Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Buffett Breaks His Cardinal Rule And Invests In IBM (Technology) - Part Two

This is the analysis section of the two-part post on Buffett's investment in IBM.  The first part was simply setting a baseline of prior remarks, outcomes, etc.  As you read this post, I hope you will gain an appreciation for a greater reality than what is presented by the financial clowns on Wall Street and the massively incompetent marionette politicians they control.  After reading this post, I hope you have an appreciation for how unstable the entire economic system is.  Even areas of the economy that you may have never questioned like IBM.  This is not a banking crisis. 

As you read this, you may ask the question of how Warren Buffett and I, as an example, can look at the same possible investment or data and come up with two wildly conflicting conclusions?  This can be surmised in one word.  Quality.   The world can only be explained by quality.   But quality requires an appreciation for the esoteric factors of life.   Economics, finance, politics and the like in today's world are most often completely void of the concept of quality.  They are void of quality because these institutions are controlled by bureaucrats.   Small-minded drones who wax poetic about efficiency and numbers when talking about human beings and the quality of our existence.  Just like in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

bu-reau-crat [byoor-uh-krat] noun - an official who works by fixed routine without exercising intelligent judgment.

We are all suffering the consequences of this fact.  We suffer because bureaucrats subvert human expression, truth, reason, creativity and quality through political and corporate control.  Let's now delve into the exploration of quality.

In many ways IBM, HP, Oracle, Dell and a few others in this field have become economic parallels to the Big Three auto makers and the Big Wall Street firms.   They are the GM, Ford and Chrysler or Bank of America, JP Morgan, Lehman, Bear, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs of the IT industry.  They are all oligopolies or economic fiefdoms that rely on a form of political entitlement and associated control to survive and thrive.  That entitlement is the pro-business corporate socialism or fascism supported by both political parties in our nation as well as countless other nations around the world; the foundation of neoliberal globalization.   They use this political entitlement  to affect economic policies that subvert working markets/competition, competition for American labor and most importantly to subvert job creation.  -->  Companies, once they gain control of markets, destroy job creation.   Companies don't create jobs, people do.  And people do through working markets.  Having a government that is pro-business is a government that is fascist.   Romney, Clinton, Reagan, Bush, Obama; it matters not.  They are all pro-business. 

Obama's calls to American multinationals to hire American workers by invoking some level of patriotism or nationalism are naive and ignorant of fundamental economics, corporatism and the policies he supports.  Policies that continue to destroy the American economy yet line the pockets of political parties with corporate-looted cash.  For now. 

First, let's take a specific look at some of the "high value" lines of business that IBM and other major firms within the IT industry and how they are being set up for a major crises in coming years.  Crises that will almost certainly be every bit as serious as those the financial industry has experienced.  Probably worse than anything we have seen to date.   Once again, this is not a financial crisis as Obama, Geithner and 99.9% of economists would have you believe.

Business Software

IBM and other major business-focused information technology businesses have become more software-centric in their business model over the last fifteen or so years.   This is driven by an attempt to increase margins and provide more predictable earnings over the business cycle’s earnings volatility.   Yet, this relatively new phenomenon of large, predictable software revenue streams is substantially comprised of recurring payments achieved both through software product upgrades and maintenance fees.  Both of which are increased quite substantially on a regular, mostly annual, basis to increase corporate profitability.  This is similar to the massive and unyielding increases of health care costs that rises annually in the double digits as corporations pilfer society's sick and vulnerable to pad the bottom line with predictable earnings.

This software pricing model is completely unproven on the scale it has now being instituted.   Rented software was popular many decades ago when IT was a new industry.  At that time customers saw massive productivity improvements with the advent of the large scale business computers and the first implementations of automated processes.  But, today's environment is vastly different.  There are generally little to no productivity improvements garnered in today's world regardless of any economics or corporate propaganda to the contrary.    What is now measured as productive gains are actually coming from massive corporations seeking to tie together disparate applications acquired through the mergers and acquisitions bubble..   This environment is driven by the corporate world's desire to become ever-larger and thus control markets and competition through acquisition.   IBM and other leading business software firms are focused very heavily on this concept of "big data".   Yet, this dynamic is not driving society's productivity.   Instead this dynamic of becoming every larger has turned our economy into mega Soviet-style state corporations that are killing our economy,  invention and job creation.    Remember, one of our themes on here is that this cycle could be coined the end of big be that government, corporations or other institutions of the ego.   Large firms seeking to achieve some level of commonality and standardization of big data, that have become the core customers of the likes of IBM, are, in fact, all too big to fail and as we have noted, they most likely will fail to some degree.  In other words, they will come out of this environment a fraction of their existing size or they will fail completely.   Through the supply chain, we can expect IBM and others focusing on big data to experience the bullwhip effect wrote about years ago.

This latest software business model of predictable and large annual pricing increases is based on one unsustainable premise.  Control.   And, Wall Street was all too willing to oblige as all of the large business software firms have been on a massive consolidation binge to take out their competitors and destroy working markets.   This too is a leading dynamic behind big data.  That, and the greater rise of state control.  Not too many years ago there were hundreds of viable solution providers in the mainstream business software space.  Now there are a handful.  In other words, both the economy’s productivity and its money supply statistics were being inflated  through the destruction of our economy thanks to Wall Street, politicians, the Federal Reserve and corporate bureaucrats; something we have hammered on here but seems to be lost upon economists and monetary dunces like Alan Greenspan.  (Alan Greenspan truly is an idiot and exhibits none of the characteristics of the Maestro moniker given to him by other equally incompetent Wall Street bureaucrats.  Another bit of Amerika's Orwellian corporate belief system.)

In some ways this software business model is very comparable to the debt serfdom we see banksters attempting to inflict on society.  A dynamic driven by corporation's search for greater profits and, thus, control.  But, the serfdom in the case of business software firms are unsustainable, predatory software annuity streams (annual debt taxes)  enforced by the likes of Oracle, SAP, IBM, HP, Cisco, Dell and EMC.  Make no mistake, these companies are predatory in their methods used to enforce these software revenue streams and pricing models just as Wall Street uses predation to enforce its debt serfdom, just as the industrial food monopoly uses predation to enforce its toxic food serfdom and just as the health care monopoly uses predation to enforce its unsustainable pricing predation and serfdom.  When the corporate profit bubble pops, just as the housing bubble fueled massive Wall Street profits, IT business models for major purveyors are going to be devastated.   You mark my word.  When I wrote seven years ago of IBM’s stock taking a dive to as low as the mid 20s, I wasn’t just whistling Dixie.  My experiences working in management consulting and information-based solutions gives me a very unique perspective on corporate America’s strategies and vulnerabilities.   This is going to happen. 

Small perturbations are already being felt in this space.  But, no one is listening.  Or no one that understands what is really going on in the global economy.  Similar to the volatility surrounding the revolt against debt serfdom, corporate software customers are already starting to change their behavior.   I have seen some plausible analyses that place global business clients some $300 billion dollars in arrears in their software upgrade and maintenance cycles.   Client companies simply aren’t going to keep forking over predatory software fees just because it benefits the bottom line of IBM, Oracle, HP or SAP.  And, software upgrades are incredibly expensive beyond the incredibly expensive initial price.  If the upgrade version fee from a software provider is $1 million, it could take as much as $5 to 10 million or more in additional costs in the form of version dependencies of other software, modifications to applications, new systems software,  systems, labor, etc to make these conversions.   In other words, change management.   So, an estimate of $300 billion of arrearage in upgrade costs could easily be the tip of a multi-trillion dollar future obligation for software clients.  We can more than likely expect this model is going to bust just as the debt-based serfdom model is busting.   We can expect the predictability of software revenue streams and associated profitability is more than likely going to turn out to be a myth as the global economy continues its death spiral.  So too will the predatory business software space start its death spiral.  No one in this industry is prepared for this coming dynamic.  No one even sees it coming.

IT and Business Services

We can apply the same dynamics and rationale of software with the relatively recent (last fifteen years or so) surge in services that companies such as IBM, HP, Dell, CSC, Accenture and half a dozen other major firms rely on for predictability of earnings.   In other words, this too is a business that was embraced to smooth cyclical earnings and it too is a form of serfdom created through customer-provided annuity.  Additionally, one of the major services embraced within the business process space, outsourcing, is predicated on a social belief system rather than a universal truth or fact.   Savings from outsourcing or offshoring are seldom realized.   If I am frank, they are almost never realized.   Nor are the business process improvements that are promised.  And, the soft costs of outsourcing, which are hard to quantify but impact the bottom line with hard dollars are oftentimes more substantial than hard costs.  These factors are completely discounted.  ie, The negative intangible effects are substantial.    There are substantially more esoteric and intangible losses associated with client experiences, loss in quality, less qualified talent, etc.  Or, with internal corporate customer experiences due to time zone, language and competency dynamics. 

But, far and away the biggest driver of this trend of offshoring and outsourcing is that companies are simply too large to manage.  No single team can manage effectively manage a firm over a few thousand people.   A firm with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees does not win in the market place because of merit.  They win because of girth that forces out competition.  They control and manipulate the marketplace in some fashion, mostly by legalized political bribery to rig the game.  So, much of this services dynamic involves shedding parts of the business that are not considered core (outsourcing), and arbitrarily/ignorantly might I add, to management’s success.  That includes human resources, IT, manufacturing and logistics to name a few.  In other words, employees, technology investment, manufacturing processes, capital investment and logistics are treated as a commodity rather than a competitive advantage.   Services outsourcing is based on a presumption that what were once high value differentiators and key investments are now commodity.  This is a fool’s game that is going to have tremendous unintended consequences in future failure.

Very importantly, maybe more so than anything else, there is no moat around services.   This business model is incredibly vulnerable to a shift in trend or ever-changing social values.  It's no different than the restaurant business.  In fact, the restaurant business is a perfect analogy to the corporate outsourcing services market.  As economic dynamics change, I, as a consumer, have a greater ability to control my finances and the quality of my food by dining at home.  That hurts the restaurant business in tough economic times.  The same exists with IT and business services.  If I bring those services in house, I have more control over quality, efficiency, investment and flexibility.  As long as monopoly and oligopoly dynamics exist, these factors are irrelevant.  But, monopoly cannot sustain itself without the force of the state.  So, at some point government must decide if it wants to create jobs or continue to support corporate welfare for firms too big to fail.  We know where this all ends up as the system continues to unwind.  The profit bubble fueling the lobbyist bubble is going to pop.  It's an economic fact that it must.  It's only questionable whether it will pop due to proactive economic policy changes or further economic crises created in large part by corporate welfare and political dunces.

The massive outsourcing and offshoring dynamic that exists today is nothing more than a social trend enabled by unsustainable, predatory factors and rigging of the economic game by special interests.  Factors that subvert democratic economics.  Social values are most often corrupted and tainted by mob behavior, propaganda, immorality, corruption, looting, bribery or worse.  The dynamics driving outsourcing and offshoring are no different.  That our government actually incents corporations to offshore jobs is a sign of how immoral our politicians truly are.  This dynamic is equivalently nothing more than what would be considered a fad in the consumer space.   If fad is a term that can be used to describe business dynamics, then offshoring and outsourcing are fads.   Half a dozen years ago I wrote on here that this trend was in its final phases.   It's end most likely will come quickly and violently.  Capitalism is a creation of the state.  So, as government corruption and statism creates more crises, and these dynamics are collapsing on every continent, both of these dynamics, a product of state corruption and the collapse of economic democracy, will collapse with them.   

Currency

IBM has moved a substantial amount of its core research and development business overseas and now gets less than half of its revenue in the United States.  A change in the down draft of the dollar that we have been writing about (a coming rise, possibly violently so, in the dollar) or a change in how country to country trade settlement is managed (that we have said was coming half a dozen years ago) is likely to play a role in determining the fate of international profits of countless companies.   In fact, it isn't beyond the realm of possibility that entire overseas investments by international firms could be lost entirely as I noted in a post regarding China five years ago.  If governments slap currency controls or nationalize economic assets, as has happened at different times in history, entire international investments could be completely lost.  This doesn’t even take into account supply chain shocks and social upheaval we have been anticipating for years that is now becoming a reality around the globe.   These dynamics will most assuredly impact global corporations substantially and negatively.  Control is an illusion. 

These business models worked as long as neoliberal economics worked.  Now that the global economic model is imploding, we can expect to see the same dynamics that are affecting the globalization of finance to impact the globalization of nonfinancial corporations.    Remember, we have uniquely said for years that globalization is dead and global finance is dead.  It’s coming.   IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, Dell, EMC and others are most assuredly not prepared and neither are any other global hegemonies, oligarchies, monopolies and governments.

Neoliberal Corporate Business Strategy Of Today (Courtesy Of The Idiocracy Better Known As MBA Schools)

Let me say that IT and business consulting firms are poster children for neoliberal or trickle down economics as espoused by President Obama and would-be President Romney.  Both men are firm advocates of neoliberal fascism through their own separate but similar messages.  Obama's message is that in order to compete in the global economy, we need to send more kids to college to serve as cubicle drones for our corporate masters.  That is, even though we already graduate 70% more kids from college than, as an example France.   In order to achieve this dynamic we need to either dumb-down education (which has been under way for decades) or create an even larger education bubble or a little of both.  This policy leaves behind the vast majority of the population who either doesn't wish to participate in the corporate-created dream of economic enslavement or who have found themselves on the outside looking in with non-living wage corporate-drone jobs or an inability to compete for a college education for various reasons.   

All industries participate in this mythology.  One method that corporations oblige this policy by jettisoning "commodity" or perceived low-value businesses and moving upstream to "higher-value" opportunities.   These opportunities are mythical.  They aren't higher value.  They are, in fact, higher-risk delusions.  Moving up the  food chain to higher value is a standard outcome to neoliberal trickle-down economics.   Making things or doing real work that benefits society has been replaced with pushing paper and doing each other's laundry aka corporate services work; both of which are consumers of capital, create zero net-new wealth and, are in fact, lower-valued forms of work.   New "new economy" is a myth perpetrated by economic dunces and political stooges who have turned our economy into a hollowed-out humpty dumpty that creates almost nothing other than bombs & money printing and accomplishes even less.  The godfather  don of this dynamic is Ronald Reagan and his voodoo economics; a term coined by his political competition.  But, now both political parties embrace this form of corporatism because it lines their pockets of political control. 

IBM is the Goldman Sachs of the IT industry.  In other words, bureaucrats at all corporations in this industry have embraced a form of follow-the-leader in adopting a similar business model of the perceived industry leader.  That transformation is essentially complete.  Now the fun begins.   Moving to "higher value" lines of business that has also driven a concentration of profitability into its top global clients.  IBM and other IT and business services leaders are squarely reliant on the state and massive corporations for the vast majority of their revenue and profits; a manifestation of Pareto's Principle.  60% of IBM's profits come from the massive, systemically-unstable corporations in the finance industry.   IBM garners the vast majority of its profits from the top 100 global firms and governments.  And, within that, the largest profits come from financial bubble companies.  As we noted in a post years ago, IBM’s profits are disproportionately tied to finance and insurance.  And, much of the IT spending in these industries has been surrounding trading, speculating, gambling and other highly risky revenue streams that will eventually be exposed as useless consumption of capital.  ie, These activities will disappear.  

To show you how small business has collapsed in this country, IBM jettisoned its small business focus to resellers over the last few decades.  It sells nothing directly to small and medium business while that was once a focus market.  It’s business model is focused on efficiency rather than service.  So, it only directly focuses on the top 20% of its customers.  In other words, the world’s largest corporations and large government bureaucracies; 80% of profits come from 20% of clients.   Those that are systemically-unstable and showing signs of failing everywhere in the world today.

Just a reminder... one of our long term theses on here is this is the cycle of the end of big and that we are in the largest financial bubble the world has ever seen.   

As it pertains to the financialization of our economy,  IBM and other corporations have often hollowed out capital development and production in favor of more predatory practices including those we noted above.  Additionally, IBM, as is the case with just about every major firm in this nation, has a very large direct involvement in finance.   IBM has a captive bank that it uses to facilitate trade and profitability.  We've already seen signs of this dynamic unwinding in GE, Harley Davidson and the Big Three auto companies just to name a few that also have their own banks.   Banks that started collapsing before the massive bailout provided by little old grandma's savings and Social Security checks.   By the way, this is also the same dynamic used by China to grow its economy.  ie, China acts as a bank by extending credit to nations around the world through the purchase of their debt.   This was also a major dynamic behind the Great Depression.  Watch and learn as the end unfolds. 

Valuation

This is the most horrific and telling dynamic associated with IBM and assets in general.  Eighty years ago there were a whole lot less public companies trading in this country.  Some of that was driven by an economy that was more agrarian in nature.  But, don’t be fooled.  Much of it was also due to the fact that the Wall Street extortion machine hadn’t yet ramped into high gear through generations of conditioning itself and the public to a false belief system.   Wall Street now has made an art of screwing society out of massive amounts of money without anyone realizing it.   This is much more prevalent than the financial fraud that existed during the Great Depression.  In other words, as a society, we are suffering from mass delusion.  That allows investment bankers and private equity to bring almost any company public that has a heart beat.  Eighty years ago most companies came public because they had viable business models and wished to tap public financial markets for capital to expand domestic production and domestic employment.  That seldom happens today.  Seldom.  Almost never.  Most of the time companies go public so Wall Street and corporate leaders can loot our pensions.  They essentially accomplish this by bribing senior executives at the companies coming public by cashing them out.   That dynamic of driving so many businesses public has been a major contributor to creating the corporate state.  Our businesses are no longer run by those who have a personal vested interest and creativity, its founders, but by bureaucrats.  Harvard MBAs that learn theoretical nonsense about Soviet-style efficiency used to run our public companies into the dirt.   (efficiency as a form of control subverts quality)  Then, as part of that efficiency, bigger is better.  The next thing you know, we have three car companies, three computer companies, three major Wall Street firms, three internet companies and on and on and on.  The end result are massive Soviet-style state-backed corporations that serve no purpose to society other than to keep the rats running in the maze.  Or to keep people employed making and doing useless busy work.  The American economic dream is no longer to create value but to now go public and become instantly a multi-million or billionaire at the stock offering and become a philanthropist courtesy of the money that has been looted from our pensions and savings.  We don’t need to rely upon ego-driven people who publicly wish to give away the fortune they stole from society.  That's Reagan's view of economic neofeudalism. 

My point of this last paragraph is there weren’t untold thousands upon thousands of horrible companies publicly-traded as there are today.  So, it was the Dow 30 rather than the S&P 500 that was the primary index in 1929.  So, in 1929 the average valuation of the top 130 companies was three times book value.   IBM is currently trading at thirteen times book value.  Mind you, book value’s calculations have been muddled in recent decades so there is some argument in a comparison to the valuations of 1929, it is trading at a much higher multiple of book value than thirteen.    And, there are most likely going to be dynamics that actually shrink book value in coming years.  That said, its current value is 400%+ more expensive than the average Dow stock was trading at in 1929 at the peak of the Wall Street bubble before the onset of the Great Depression.   After which the average stock fell over 90%.

A few years ago Fitch cut IBM’s credit rating for an aggressive buyback that included borrowing tens of billions to buy back company stock.  This resulted in  higher financial leverage within the company.  Not for new product development but to raise the shares for vested executives.   A cash flow analysis shows IBM, and for that matter, most major corporation's peak profitability was some quarters ago.  We are already on the downward leg of the profitability cycle.  

For IBM to trade at the astronomically-inflated values created by Wall Street and political criminals in 1929 before that market crashed, it's stock would need to drop 75% today.   Of course, to trade at some semblance of post-1929 and post 2012 bubble collapse reality, it must lose 95+% of its value.  Of course, were that to happen, which would simply be a reversion to the mean or a return to reality from the fraudulent economics and political corruption that enabled it, the fundamentals that come with it would ensure IBM and other similar firms will most likely be in a fight for their very survival.  The horror of the financial and political corruption that created the modern-day dynamic that defines our financial and economic system is beyond the comprehension of most Americans.  Don't worry.  For those who refuse to acknowledge reality, who instead prefer to keep voting for their political team to win and deliver more of the same in Obama and Romney and both political parties, a greater truth is in store.  You will not escape enlightenment but rather it will be thrust upon you.  Most likely violently and without notice.

Inevitability

As we noted before, the vast amount of future invention happens outside of the walls of any specific corporation or institution of control.   That we have a culture of massive corporations simply is a reflection of how they rigged the rules to the game similar to how massive state-backed corporations rigged the rules to the game in the Soviet Union.  There are almost no technology companies that existed in 1970 that still exist today.  90+% of the technology leaders of 1970 have disappeared.  Technology companies today have become monopolies because of deregulation of finance and the subversion of working markets; all enabled by political corruption.   In other words, these firms don’t lead through invention but in fact suppress it.   These firms don't create jobs, they destroy them.  No one defines this fact more than the likes of IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, Accenture, CSC and Oracle as leaders in the IT industry.

Because capitalism is an invention and creature of the state, it's inevitability is tied to the legitimacy of the state's policies.  In other words, this too shall pass.  Buffett's investment in IBM was clearly not based on investing brilliance but, instead a wild misunderstanding and miscalculation of reality; a hallmark of the status quo.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:05 PM

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Sandy Weill, Architect Of The Destruction Of Glass-Steagall, Now Says To Break Up The Banking Trusts

This is really quite a milestone in the coming tipping point.   We were writing about deregulation and the destruction of Glass-Steagall well before most anyone even knew what it was and well before the 2008 collapse.   By the way, as we have noted, Glass-Steagall was about two dozen pages long.  Dodd-Frank is well over two thousands pages of bought and paid for red tape that ensures Wall Street maintains its predatory grip on Washington.  ie, Dodd-Frank is the best protection the bankster racket could buy to protect their Ponzi schemes and their predation and violence against democracy.

Sandy Weill essentially bribed the Clinton administration into getting Glass-Steagall overturned.  The Clinton administration took lots of bribes.  Maybe more than any presidency.  But, they had the technicality of being legal bribes.   Of course, any of us would be in prison were we to have done anything like Clinton officials.  But, then as Bastiat said, the law sometimes defends plunder and spares those participating in the prosecution for their crimes.  (How in God's name does an ex-president with no previous business experience,  no money to invest and no skills that ever created or invented anything, end up with $200 million in earnings just ten years after his presidency?  Btw, include Al Gore in that same dynamic.  That would be Rolodex cronyism and morally-bankrupt capitalism.   And because he never invented anything and never created any capital, his earnings had to come from somewhere.  I'll tell you where.  They were taken from other people.  ie, A transfer of wealth.  But graft is now the primary business model of American-style  corporate capitalism enabled by politicians aka fascism; a dynamic substantially enabled by the Clinton team.)

Weill's actions and his power-mad rampage to create his own financial kingdom were major factors in the creation of the bureaucratic,  monolithic oligopoly trusts on Wall Street.  To now have Weill essentially admit he was wrong is an incredible revelation.  It will have profound future implications.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:50 AM

Monday, July 23, 2012

Quick Update On The Predation And Corruption-Driven Crisis In Spain And Europe

The March 19, 2012 turn date I mentioned quite a few times earlier this year is holding up quite nicely as the beginning of the process of the end of the system as we know it.   It was the exact date of the bond market high for Europe before it started selling off substantially since.  Today Spain is in the news.  Again.  Back when it seemed completely improbable that this crisis would become as severe as it is, I surmised Spain would be the first to leave the Euro currency.   Years later and that still hasn't happened.  But, have faith.  Greece and Ireland are small economies and the predatory central planners are able to rig these economies for some period of time to give an illusion of stabilization.  Spain is a behemoth economy and the ECB is not capable of bailing the country out under the European Financial Stability Facility (ESFS).  In other words, the shit is about to hit the fan.  Probably no later than the end of the world - December 21, 2012.  :)

The ESFS fund is essentially a financed bond sale available as short term loans to member states in need.   There is some question to its legality under current EU treaties.  Eventually the issue of legality could very well come into play.  Possibly when member nations refuse to honor their ESFS obligations.  If the facility is illegal, and it most likely is, then there will be no recourse within the court systems for nations who refuse to honor their obligations. 

Beyond that, the ESFS is a short term facility being incompetently misused for systemic and unrecoverable crises.  Crises that are unrecoverable without massive change to the EU/ ECB construct or the disbandment of the EU/ECB  slave state.   Regardless of whether it is legal, one could easily classify the ESFS as a Ponzi scheme.  While it is a “Euro” facility the reality is it reports into the toads in Germany, the IMF and the ECB.  To receive a loan, a member nation must agree to anti-democratic foreign debt enslavement terms and conditions.   (We have talked repeatedly about how the IMF is used as a tool by the U.S. to prey upon and loot the citizens of corrupt and impoverished nations, so this type of criminality is nothing new.  It's now simply high profile because there is reasonable transparency given democratic states are involved rather than the behind closed doors pilfering of poor and corrupt nations as has been the prevailing form of economic looting and serfdom employed by the U.S., that is now being employed by Germany and France.)

There are some massive structural problems with the ESFS.  And, under the current European crisis, it is clearly a very high risk facility that isn’t accurately reflected in the bond yields of France or Germany.  Yet. 

The ESFS is guaranteed by Euro area member states in proportion to scale and size; Germany being the largest and France not far behind.   Once nations receive loans from the ESFS, they are no longer required to guarantee loans to other member states.   Hahaha.  No joke.  You can't make this stuff up.  Where I come from, this is called a cluster f$ck.  In other words,  at some point we could have borrowers backing the debt of other borrowers – a Ponzi scheme of debt that is no different than using a credit card to finance more debt on a second credit card.   You know, like the Ponzi scheme of the Federal Reserve and its broker dealers that simply passes debt back and forth in a similar illusion of stability. 

The total funds available to the ESFS are a paltry $440 billion euros.   Greece alone is getting $100 billion of that.  (Equivalent to about $5 trillion if the U.S. were pulling the same Ponzi scheme.  For comparison, our stealth bailouts have been more like $25 trillion and could easily reach double or triple that if the Fed monetizes debt... which I have said they ultimately will.)  If the ESFS ceiling is lifted with greater bond sales, rates will rise further in anticipation of an eventual default or failure on some level of the EFSF.  In other words, there is absolutely no way this facility is ever going to work as this crisis continues to metastasize.  Italy, Spain and others will eventually come groveling to the ESFS.  Well, if the euro lasts that long as constructed.   Recent comments made by some financial yoyos, like Niall Ferguson, that the failure of the euro currency is too great to allow to happen are delusional and completely wrong.  Continuation of the predatory, anti-democratic euro currency as constructed are too great to allow to continue.

The Euro zone is nothing more than a form of control where member nations outsource their democratic and monetary sovereignty to enslavement by Germany, France, the IMF and unelected Euro and ECB bureaucrats. 

As we have noted many times, the people of Greece, Spain, Italy and other EU nations embroiled in serfdom would be best served to reclaim their democratic sovereignty (local economics) as Iceland has, slap on capital controls and leave behind the euro currency and the debt-economic slavery of other nations, banksters and unelected bureaucrats.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:11 PM

Sunday, July 22, 2012

CNN - Poster Child For the Dumbed-Down Corporate State's Infotainment Bureaucracy Headed For The Economic Scrap Heap - Blames Lack Of Major News On Viewership Collapse

I'm going slide this in between my Buffett posts.  CNN's remarks show how completely disconnected from reality the infotainment bureaucracy is.  And that shows how massively incompetent they are at actually doing what they are supposed to be doing; reporting the news.   Sound familiar?  It should.  It's an example of the systemic incompetence of the corporatocracy.  The same incompetence that led banking bureaucrats and their bought-and-paid-for political stooges to remark that no one saw the banking crisis coming.  Ahem.  Wrong.   Some day we'll hear the same nonsense from the infotainment bureaucracy regarding their coming crisis.  Just as we hear from EU bureaucrats.  Just as we'll here from the communist Chinese bureaucrats and on and on.

We are arguably living through the most newsworthy time in the last two hundred years.  News in this country and around the globe is being made at unprecedented rates.  Real news.  Substantive news.  There is no lack of major news.  That is utter nonsense perpetuated by systemically-incompetent corporate bureaucrats who have turned news into infotainment. 

People aren't watching mainstream infotainment because they don't report the news   They hire pretty people to provide infotainment.  Nothing wrong with pretty people but what is lacking is the de rigueur of investigative and discovery abilities that define excellence in journalism.   Merit has clearly been subverted on a wholesale level within the field of journalism.  It has been replaced by roteness and intellectually-lazy drones who happily provide us infotainment while subverting a greater reality. 

Americans are waking up to the stupidity of the dumbed-down corporate state and its mind-numbing drivel reported by the likes of CNN.  They thirst for truth, reason, education and knowledge.  They thirst for substance that CNN and other dumbed-down corporate state news machines generally are incapable of delivering.   People don't care that Janet Jackson's breast was exposed for two seconds during the half time of a football game.  Let alone have it be the lead story.  Think about that.  CNN's lead story was Janet Jackson's boob.  I think Walter Cronkite or Harry Reasoner would have  walked off the set rather than report the endless drivel we see today.  No.  CNN, your ratings are collapsing because you subvert truth in favor of control.  Control that rewarded you with handsome advertising profits over your constitutional obligation to serve the common good.  To educate, to inform, to enlighten.

What are all of those retired generals on the Pentagon payroll as bribed shills on CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News for endless undeclared, unconstitutional wars going to do if  the infotainment bureaucracy goes bust?  Or all of those hacks who call themselves political advisors or consultants who seem to be on every single "news" segment of CNN and these other mind-numbing infotainment sources?   All television news I am aware of, except PBS, which by no coincidence is non-profit, is at varying degrees of uselessness.  You remember PBS?  That antiquated public-funded news source that the Republikans keep trying to kill.   Most certainly because it interferes with the infotainment profit engine of their corporate masters.   That said, as PBS' public funding has decreased and it relies on greater donor involvement, it too has sometimes reported ideology and bias of large donors rather than truth. 

This collapse in viewership fits into about half a dozen of our long-time anticipated economic outcomes.  And, the substantial fall in viewership is at every 24 hour news channel to varying degrees.   Anticipated outcomes based on data and analysis not useless opinion.  You know, like that useless opinion CNN, Fox News and others feed us 24 hours a day.   .......This fits into our calls that this cycle is marking the end of big, the failure of institutions of the ego or institutions of control, the collapse in the advertising bubble, the collapse of salaries for specific segments of the economy; of which infotainment and media are two, the end of the corporate state, the coming collapse or major retrenching of countless monopoly and oligopoly corporations, and most importantly tens of millions of  jobs in our economy serve absolutely no productive purpose and therefore are likely to disappear, etc.   Issues we have been talking about since before the 2008 collapse. 

24 hour "infotainment news", a creation of the corporate bureaucrat seeking greater profit through control, is most certainly not long for this world.  The 24 hour propaganda dump focusing on Newspeak created by the dumbed-down corporate (war) state, political dunces and other mind-numbing drivel that relies on massive subsidies from the corporate advertising bubble.  Yet, corporations don't actually want to advertise on any channel actually reporting the real news.   Take a stand and support real news with advertising dollars?  Right.  That's too risky for the corporate brand (propaganda) or just outright misaligned with corporate values.   Corporate values generally subvert timeless human values of truth, respect, empathy, compassion, community, dignity, equality.  The bald truth is that CNN doesn't respect its viewers or democracy.  It respects the almighty bottom line of profit over truth.......

It's quite plausible that we could see all 24 hour news channels eventually disappear.   The vast majority of their content is simply propagandized editorials and endless useless opinions rather than any sort of fact-based news reporting and any representation of the discovery process.  What a glorious day that will be!  Transform or die.   Yet change involves a business model without the corporate advertising profit bubble to pay for the 24 hour infotainment bureaucracy.   Operations will most certainly be scaled back, if nothing else.  And, that means late night television could be local reruns or simply see channels off the air as was the norm thirty years ago. 

Only public, nonprofit or public nonprofit news or any business model that rejects the concept of profit over truth is ever going to provide for unfettered discovery and truth that is the news.  Not ironically, all major newscasts used to be not-for-profit.  That is, until unregulated capitalism's invisible hand of self-interest put control (profits) over truth (news).   The end result?  The dumbed-down infotainment bureaucracy controlled by corporate Ivy League MBA bureaucrats and their legion of attack dogs, Ivy League lawyers, used to maintain corporate control. 

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:25 AM

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Buffett Breaks His Cardinal Rule And Invests In IBM (Technology) - Part One

I believe IBM is putting in a major top in the first half of this year.  Possibly the top of my life time.  Or, depending on how the future unfolds, it's ultimate top.  Forever.  There are many outcomes to this crisis where that is most than possible but even plausible. We'll talk more of that in my upcoming Buffett-IBM post.  – A March 8, 2012 post on here regarding the coming tipping point of financial markets.

I would encourage readers to consider this post and the next even if they aren't focused on finance, economics or investing.   I suspect for many these posts will open their eyes to dynamics that are widespread across every segment of corporate America - the vast majority of our economic model is derived through some form of predation, victimization and violence against society, other corporations, democracy and individuals.    This post will help create a greater awareness to those dynamics that extend well beyond banking to include food, health care, agriculture, technology, chemicals, pharma, military contractors, security contractors and on and on and on.

I'm splitting this topic into two posts.  This post is a baseline provision of background information and the next post will be my analysis.  An analysis that I believe exposes Buffett's decision to invest in technology and IBM as a very flawed error that will prove costly.

We clearly live in a unsustainable dynamic that is most assuredly going to resolve itself quite rapidly.   In other words, we won't have some decades-long economic slow burn as has happened in Japan with their two lost decades of economic malaise.  As I have noted continuously for the last seven years, this crisis has nothing to do with debt or housing or a banking-specific dynamic.  Those are simply symptoms that you see with your eyes.   Re-regulating private, for-profit banking and even writing down debt simply masks over some symptoms of economic predation and violence for some period of time.  These efforts would do nothing to resolve the fundamental issues facing the United States and the world economy.  Debt didn't cause the Great Depression and debt isn't the cause of this crisis either.  This is a full-fledged global economic collapse.   And, that collapse is driven by widespread and unsustainable predation, victimization and violence everywhere. 

As I have noted countless times over the last seven years, I expect the U.S. to lead the world economy out of this crisis.  Future crises and even horror may come first but if one understands anything about globalization and economics, and one has any concept of economic freedom, this is really the only legitimate outcome. 

I have called many coming turn dates and events over the last seven years.  That includes the coming crisis of our banking system, the Chinese and Russian stock market collapses, coming global economic volatility and chaos, the auto industry bust, the 2008 gold collapse, the attractiveness of gold stocks after their collapse, the euro disaster, financial market collapses, the municipality and state fiscal crises, the commodities and oil bust, the asset reflation rally of 2009, the peak in banking stocks in early 2011, etc, etc, etc.    Those and more were written of generally before anyone in the financial or economic community even acknowledged there were issues.  And, they have already come to pass.   There are countless more outcomes that I have called that are all in the process of a similar fate.    Two of those are the ends to current methods of trade settlement (ie, most likely an end to the concept of a reserve currency), and the coming collapse in corporatism and, therefore, the coming bust that will consume many corporations or large chunks of their business models.   Both of those factors will play a major role in the fate of IBM and other multinational firms.  Although I don't share much of the detail behind my work, most everything I write is based upon data, science and fact, where available.   There is a lot of hard work behind those calls.   And, that is why they are most often accurate to a large degree. 

So, as I have been writing since 2008, that collapse was a primer.  The coming back end of this storm will be far worse.  And, it will be global.  So, with a track record of performance not rhetoric, I'm going to share another little known fact as it pertains to this very instant in time.  One that political stooges, banksters and corporate bureaucrats most certainly aren't aware of.  That is, at this very moment corporate balance sheets across the board are deteriorating at a rate not seen at any time in the last twelve years.  Yes, that's right.  Worse than anything experienced under George Bush.   This ties in very nicely with my game theory post that corporations are headed for a massive hard landing and that many major corporate names will very likely disappear in coming years.  It also ties nicely with our long time thesis that we are in the midst of a massive profit and financial bubble that is unprecedented in our nation's history.  A bubble that is going to pop and have wide-ranging implications beyond that of which anyone is talking about.  Now, this is change you can believe in.  Because unlike political rhetoric and endless financial opinion, this is real and it's unstoppable.  The seeds have been sewn and now we reap our reward for fraud, corruption, predation and violence that defines globalization, banking and politics. 

It’s probably been five years since I have uttered these words on here but I hate technology stocks as an investment.   I wrote that I hated them before the 2008 crash and I hate them even more today.  Now, hate is a strong word but I'm trying to convey a very clear point.  The technology stocks in the market today are horrible investments whose time has come and gone.  Forever.   But the fantasies of another technology stock bubble similar to the late 1990s remain indelibly imprinted in the minds of an investor class; a wholesale group of gambling addicts and economic dunces.

Back in 2006 we discussed that IBM's stock could be headed  into the mid $40s or even the mid $20s where there was finally strong support.   Then in the 2008 collapse the stock traded down to about $70.  Since the speculative bubble has been re-ignited with endless free money for Wall Street criminals the stock has recently traded around $200. (For the last six months or so.)   Absolutely nothing has changed on IBM's ultimate value or fate.  That is, nothing except the financial bubble is simply bigger courtesy of Barack Obama, George Bush, Democrats, Republicans, Wall Street, the Justice Department, financial regulators and the Federal Reserve.  

On the note of a larger bubble, early this year I wrote that IBM was possibly being used by large/institutional traders to manipulate the Dow given about a quarter of the Dow's advance since late last year has been because of IBM alone.     There are thirty stocks in the Dow.  One must appreciate that when a single company is responsible for much of the Dow's gains, the market is simply biding time before it heads lower.  Whether than was a contrived manipulation to dump stocks to fools at higher prices or simply the momentum trade that is so prevalent with "quantitative" stock pools (Great Depression era corruption reborn today) or some other reason, no one really knows.  No single person has a clear picture of all of the moving parts.   I also wrote, as noted above, that IBM could be putting in a permanent top.   As I have noted quite a few times, I think it's quite possible, although I am not predicting it, that the stock market as we know it could disappear forever in the next decade.  It's really not that far-fetched.   And our society wouldn't miss a beat were it to happen.   Well, other than the dynamics that might lead up to such an event that would devastate the investor class.  Of course, that is one our our long term theses on here anyway.  That is one of the most clearly certain outcomes that I have called for on here.  And, there is no hedge that is going to save them.  There is no place to hide.   

Warren Buffett has become the greatest investor of our time both by buying companies and taking large stakes in companies over the last 25+ years.  The majority of Buffett's wealth can be attributed to investments benefiting from the financialization of America's economy; a dynamic we have written about ad nauseam for the last seven years.   Buffett's success is very exposed given he is substantially invested in that financialization, corporatism and the status quo.  In other words, as the biggest financial and profit bubble in history deflates/pops, so too can we expect Buffett's perceived brilliance to pop with it.   This really isn't that difficult to understand.  In the Great Depression, all of the perceived Wall Street genius ended up destitute or bankrupt.  Some even committed suicide because of it.

Late last year Buffett broke his cardinal rule of steering clear of technology investing and took a position in IBM within a handful of percentage points of its all time high.   From what I can tell, his investment baseline is probably somewhere around $180 a share.  It’s really irrelevant what his basis is.   IBM is so astronomically overvalued that any concern about acquisition costs  are splitting hairs.  What’s relevant is that Buffett made a late stage investment in a company whose business model and share price are not sustainable.    He will most certainly come to regret that decision.

Most everything that I am going to write in the next post is not unique to IBM but are generalized systemic issues across countless companies in every industry.  I'm simply using Buffett's investment to highlight a particular example of how the system is unsustainable regardless of whether it is IBM, Apple, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Cargill or literally countless others.  And I do mean countless. ie, Hundreds of major firms and thousands of total firms.  There are specific manifestations I will talk about in the next post as it applies to business consulting/business information technology firms but the generalized issues are contained within countless numbers of firms.  That is, a predatory business model, a hollowing out or financialization of many nonfinancial firms, a substantial systemic risk to the profit bubble and an even greater risk of coming systemic corporate failure on some substantial level.  
posted by TimingLogic at 12:40 PM

Monday, July 16, 2012

Green Party Candidates Jill Stein And Cheri Honkala In Their Own Words

I have never backed any political candidates on here and I never will.  Anyone who tells another person what their journey should be has a primary intent of control.  And, that intent is directed at controlling others.  That is a main reason why politics is a relic of ancient forms of social control that isn't long for this world.  It is a vestige of control that subverts truth and selflessness or public service.   And that intent of control is driven exclusively by the self, the me, the I.   But that doesn't stop the endless flood of corrupt money meant to subvert inner truth in order to essentially cast a mind-c0ntrolled spell upon voters better known as brainwashing.

No one is qualified to ever tell another person how to vote.  No one.  Ever.    I do think it is important that people and the press help educate each other to our  blind spots of irrationality and self-delusions.  These factors help all of us create endless rationalizations about our behavior.  That includes why we continue to support politicians and political parties that don't reflect human values and clearly manifest behavior of a  disconnected self aka control.

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the Green Party candidates, talk substantially about real, substantive issues in a clear manifestation of the search for truth and restoration of democracy.   And, that discussion focuses on helping those who have been victimized and preyed upon to become productive and dignified members of our democracy.  And, they talk about the end of corporate victimization and predation that has left our nation at the mercy of international thugs who control our supply of energy and how to empower our nation to one of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency.   As I have noted numerous times over the years, there are multiple methods of creating a merit-based economic system that embraces democracy, humanity and dignity.   And, one such method we discussed was cooperatives; something that Jill Stein mentions on here.   Capitalism can be made to work for democracy but it will never serve all of our economic needs.  It's time to think outside of the box of self-created control with an intent of discovery and truth.

There is no intent of control or manipulation in these messages.  Only the search for truth - real solutions to real problems often involving human suffering and always based on the intent to control.  Truth that is not being addressed by political stooges or an economic system in systemic and permanent failure without transformational change.  These are messages of public service and not politics.    Are they the right answers?  Well, there are many right answers.  But in order for any answer to be considered right and truthful, it must be based on some modicum of timeless human values and the intent of discovery and truth rather than an answer found through some method of control.  That means they should pass the test of public discourse and vetting based on human values, economic value, reason and merit.  Truth, reason, honor and dignity sells.  They don't require the need for control - for manipulative political messages, political consultants distorting reality, endless lies in the form of propaganda campaigns creating a myth of a candidate that does not actually exist and other examples of flim-flam that are created by endless bribery of political parties and candidates with dirty money.  Dirty money that buys politicians and political favor while subverting one-person/one-vote and the democratic ideals that go with it.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:05 AM

Thursday, July 12, 2012

LIBOR and PFGBest: The Latest Criminal Examples Of The Private For-Profit Bankster Syndicate

I'm really bored with writing about the same old nonsense but I guess I have to mention this.  It's more of that change you can believe in.

Back in 2008 when the financial markets collapsed my first pronouncement was that global finance and globalization were now officially dead.   I received a fair amount of flack for those statements although my statements were most certainly accurate. 

It's hard for people to remember 2008 but the illusions of the global economy were still strong.   The crisis was still considered a U.S. housing and subprime mortgage issue.   Righhhht.   We still had many in finance and investing who were bearish on the U.S. but were writing about how emerging markets, China and Europe were safe havens.  Righhhht again.  Of course, we had been writing leading up to the 2008 mess that those areas were going to eventually get hit harder than the U.S. and that this crisis was a full global economic collapse. 

Too many people think with their eyes.  Do you see it yet?  Don't worry, you will. 

PFGBest Revelations Shock Industry (Really?  Shocked?  Are you brain dead?)

The Federal Reserve and Timmy Geithner knew about the LIBOR scandal for years and did little as banksters plundered and looted democracy.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:32 PM

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Tyranny Of Predatory Corporations - Peru Declares State Of Emergency To Deal With Anti-Newmont Gold Mining Protests

Capitalism as it has been practiced since the advent of the industrial age has generally been structured in such a way to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.  Another way to look at this is the concept of price and cost.   The price is the tip of the iceberg of the total cost for most every corporate activity in our economy today.  This dynamic has been magnified with the financialization of our economy.  People like Mitt Romney, private equity predators,  banksters and Harvard MBAs infiltrate corporate management and lack the business acumen and knowledge to understand this concept.  And, more importantly, they lack the conscience and empathy to care.  So, this dynamic becomes systemic.  Even in nonfinancial firms.  The short term gains or price are never measured against the long term costs or costs in general.   The reason why this is so is because there are no risk controls within our regulatory system to stop this behavior.   And with the financialization of our economy, we generally have idiots running firms they really are completely unqualified to run.  I'm sorry but finance should not be running nonfinancial firms.   They have never proven they are capable of running financial firms. 

This dynamic was part of the destruction of the American auto industry as I highlighted years ago.  I have seen this in spades where corporations will execute business plans that appear to have a price of X yet when a total cost analysis is done, the cost is literally 5-10X.   Corporations are not incented or regulated to consider the costs to society.  They are simply institutions of control or of the ego used to loot for benefit of the self.

Nothing represents this dynamic more than the endless destruction of the environment by international mining, energy and natural resource corporations.   These corporations often leave disaster in their wake.  There are generally ill-conceived risk controls, disaster recovery plans and proper regulation to pro-actively mitigate destructive practices.   Deep well drilling in the Gulf, natural gas fracking, strip mining natural resources and gold mining are just a few examples of the systemic offenders.  

First off, we don't need gold except for a small number of industrial uses.  Well, and the world's elite who are hoarding gold today.  And, we surely don't need it as a  tyrannical and undemocratic form of money.  While I support oil, gas and coal mining as a pragmatic source of energy, there has never been a proper regulation or proper risk controls to ensure these methods don't lead to endless destruction.   And, as we saw with the BP Gulf disaster, the regulators are essentially owned by the miners and energy companies themselves.  Obama has done nothing to ensure workable disaster recovery plans are now in place to support deep water drilling yet the practice now continues.   The next mess is inevitable.  It's just a matter of when.  More of that change you can believe in. 

Some time ago I highlighted how international gold miners were devastating the environment in South America.  Now, we see a state of emergency declared to deal with the massive destruction associated with gold mining.   Newmont's senior management heads back to  gated communities and their life of privilege in the U.S. at the end of every day.  And the elites buying their gold production benefit from a price not reflective of cost.  The cost associated with Newmont's activities are felt in communities that cannot escape the loss of environment, destruction of water supplies, loss of economic opportunity and the massive environmental messes created by Newmont's privileged management.  There is no accountability or local control in the predatory world of fascist-based or unregulated corporate capitalism. 

We fought a war a few hundred years ago to rid ourselves of the tyranny of concentrated, unaccountable power in a far off land.  Peru and people around the world today fights to rid themselves of the same tyranny in the form of corporations.  Globalization, a code word for corporate looting and predation backed by the force of the state, and unregulated corporate capitalism has created an even greater tyranny and enslavement than the English banksters, corporations and its megalomaniacal king in 1776. 

Capitalism or any merit-based economy must be designed and regulated to serve democracy and not the other way around as is the case today. 

The leaderless society marches on.

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:46 AM

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Arizona Initiative Would Strip Supreme Court Of Judicial (Constitutional) Review As A Result Of The Unaffordable Care Act

I'm gone on a healthcarepalooza with the last handful of posts.  I wasn't expecting to do so but I'm going to drop one more in here before moving back to mainstream economics and finance.  (Although, these topics are most certainly more about economics than mainstream economics.)

I have noted five or six times over the last few years that judicial review of what is or isn't constitutional is not a power granted to the courts under Article 3, the judicial powers, of the Constitution.  And, that many founders never would have signed onto the Constitution were that a  power granted to the courts.  There were some giant names against this tyranny of an unchecked power of unelected bureaucrats on the Supreme Court.   That is the very reason such power was not granted under Article 3.  Yet the precedence for this power grab of judicial review self-granted by the courts to itself was a wildly corrupt case at the time.   In other words, the Supreme Court self-granted itself this process through corruption rather than it being a constitutional power.  This self-granted power has stuck with the court. 

I would argue this power has stuck with the Supreme Court mostly because politicians never want to tackle anything controversial that threatens their ability of re-election rather than any modicum of democratic truth to granting this unchecked power.   In other words, politicians never want to be associated with any controversy of what is or isn't constitutional so outsourcing that power to someone else is fine by them.  By the way, it's this very dynamic of emotional self-abandonment (and the subsequent lack of personal responsibility typical of unstable, power-mad personalities.  Think Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and Dick Fuld.)  that has created an executive branch that steps well beyond its granted powers.  The Congress, the supposed voice of the people, is constantly outsourcing its duties through self-abandonment - the most glaring of which are the congressional responsibilities literally handed to the executive branch in the form of endless undeclared wars that define the corporate state and the massive security apparatus granted to spying upon Americans, killing terror suspects, killing Americans, illegal torture, illegal rendition and the like.  All without congressional involvement. 

There are many dirty little secrets created by unchecked power and politicians that subvert our economic and human rights and our Constitution.  Not the least of which is corporate personhood.   This Supreme Court ruling granting corporations the power of people to lobby (bribe) government could easily be overturned by Congress.  Easily.  It's never even brought up.  In fact, other than a little hollow rhetoric,  Obama has done nothing but benefit from this corrupt case as well.  But, then the Democratic and Republican Parties are, in fact, registered corporations who are only able to survive by granting their corrupt party (corporation) money engines and control of all elections through the dynamic of corporate personhood and associated fascism or the comingling of corporate power with government.   Otherwise, party control would collapse.  I believe it's likely headed that way regardless as we have noted numerous times.

A few posts ago I noted that I believe judicial review will eventually be stripped from the Supreme Court as it had been in France and provided a link to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's resolutions granting constitutional review to the states and not via Supreme Court judicial review.   Less than a week after that post, forces in Arizona are challenging judicial review under the same premise.   Arizona is at least considering the allowance of what federal laws are constitutional through their own powers as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison noted.

State's rights are eventually going to clash with the federal government.   I have been writing about this for the last seven years.  The federal government is drunk on unprecedented corruption and unchecked power that has destroyed the rule of law and created empire and a corporate state inconsistent with democracy.   The only rule of law able to stand against this unchecked power are the states.

Federal law is the law of the land but we have a written rule of law that limits those powers.  And, determining whether those powers or federal law is constitutional is not a matter best determined by a federal government drunk with its own avarice and corruption.   As Jefferson and Madison noted, determining what federal law is constitutional is a right, albeit maybe not an exclusive one, but most certainly granted to the states by a rule of law as a check against a federal power grab. 

Unfortunately, some of that clash between states and the federal government will be politically motivated as party politics.  In other words, this clash may often be less about what is just and more about one party trying to take power from the other; a dynamic in which both parties are subverting democracy and the interests of our nation.  But, that dynamic might actually force the end of both parties much more quickly.   I want you to remember that I have noted that we are in the midst of America's second civil war.  It doesn't have to be people fighting in the streets.  It's a war for power and restoration of balance of power.   It's a war for the mind of democracy and the rule of law versus the tyranny of the rule of man or the self and its endless corruptions.

I'm amazed at how ignorant Democrats are to what this Supreme Court ruling means.  Obama is the tax man. And he's levying the greatest tax in history on the poor, downtrodden and persecuted in this nation; those without a voice because they are unable to compete with the endless stream of political corruption driven by the god of money.  A process that subverts righteousness, reason, intellectualism and truth thus creating the dumbed-down corporate state. 

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp.  Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me"   ....  so that I may prey upon them.  -- The Godless Corporate State

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:56 AM

Monday, July 09, 2012

Modern Medicine Becoming Tyrannical, Dogmatic And Intolerant As It Recommends Unproven Treatments - Woman Stuns Researchers By Beating Cancer With Turmeric

I'm going to throw up a few more medical posts while I bide time till my Buffett/IBM post. 

Turmeric is a regular part of my diet.   Its anti-cancer and anti-diabetes properties are well known, if not legendary, outside of the mainstream medical bureaucracy.   Of course, telling someone to incorporate turmeric into their diet as a form of preventative medicine doesn't make anyone in a self-interested medical bureaucracy any money.  Pumping people full of radiation and medications after they are sick makes countless people and companies in the health care supply chain untold billions.   Even if the treatment doesn't work as noted in our last post - UCLA researchers have finally acknowledged a glaring reality, radiation therapy for cancer treatment is a stone-aged failure.  (What are we going to do with all of those radiologists, doctors, hospitals, treatment centers and companies who manufacture this gear?  The vast majority of employment in our economy serves no purpose to society.  And, we are finding out even more every day.  Capitalism's self-interest working to create a virtuous and harmonious common good for the betterment of society, an asinine theory supported by economic idiots, is failing.  Most likely for ever.) 

Dr. Briffa on the tyranny, ideology and dogma of modern medicine.   How doctors are forced to follow procedure even though the prescribed treatment may be flawed or even wrong.  This dynamic is a direct result of the dumbed-down corporate state tainting medicine and our universities.  It is corporate capitalism run amok.  It is just another example of corporate bureaucrats and political toadies working in unison to institute a system of control that, as a side benefit, destroys the purity of science (medicine), reason and the search for truth for the benefit of corporate control.  But, Obama has the answer.  It's a massive tax on poor people to enslave us to this system of injustice, tyranny and literal stupidity.  Of course, being a bureaucrat himself, he obviously is blind to his own ignorance. 

And, then to highlight Dr. Briffa's post on how dogmatic and self-interested our medical bureaucracy has become, where we push patients into treatment routines that are often unproven at best and lethal at worst, is an article about the curing of cancer with turmeric and food.   A concept that would be laughable to almost anyone in the corporate state's medical bureaucracy. 

This may sound completely bizarre but I suspect I might understand on a macro level how turmeric and super foods work to defeat cancer and I'll post something regarding this by the end of the year.  By the way, it completely rejects all accumulated knowledge about treating cancer and how to prevent cancer.   That shouldn't be a surprise.  While we are able to keep many cancer patients alive, we still aren't close to a cure.  That likely means prevailing science is wrong on many levels.  I'll tie it in with the remarks in my last post about coming back with another discussion by the end of the year about cancer.  In other words, if I was diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, I wouldn't be going to a doctor to be treated with our finest stone-aged tools until I confirmed that I was unsuccessful through self-treatment.

The body has an uncanny ability to cure itself.   It is a complex system that self-corrects and self-regulates when given the opportunity to do so.  That isn't by filling our minds and our bodies with the endless industrial goo, poisons and toxic stress associated with modern American life.  Nor is it most often by filling our brains and bodies with endless supplies of pharmacological agents.   The holy grail of medical science is to learn how to unlock the natural healing ability of the human body.  A major part of that is nature's pharma - the foods of our planet.  As I have stated on here before, every medication is considered a poison by the human body.   But, in terminal or serious cases, we oftentimes have to deal with those poisons, oftentimes unknown, because the alternative may be even worse.  Some day the concept of medication will be obsolete.  And, with it, so will be the pharma industry.  Now that may be twenty or two thousand years from now but that day will come to pass. 

posted by TimingLogic at 7:12 PM

Friday, July 06, 2012

The Healthcare Hostage Racket - Predation, Victimization and Violence Endorsed By The State - Part Five

The topic of sickcare, er, healthcare has been a common one on here.   As I have noted numerous times over the years, the system is headed for crisis, if not outright collapse.   For new and newer readers, healthcare in this country is wildly corrupt and incompetent.  Not corrupt in the sense of massive, overt bribery as in Washington or the endless, overt predation and violence of Wall Street.  But, it is a more nuanced and insidious corruption and bribery.   It is the corruption of unregulated capitalism's self-interest over the interests of community and society.  Of the self's control and manipulation of bureaucracies that subvert truth in favor of personal gain at the expense of others.  Because of that, healthcare in this nation substantially contributes to making  people sick.   And, as discussed ad nauseam, healthcare is just one part of our economic system's institutionalized predation, victimization and violence endorsed by the state.   What could be more violent than denying healthcare to a citizen of our nation?   What could be more predatory than the hostage racket Kunstler so eloquently describes in the link below?

I would highly encourage you to read Hostage Racket, James Kunstler's latest blog post.  I have had similar experiences to his with the medical bureaucracy's systemic incompetence.   I would go so far as to say many doctors are outright unqualified to practice.  I suspect that number is much larger than anyone would care to admit.  This incompetence is due to a multitude of factors but certainly two of the most obvious are the horrendously misguided university education and training bureaucracy and the most glaring is the corruption of medicine by money and capitalism's self-interest.   Doctors generally know little, if anything, about the effects of their massive over-prescription of drugs, the knowledge about nutrition and its ability to heal both our mind and body, and the understanding of the mind-body connection to sickness (not brain-body, mind-body) and the understanding of the body of a complex system of incredible self-correcting and self-healing elegance is almost nonexistent.   But, then, there isn't any money to be made by telling someone to eat healthy or telling someone to practice meditation or yoga or whatever as preventative methods of maintaining our health.   The bureaucracy that has built itself into a massive monolith has done so by embracing a system that best serves its self-interest.  And, that is most easily accomplished by focusing on the most expensive forms of treatment, whether they are the most productive or most useful is oftentimes irrelevant.    So, the university medical bureaucracy of training built itself around expensive procedures of cutting, medicating and radiating.   Most certainly this is no conspiracy.  It's simply how a self-interested system of violence and predation develops without oversight and proper regulation to ensure the public interest is protected over the interests of the self; better known as free market capitalism run amok.

It's only when an environment of endless toxins and emotional poisons, industrial food goo, unintended consequences of pharma's massive overdoping and a violent and predatory economic dynamics push us to the brink that medicine has any substantial usefulness.  There is no ounce of prevention.  There is only the pound of cure or treatment.    This system of incompetence or institution of the ego perpetuates itself through the force of the state.   For now.

How about I throw in another example of that systemic incompetence of the healthcare bureaucracy just for grins and giggles.  Mammography and cancer radiation therapy possibly induces cancer and most certainly creates treatment-resistant cancer.   This clearly points to the possibility that cancer is a virus or is caused by a virus.  I'm going to come back to that topic in a post I will put up by the end of the year.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:54 PM

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Democracy Now! Discusses The Mess That Is The Corporatist Unaffordable Care Act

The 4th of July is about freedom.  But, freedom is a state of mind.  You have to want to be free.  And, the flip side of that is taking responsibility for having that gift.   If you are one of the people cheering this Supreme Court decision about health care, you really need to consider removing your head from your derriere.  You aren't any more free than than a hamster running on that proverbial wheel.  You have fallen prey to the dimwittery of political propaganda.  It's time to get real with yourself and take some responsibility.  In other words, quit cheering political victories like it's your favorite sports team and start thinking critically to educate yourself beyond the ad hominem political lunacy perpetuated by party politics.  Because you are the reason the dumbed-down corporate state still survives.  That you cheer party political victories is leading you down the path of misinformation, intellectual defeatism and ultimately great ignorance.  Politicians are some of the most incompetent, unqualified, uniformed people in our society.   They always have been and until we see a post-political society, and it will happen some day, they always will be.   And, that means when politicians pass a law that has not been vetted by civil discourse and dissent, let alone read by the dimwits who passed it, the unintended consequences usually ripple through our lives and the economy like an earthquake for years or decades or forever until the stupidity is somehow stopped - usually by the endless crises in poverty, joblessness, victimization, predation, violence and the like that politicians have created.

It's quite amusing that in this video segment they show Marco Rubio being interviewed on Faux News stating that Obama's health care bill is nothing more than a gigantic tax increase on middle-class Americans.  Now people who cheer their respective teams in politics might expect the guests interviewed in this segment, who are all for national health care by the way, as am I, to excoriate Rubio because he is a member of the enemy party's camp.  Of course, that is the reason why we have a dumbed-down corporate state.  Because we have these endless ad hominem attacks by politicians that shout down reason, intelligence, discourse, vetting and dissent.  And, people line up behind their favorite team in a form of unbridled mob lunacy that creates an idiocracy run by the biggest idiots, politicians.  It's a form of political control that works quite handsomely to maintain victory of the party over the victory of We The People.   The dumbed-down corporate state is dumbed-down because ignorant and clueless politicians control it.    In fact, the guests in this segment actually acknowledge that Rubio is indeed correct.   That this bill simply lines the coffers of a corrupt, wildly inefficient health care system as a massive tax.   They do so because they embrace reason, intellectual honesty and truth rather than the idiocy of the political mob.  This corrupt, awful bill was passed because it served our corporate masters.  There are no ifs, ands or buts.  Medicare was what we should have gotten instead of corporate tyranny and predation. 

Forget about whether you think this bill gives people access to health care because the economics don't match up so they most certainly can't pay for it.  Forget about if you think this increases women's rights after endless victimization by Republikan misogynists because tens of millions of women won't be able to afford it.  Forget about if you think this is a step towards single payer which is clearly nothing more than a delusion because corporations have tightened their grip with this bill.  We already have a single payer system.  It's called Medicare.   This is the best bill corporations could buy.

The reality is this bill is wildly corrupt and is going to devastate people and our economy.   The problem with politicians is they don't understand economics, money, business or the consequence of their political decisions on average Americans.  And, quite frankly, most really don't care what the consequences are.  That is why our nation should be ruled by law.  And that means much of what is left to the discretion of political victories should instead be law that cannot be tampered with.  That includes an economic constitution that guarantees Americans certain economic rights that can never be tampered with by political dimwits. 

The only good news in this video segment is how Vermont, which used benchmarking and the input from health care experts, instead of bribery and lobbying from corporations to implement their own single payer system.  

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:39 AM