally-plan a topic they know little or nothing about.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:27 AM

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Goldman Sachs Probed Over Bribery In Case of US. Foreign Corruption Practices Act

Goldman Sachs Libyan bribery probe

Let’s throw a few more lovelies up here that also drew headlines in the last twenty four hours.

Goldman Sachs lost most money trading since 2008 collapse (We said countless times this would happen as Wall Street traded counterparties out of markets.  That means eventually Wall Street and hedge fund trading systems, many of which use the same basic algorithms, would start to produce substantial and recurring losses.  Wall Street and the investor class are holding the bag in their trading Ponzi schemes.) 

Goldman Sachs leads financial stock swoon (Again no surprise here.  We have remarked for a long time Goldman’s future as a legitimate business entity would eventually become a serious issue because their business model is simply unsustainable.)

Goldman Sachs sued by credit union regulator for fraud

European Union accuses Goldman Sachs of price fixing

Warren Buffet’s investment gains in Goldman Sachs erased

Goldman caught red-handed in insider trading?

Life’s a bitch for all of those really brilliant Wall Street savants when rigging the game no longer works.  Come to find out they weren’t really that brilliant at all.  They were just cheating.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:34 PM

Dylan Ratigan Goes Ballistic – The United States Is Being Destroyed By Banking Corruption And Massive Political Fraud From Both Parties

A friend just sent me this.  Finally, someone in the mainstream media hits a homerun out of the ballpark.  Go Dylan go!   Although I must say something.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  WTF does Dylan invite these absof8ckinglutely clueless political consultants on his show to talk about a problem they created?  And then listen to them day after day bitch and snipe and carp at the blame game of Republicans versus Democrats?  Send these dipshits packing.  Dylan, you need to get your stuff together and invite a new panel.  A panel of people who understand how to solve problems and who actually understand economics and monetary theory.   How how about some engineers, the world’s problem solvers, who understand economics, capital production, human development, public banking and monetary theory.  :)   Haha.  I kid.

The president uniquely has the bully pulpit to tell the American people directly how systemically corrupt the system is because the media treats him or her as a king or queen. (Although it is truly the law-making branch or Congress that wields the power in Washington if we actually had some leaders in Congress.)  

We wrote years ago that Obama had a unique opportunity to bypass the Congress and go directly to the American people to expose and solve the fraud and corruption that is pervasive in Washington but that Obama blew it.  He is beholden to the status quo.   Both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt understood the power of the bully pulpit for transformational change that served democracy. 

Interestingly, Dylan just lobbied for a public banking system.  Ahem, that is exactly what have we been lobbying for. 

Private banking will NEVER serve democracy.  NEVER.  N-E-V-E-R.  I don’t give a shit whether it is backed by gold or moon rocks or all of the money ever created.  Gold is yesterday’s news as it pertains to money.  It is a ancient relic of the status quo.  Those who advocate it are right to want to see change but clueless about how to create a democratic economy, a banking system that serves human development or of what the use of money should be within a democracy.  Period.  No ifs, ands or buts.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:28 AM

Marc Faber – The Best Thing The Federal Reserve Could Do Is Resign

One of our favorites is on Bloomberg TV sharing his always sardonic view of central banker’s endless stupidity and timely remarks about the global economy.

How many times over the last six years have we said that the Federal Reserve cannot fix the economy?  Faber is theoretically right that under the current monetary and economic system the U.S. should save more but he is fundamentally wrong in his assumption that capital spending will eventually pick up if we do so.  Completely.   As we wrote well before the 2008 collapse, capital spending is and has been at the lowest levels in U.S. history.  That is not going to change without a new economic model.  And how the hell is anyone going to save anything given the wage structure in this country?  I think Faber is well too ingrained in current failed economic ideology.  Need I repost the quote below for the umteenth time? 

"We are justly proud of the high wage rates which prevail throughout our country and jealous of any interference with them by the products of the cheaper labor of other countries. To maintain this condition, to strengthen our control of home markets and, above all, to broaden our opportunities in foreign markets where we must compete with the products of other industrial nations, we should welcome and encourage every influence tending to increase the efficiency of our productive processes"
--Henry Towne, President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1911

By the way, the U.S. productivity miracle that Alan  Greenspan spewed endless bullshit about during his time as head dummkopf of the Federal Reserve is a complete myth.  More economic junk science.  (The latest survey I saw is that 99 out of 100 economists have their head so far up their ass that there is no hope of ever pulling it out.  The economic profession’s failed ideology is systemic.  These college degrees are a complete failure or systemic brainwashing and propaganda.  If the system wasn’t rigged, there wouldn’t even be an economics profession.   How can someone so systemically incompetent expect to ever be hired in a merit-based job market?  They can’t.   Cronyism and rigging the game is the only method through which the profession survives. )

Today’s economic ideology is based completely on bullshit and corruption.  Both parties.  Scott Walker in Wisconsin or Barack Obama in Washington.  They are both equally clueless. (Although Walker is magnitudes more so.)  And, frankly, as much as I like Marc Faber, he has been very wrong on a lot of substantive issues that we called out before they came to pass.  And he is going to be wrong about how this ends up as well.  That is because Faber, for all of his insight, and he is very insightful, only knows current failed economic ideology that is crumbling before our eyes.  it has created his livelihood and even if it is subconsciously, he can’t see beyond it just like other financial wizards.    And unlike throughout his life time when this system always recovered at some point, this it is.  It’s over.   The future will not be decided by what worked over the last thirty years.   The future will be decided by new ideas, new ways of thinking and new solutions.  We simply need to shove aside the status quo to get there.  All in due time.

Faber is right that quantitative easing in its prior form recreated asset bubbles and disproportionately hurt underprivileged people through Wall Street’s criminal rigging of commodities markets and food prices.  And we wrote that was going to happen.  But future quantitative easing will most assuredly be much more precise.  It will almost certainly not be free money given to Wall Street to speculate in assets but instead will be used as a tool to either fund the government or fund capital projects or fund a public bank for infrastructure projects or fund public involvement in the housing mess or something in this vein of thinking.  And we should be doing that right now!  Not government handouts to corporations or Wall Street.  Government spending that benefits our society.  That is, take the easing out of the hands of Wall Street crooks and corporate welfare recipients and put it back into the hands of democratic government.   That may not even be politically possible until another end of the world crisis given the massive political corruption in this country.

The Fed can keep giving money to Wall Street all day long and the minute they stop, the asset bubble will start to pop.   Again and again and again.   And that means all of that perceived wealth will evaporate again and again and again taking the investor class down with it.  The Fed can give free money to banks all day long to speculate in asset prices.  But the minute that stimulus is gone, fundamentals take over and we quickly see there simply isn’t enough money in the underlying economy to support those prices and all of that artificial asset wealth begins to be wiped away again.   In other words, quantitative easing in its current form of handing money to financial criminals is and will prove to be a perfect failure every single time.

We can let the Federal Reserve blow bubbles Wall Street’s way (quantitative easing in its current form) five billion times and the result will always be that the artificial wealth of asset inflation will collapse the minute they stop the underlying economy is fixed.   It’s just like the movie Groundhog Day.  We simply relive the same endless stupidity. 

The Fed cannot fix an issue that is not a result of monetary policy.  Which, by the way, is not the prevailing belief on Wall Street and in Washington.   Everyone thinks the Federal Reserve created this crisis.  That includes more than a few Nobel Prize winning economists and almost every financial blogger.  They are all wrong.  Every single one of them.  And why wouldn’t they be?  Prevailing wisdom is always proven to be wrong at some point. 

This economic crisis is because of political corruption.  That’s it.   And that means only the government can fix the problems they created.  How likely is that given the ingrained structure of the fascist state? 

posted by TimingLogic at 9:37 AM