Thursday, November 29, 2012

Warren Buffett–Jamie Dimon For Treasury Secretary

Let’s see.  JP Morgan is listed as one of the systemically-risky financial institutions by the IMF.  ie, It should be dismantled because its risks are systemic and cannot be managed.  It gambles with trillions of dollars of other people’s money.   It uses gambling instruments that are leveraged dozens to hundreds of times the capital required to buy them.  And, it does so in markets that are often completely opaque so that no one really has any idea what it is really doing.  It has manipulated policy of democracy and financial regulation through the use of money and power.   And while the arrogance of Dimon leads him to tell little stories about not needing TARP money, the reality is the Federal Reserve squirted so much money in so many orifices and without doing so, the counterparties to Dimon’s betting parlor would have collapsed.  Ditto today with massive bets made on Europe and who knows whatever else.  In other words, incompetence, being rewarded, still is incompetent.   

Dimon was instrumental in gutting our financial regulatory structure while at Citigroup.  If by no other means than by being Sandy Weill’s protégé and because he clearly still chafes at it today.  That regulatory structure was put in place because of the betting parlors and massive corruption our financial system had become that led to its collapse in the Great Depression.  And, then after leaving Citi, Dimon went out to create an Orwellian organization that was far worse than any risky scheme created by Wall Street leading up to the financial collapse of 1929.  Those schemes embraced by Wall Street needed tens upon tens of trillions of dollars of bailouts by the Federal Reserve and tens and tens of trillions of dollars more in implied backstopping of banking assets such as real estate and other tradable Ponzi schemes.   And, most of those schemes remain in place now that we have ObamaCare for Wall Street firms.  ie, Dodd-Frank, which is nothing more than more corporate welfare.

Warren Buffett has benefited tremendously by the financialization of our economy.  His major holdings and major income generators are financial taxes on society.  In other words, they don’t create wealth, they destroy it by levying a tax on society’s productive assets.  It is becoming apparent that Buffett’s old saying that “when the tide rolls out we see who is naked” applies to his own beliefs.   What about Dimon or JP Morgan leads anyone to believe he should be our Treasury Secretary?  Buffett wishes not to reward democracy or virtue but instead reward more of the same.  And, arguably, the worst of it.  His rationale?  Well, only he can answer that.  But, it certainly isn’t for the betterment of society.  For benefit of the self? 

This world is full of endless amounts of bullshit if you listen to the endless mainstream chatter.  It seems modern corporate society’s belief systems are often one big pile of bullshit.  Opinion is taken as fact.  Fanatics gain legitimacy.  Advertising creates a reality that doesn’t even remotely exist.  Con men and women loot our institutions.  And people say and write absolutely false things out of complete ignorance and then they pawn it off onto other people as some level of greater truth.   The world  defined by the corporate state is essentially all a lie to varying degrees.  So, in order to survive and even thrive in this world, we end up lying to ourselves.  About almost everything.  What do we actually believe in anymore? 

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. -- Dostoyevsky

This view of Dimon being a great candidate for Treasury Secretary is a perfect example.  Some fawning clown who literally doesn’t appreciate economics, monetary policy, the human psyche, what has been happening to our society for the last thirty years courtesy of Wall Street writes a dystopian biography of hero-worship that Dimon is a hero and moral compass for our nation.  And, I’m sure MBA programs and the corporate state lapped this bullshit up. 

Let’s take a closer look at reality. 

I don’t need to point out anyone in particular.  Let me just rehash a few known traits of the human condition and the tyranny of the self.  These are incontrovertible facts.  Any person who seeks power of any kind doesn’t do so out of virtue.  They do so solely for benefit of the self.  There is no such thing as benevolent dictator or a benevolent politician.   There is no legitimate human authority in this world.  The only legitimate authority in our world when it comes to people is reasoned, just law.  Granting any person power over another human being will always result in injustices. 

There most certainly is selflessness in public service or service to humanity.  But not power or authority of any kind.   Public service and service to humanity is about giving power and authority to others, not seeking it ourselves.  There are no exceptions to this fundamental law of the human condition.  This is a universal truth.  Selflessness is actually derived from a physically-different part of the brain than that containing the manifested ego or self.    Selflessness and the self are literally mutually-exclusive.  Selflessness comes from our inner divinity.  It is a physically-separate part of the brain.  By the way, a billionaire giving money, that they more than likely took from someone else, to a hospital wing or college building named after him or herself is not selflessness.  That is driven by ego-motive.  And, that our system relies on this type of trickle-down vanity to provide for our society’s needs is typical of the injustices we see today.  

When any human being seeks greater and greater power or when they show a need for more and more money beyond that which can be used to lead a humble life or they show a need for more and more physical manifestations of obscene wealth, those acts are done for one reason.  They are used as armor or layers of protection to separate the self from the cycle of life.  The more one seeks to separate oneself from the cycle of life, from our brothers and sisters, from nature and from other sentient beings, the more one is dealing with some manifestation of dysfunction of the self.  These layers of protection that modern society provides that result in a greater and greater acquisition of power, money, fame, obscene wealth or inanimate objects are simply “things” used to hide something that is unstable about our perceptions of self.   Most often they are used to ameliorate feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness or in some way to change other’s perceptions of who we are.  We do that by separating ourselves.  By seeking a perception of greater worthiness through the acquisition of power and authority.  We do that because our perceptions of who we are without those layers or protection is one of unworthiness.  

Now, to be human is to have feelings of unworthiness or inadequacy.  Even if those feelings are latent or hidden from our own conscious perceptions.  And, dare we ever express these vulnerabilities in a society that preys on vulnerability – a greatest of paradoxes that we live in a world that victimizes our greatest strength as sentient beings, vulnerability.   But, what makes those who seek power and authority over another human being – politicians, CEOs, bureaucrats and even that power-mad “peace” officer beating people pulled over for a traffic tickets - in order to ameliorate the instabilities of the self, is that they are users.   They are takers.  They use and take from others to ameliorate their own inadequacies.  It is a form of social violence perpetrated on others.   We are the victims.  And, corporate capitalism and the corporate-political fascist state glorifies this behavior by rewarding those most driven to seek that power and authority.   We are so proud of Johnny.  He grew up to be so successful.  Johnny is a predator enabled by corporate capitalism and politicians. 

As a spiritual being, I have compassion for this greater reality that defines the human condition.  I know that deep inside there is something broken.  Most often all that is broken are perceptions.  And, those perceptions are often put there by someone else.   But as a human being, I can still consciously be aware of that greater truth but recognize it is absolutely necessary to set boundaries to protect ourselves, others and society from this type of dysfunction or tyranny of the self.   That means corporate capitalism and government must be ruled by laws.  Laws based on moral clarity and reason so as to protect us from these unstable perceptions of self and those who would use others to ameliorate their own inner demons.

Our Treasury Secretary should be someone who has shown an ability to be selfless.  Just as all public servants should be.  But, given politics is an institution of the ego or control and actually subverts truth, that is most certainly not likely to happen.  That is, unless we start electing people to public service who aren’t predators, sociopaths, power mongers and lunatics.  That likely won’t happen until we recognize politics for what it is.  That it is a control-based relic from ancient man that subverts discovery and truth. 

At some point in humanity’s future politics will be replaced by a post-political form of self-rule.  A world where those who threaten the community or the tribe are no longer rewarded with positions of control and authority over our lives.  But, instead we reward the people who protect the community or the tribe from the dangers of our world through acts of kindness and selflessness.   

Acts of altruism are what allowed humanity to flourish as a species.  Not the myth of survival of the fittest or survival of the most pathological as is the case in a world defined by the corporate state.

Buffett says Dimon best to lead Treasury in crisis even though he was instrumental as a Wall Street leader and insider in creating this crisis.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:41 AM

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Latest EU-Greece Deal–Status Quo Is Slowly Losing Its Grip

The Greek crisis, just as is here is driven by the economic slavery of deregulated corporate capitalism.  The crisis has been manufactured by economic criminals as I noted on here some years ago in a post about the Greek crisis.  Seemingly right on time after my last post where I ranted for the umpteenth time that debt is a myth, Greece and the EU bureaucrats come to a deal that proves debt is a myth.  They pushed the terms of Greece loans out by as much as 45 years and absolves them of interest payments.  This is all but forgiving Greece of its debts without officially losing face by doing so.  And, both the IMF and Germany have stated that future debt relief for Greece is likely.   Under the current system of tyranny that exists in Europe, Greece isn’t ever going to repay anything.

Does this solve anything?  Of course not.  Greece still has 25% unemployment and has lost its democratic and economic sovereignty.  This is simply the best worst solution for fascist Europe to maintain its grip on Greece and keep the system from unwinding.  For now.

Since this crisis has started I have been writing that this very dynamic is more than likely coming to the United States.  Most likely because some crisis will force this event.  But, instead of external creditors holding sway over the U.S. as they do in Greece, the Federal Reserve can simply make our debt disappear with the stroke of a pen.  Or, in modern terms with the touch of a computer key.  We are half way there.  The U.S. is funding its operations with short term Treasuries whose interest rates are essentially zero.  The U.S. is already absolving itself of interest payments on its debt by using this approach.  For the U.S. to pay $800 billion a year in interest to Wall Street criminals to finance its existing debt load is preposterous.   Over ten years that amount would $8 trillion at about 5% long-term Treasury yields.  And, Brown University’s Cost of War web site, highlighted on here before, tallies U.S. wars since 2001 at $4 trillion and counting with upwards of 905,000 people dead and countless more wounded.

What would the U.S. do with that $12 trillion?  Let’s add in an estimated $15 trillion (more than likely way too low) over the last 30 years (in 2012 dollars) from fascist corporate welfare started under the trickle-down political dunce and father of neofeudalism, Ronald Reagan – corporate tax receipts as a percentage of total tax receipts had dropped 75% by Reagan’s mid term re-election from what they were 30 years before.  It’s even worse now as noted on here many times.  So, if we didn’t have to pay Wall Street criminals for destroying our economy, if corporations paid their taxes and if the military-industrial complex profit-driven war state was dismantled, that would be an estimated savings of $27 trillion dollars or nearly 200% of GDP that our nation would have benefited from or will benefit from in today’s dollars. 

What could democracy do with $27 trillion dollars?  First off, abolish property taxes on our homes that enslave us to a renter’s existence to our corporate masters.  Secondly, abolish the income tax.  Thirdly, pay for health care for every American who is willing to be responsible for their share.  Fourth, provide a college degree to anyone who wants one and is willing to work for it.  Fifth, finally fix the shambled primary educational system that has been primarily destroyed not by teachers, but by politicians and self-interested bureaucrats who toy with our children’s lives and perpetuate poverty, racism and bigotry.  Sixth, provide a minimum level of property ownership at no-cost to every citizen so that we may all have a roof over our head that we are personally-responsible for; something I have noted countless times that Thomas Jefferson wished the government to do for all Americans free of charge.   And on and on and on. 

The world is only this way because we let it be this way.  If you can dream it, it most certainly is possible. 

The status quo is losing its grip even as I type this.

Latest EU-Greece deal here.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:25 PM

Monday, November 26, 2012

Marc Faber–Prepare For A Massive Financial Meltdown

Faber is one of my favorites as noted on here many times over the years.  If there is any single person who has gained acceptance and fame in this system, or in Faber’s case, often notoriety, that I want to listen to, it is Faber.   In my estimation, Faber, more than anyone else in the world who is famously part of the status quo, understands how this current financial and monetary system works.   Of course, there are countless people outside of this system who are equally, if not better equipped to understand what is going on today.  But Faber is unique within the system as a general source of lucidity and reality who has survived and thrived through numerous fads and short term trends. 

Now, that said, over the years Faber has made some nonsensical remarks that he has eventually rejected.  That is also what makes Faber a worthwhile voice in the system.  He has little ego and doesn’t wed himself to most positions.  When Faber essentially said the U.S. was headed for the scrap heap and China and Asia would inherit the world and when he called the euro a safe currency and the dollar was headed for collapse and a few other comments over the years, I called him out for those ludicrous remarks.   He let his bias and his belief system cloud his judgment at times.  There is a Freudian desire and associated belief system for many people to see the United States collapse and it clouds their judgment about what is yet to come. 

Faber’s most recent remarks line up very well with some of my long time theses on here.    That is, global finance is going to collapse and so will all financial markets, corporate profits and the global economy.  In addition, Faber interestingly has come out with a new position.  That is, that the period of time between 1980 and the 2008 collapse was a period of “living beyond our means”.  Long time readers will recognize for a very long time I have noted that U.S. economic activity peaked around 1980.  And, while I haven’t shown the data, I can most certainly prove that statement to a very high degree of probability.    Not more than a year or two after my initial remarks regarding economic activity peaking around 1980, a well-received book came out that made a similar conclusion.  I highlighted that book on here some years ago.  And, recently Bill Moyers highlighted the book and its authors.  Now Faber is remarking of a similar dynamic.  1977-1982 is a very key time in the economic history of our nation.   And, as noted on here before, the economic activity since was fueled by massive money printing.   We haven’t become wealthier since 1980.  We have become wildly more poor.   But the perception of wealth created through massive money printing during this multi-decades destruction of our economic system plays a pivotal role in our future.  I’m not done with this topic by any means.  1980 plays a key date in what I consider will probably be the most important post I will ever put on my blog.  A post that I will put up on here at some point in the next few years.  And, while I have said I don’t believe we will go back to 1980 financial asset prices, it most certainly is possible.  The greater truth of the universe doesn’t really care what I believe.   Much of what is to come is preordained.  It cannot be stopped.   I don’t mean some 2012 end-of-the-world preordained either.  I mean as a complex system, there is no way to stop some of the destabilization and volatility that is yet to come. 

By the way, it was the looters who lived beyond their means from 1980 to 2007. It wasn’t the average citizen of the U.S. or anywhere else.  Did 50 million people on food stamps live beyond their means?  Did the 25% of Americans who are unemployed?  Did the 160 million Americans who essentially have less than $10,000 in net worth live beyond their means?  Did the 50% of people in Detroit or countless other cities who don’t have a job live beyond their means?  Or the 50% of new college graduates who can’t find a job?  No.  It was politicians, banking criminals, the investor class, the corporate entertainment complex and the corporate state that lived beyond their means.   

Faber still has one major blind spot in his recent comments.  That blind spot is money and debt.  Faber understands how this system works but yet hasn’t opened his belief system to appreciate how this system of money and banking is finished.  And, with that, what is possible or probable in replacing the current system as a greater awareness develops.   Faber, like every single person within the system, doesn’t really understand money from a conceptual standpoint.  He understands how this monetary system works.  I attribute this faulty belief system and outright ignorance to his European heritage.  Europe, being a mercantilist, colonial empire-driven exploiter and predator is and always has been a source of tyranny and corruption when it comes to money and banking.  Never has the European continent experienced democratic money.  So, Faber still wrongfully believes that the value of money is derived through money itself.  He doesn’t seemingly understand that money itself has absolutely no value in a functioning democracy or democratic economic system.  It is the value of inventiveness, creativity, production, human expression, etc that a free people, ruled by law and not men, excel at that gives money its value.  Our money is dying because democracy and the rule of law is dying. 

Democratic money is fiat money.  It is abundantly available for all citizens and for the freedom of ideas and expression of all people.   It is not the for-profit, criminal banking and monetary system we have today.  Faber still believes money itself is defined by intrinsic value.  That is why Faber likes gold.  It’s why all gold bugs love gold.  They simply don’t understand money or democracy.   These are faulty belief systems instilled by a history of feudal lords, private for-profit banking oligarchs and their pliant political marionettes in the state. 

Gold money is the money of looters, banking criminals, oligarchs and self-appointed kings and lords who use its scarcity to deny others their economic and democratic rights.  To enslave others to their illegitimate power and control.  Gold is used to dumb-down society by maintaining a grip on what forms of human expression and economic ideas are allowed or endorsed by the state, oligarchs, corporations and our masters.  Anyone who believes we should return to gold money is an economic and monetary idiot.  Truly.   And, if you listen to them, you are an idiot too.  Wake up to a greater truth. 

Faber remarks that the U.S. must take its medicine by cutting social programs to pay the private, for-profit banking syndicate and their extortionary racketeering.  Just like the mafia, street gangs, drug cartels and other organized crime syndicates.   As I have noted on here countless times, debt is a myth and no sovereign democracy ever needs to borrow a nickel from a private, for-profit banking cartel of looters.  And, this notion that poor and exploited people in this nation or anywhere else need to take their medicine by cutting democratic social programs is nonsensical bullshit driven solely by evil and monetary ignorance.  Along with that is this myth of a fiscal cliff.  More nonsense and ignorance that will simply create disaster. 

This whole system is finished.  But, as I have noted numerous times, that doesn’t mean we are going to see a debt collapse.  There are numerous people within the status quo who are writing books, selling bomb shelters, selling food and other forms of profiteering by scaring people into a coming debt collapse.  There are many things to be concerned about in the future, but by no means is a debt collapse imminent.  These people are exactly like the generals who are always fighting the last war.   We witnessed a debt collapse in the Great Depression so they expect one today.  They are using the rear view mirror to divine the future.  Just like those generals fighting the last war, they don’t know what they are talking about and their strategies/rigid belief systems always involve massive blind spots. 

The issue is not debt.  Debt is simply a manifestation of the greater reality of economic slavery created by our neofeudal corporate and political masters.  This system is going to unwind with or without a debt collapse.  And, even though we have already seen the Federal Reserve ante up $25 trillion in free money to bail out bankers, there are some who believe a debt bust is imminent.  If the Federal Reserve can bail out the bankers, the reality is they can bail out everyone.   The size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is infinite even if there are minor political, law-driven stepping stones to get to that point.    But doing so exposes the myth of debt enslavement as I have noted many times on here before.  And, if the debt myth no longer exists, how will the status quo continue to maintain its economic slavery?  They won’t.  If a debt collapse does come to pass, it will only be due to the criminality of the existing system to absolve our society of illegitimate economic slavery.   That is a distinct possibility but it, by no means, is a guaranteed outcome.  Anyone who believes it is is simply showing the extent of their rigid belief system’s massive blind spots. 

posted by TimingLogic at 12:38 PM

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Social Science Of Economics - Predation, Victimization And Violence Endorsed By The State - Part Five. Republican Views On Social Darwinism Seemingly Align With Nazi Germany

I'm going to spend the rest of the year filling in some of the posts I promised throughout the year.   As this is a short week where we celebrate our freedom, I thought this was a very relevant topic.  I was over at The Real News many months ago pulling a link for another post and noticed this video was highlighted on their web site.  There really is no time sensitivity on this.   It’s Eric Cantor talking about how its essentially a crime to be poor and implying that we should raise taxes on people who make so little they don’t qualify for income taxes.    The implication is quite clear; poor people are freeloaders.  Welcome to the world of covert violence against the poor and voiceless in the proletariat corporate state.  

When I was watching this, the first thing that came to mind is what kind of person even thinks like this.   Well, I don’t know what Eric Cantor’s demons are but I could make a pretty good guess that they are many.  This type of covert violence is always consistent with those who seek authority.  This dynamic is made even more pronounced in a patriarchal society like the United States.   That is why there is only one legitimate authority over another human being.  That is a reasoned rule of law.

By the way, don't let definitions fool you, the Republican Party is the founding proletariat party.  Although the Democrats have fully embraced proletariat fascism.   The Republicans and Democrats define reality through service to its corporate masters.  What it values above all else is business.  And, business values work from our citizens above all else.  Any fascist society is a proletariat society.  And, anyone who doesn't provide their perceived "fair share" of work, even if they are denied that opportunity, even if it isn't for a living wage, is an enemy of the proletariat corporate state and, therefore, are on the receiving end of its violence.
Quite frankly, this appears to be similar to victimization that was very typical of the type of covert violence against undesirables in Nazi Germany’s political-corporate class.  Or, even in the Soviet Union or countless other examples of state violence against undesirable classes of people.   Of course, later, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union’s covert acts became anything but.  And, it extended well beyond Jews and eventually included intellectuals, mental illness, gypsies, those not considered racially pure, those who were handicapped and countless others who arbitrarily fit the random label of undesirable to the proletariat fascist state. 

Peer victimization (bullying) is the consequence of acts of intentional aggression, by a peer (or group of peers) operating from a position of strength or power, and directed at a victim who is viewed as relatively weak. The aggressor’s goal is to damage status and/or social relationships.

I can’t speak for individual remarks but generally these types of social stereotypes are fundamentally driven by some level of belief in Social Darwinism.  These beliefs were foundational to Nazi propaganda.  By the way, the Nazi's ideas foundational to a superior Aryan race and Social Darwinism were built upon the American and British Social Darwinist movement some decades earlier.  They simply perfected the propaganda to a much greater degree.  There were similar Social Darwinistic atrocities and beliefs put forth by American and British elites of that era.   A dirty little secret not taught in your high school history books.   A dirty little secret that is repeating itself.   Most elites hate democracy and they probably hate you.   They are consumed by the manifested self's greed, arrogance, vainglory, lust, control, hatred, violence, exploitation, predation, etc.

Make no mistake, this isn't some crackpot view of history.  It's as real as the exploitation and violence of slavery, indentured servitude and immigrants that is a hallmark of our nation's history and the history of free market capitalism.   Free to exploit anyone and anything.  I have wanted to put up a major post on this topic but there is simply so much to lunacy out there that I never seem to find  the time between what I want to post and the endless events that are unfolding.   This will suffice for now.

This type of implication that undesirables, in the case of Cantor's remarks, poor people, create their own misery and are therefore undeserving of human dignity or a voice in government policy is driven by the manifested self .   As we have noted numerous times, this is all part of the violence and exploitation practiced by the corporate state, politicians, the national security state and the military-industrial complex against anyone who is considered undesirable or unworthy.  This belief and its violence plays a very substantial role in the modern Republican Party.   Need I list the endless examples of this behavior?    In addition to poor people being lazy and a burden, maybe by calling women whores who are on birth control, or by men of political authority attempting to define what is acceptably considered rape, or using drug tests to deny people the social services of our government or by perpetrating any number of exploitive and violent stereotypes of  class, gender, sexual orientation and race of our citizens. 

There is an endless targeted exploitation of poor people and "undesirables" as defined by the corporate state.   It manifests itself through statements and policies of covert violence.  Bill Clinton, one of the godfathers of the corporate state and its exploitation,  was notorious for this type of covert violence in many of his policies.  Not the least of which was "welfare reform" that essentially destroyed the social safety net for countless Americans.   This after he signed corporate state trade agreements that would end up putting tens of millions of Americans in welfare lines.  Bill Clinton/Al Gore may have been the worst presidential team in American history.    In looking at the sum total of their work, I can find no other parallels.  They were most certainly the worst in the last one hundred years.  But he feels your pain.  Pain he caused.  They left our nation's economy and financial system in shambles and George Bush got all of the blame.

While many political policies may be covert in their violence and exploitation, many in society view this violence as cover for them to express their own lunacy and hatred.  This should really be no surprise.  These predatory actions have been a hallmark of corporate capitalism in this country for decades.  Frankly, except for a handful of decades when democracy won rights against predatory corporate capitalism, it has been a hallmark of corporate capitalism since the dawn of the industrial revolution.    And, it was typical of the corporate trading and land corporations, private bankers and the King of England who all worked together to loot the world. 

We not only see this in our society but the corporate state supports endless numbers of dictatorships and preys upon poor people around the globe both militarily and economically.  People are simply viewed as disposable assets to project corporate and financial power and military hegemony.   Anyone not assimilated into the Borg is mowed over without conscience.

The modern day Republican Party is the founding party of fascism in this country.  It is the original party embraced by elites as a buttress against democracy.   It is the original party of pro-business fascism.   The Democratic Party has been a quick learner.  They are simply more nuanced and covert in their behavior.   Remember, it was Bill Clinton and Al Gore who took fascism mainstream in the political class. 
posted by TimingLogic at 9:32 AM

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The Tyranny Of The State Denies A Dying Man

posted by TimingLogic at 8:46 PM

Magnitude 6 Earthquakes Every Day This Past Week

The week ending this past Saturday had six magnitude 6 earthquakes in six days.  This is the most active tectonic activity since our last post on this highlighting six magnitude 6 or greater quakes for the week of March 19, 2012.

The cycle of volatility remains in full force.  That includes the back end of the economic crisis to come.  

posted by TimingLogic at 9:45 AM

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Stupidization - Jamie Dimon Points To Europe As The Light

Obama’s favorite bankster, whom he essentially called brilliant, shares his infinite wisdom with us on U.S. economic policy.   That is, the U.S. must cut democratic programs to pay Jamie Dimon and mammon back.  And, after we do that, unlike Europe, whom he cites as a beacon of leadership that has the will do to what is necessary, the U.S. economy will “boom”.   Of course, his recommendation is that business and government collaborate.  You know, more of that good ole-fashioned capitalist comingling of government and corporations better known as fascism that created this crisis.  Dimon obviously was inspired by watching his heroes in the movie Idiocracy as Europe falls steeper and steeper into a collapse that is already at depression levels.  Last week it was reported that loan demand for nonfinancial corporations has fallen 30% across the continent, a staggering and unbelievable number.  This collapse is driven by a dystopian attempt of politicians to please banking looters like Dimon while butchering democracy.  But somehow Dimon believes the same medicine will create a boom in America.  Guess what else?  Brawndo’s got what plants crave. 

I would love to be in some public forum to debate substantive democratic, monetary and economic issues with some of these clubby Ivy League assholes that have turned Washington into that same type of Harvard crony club.   And expose them for the know-nothing dimwits they really are.   My point is these self-appointed ruling pathocrats are control-driven predators and the deference they receive from their cronies in the status quo media is obscenely pathetic.  Okay, enough ranting.

Running a Wall Street bank in this country with endless free money from the Federal Reserve and the enforcement of debt serfdom by a political police state most certainly doesn’t take genius.  It takes pathology.   And, even with the power of the state at their back Wall Street’s pathocrats needed trillions in bailouts and continues to lose billions on gambling with our money.  

Speak of which, the Democrats and Republicans of today appear to be very similar to the Know Nothing Party in our nation’s history.  Bureaucratic dunces who reject reason, knowledge, science, intellectualism and virtue.   Yes, that is both parties.  The Democrats manipulate and destroy science, reason and intellectualism just as the Republicans do as I have cited on here before.   This myth of Obama brilliance is absolutely preposterous.  There is nothing in his life or his presidency that points to any brilliance.   Other than that, he got into Harvard.  And he did so  through unknown and suppressed circumstances.  The birthers are ridiculous but Obama will not release his transcripts and there has been reason-based perspectives that funny business or cronyism or favoritism was involved.  The math doesn’t add up.  Donald Trump, a real charmer himself, is not one of those reasoned-based perspectives.  Regardless, there are plenty of Ivy League-educated idiots --

"The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors. Sometimes they need to take very stern action to stop intellectuals leading us to ruin."  - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The stupidization of our society, the dumbing-down of our democracy and the sociological factors leading to the Know Nothing Party led up to the Civil War.   And, so was talk of secessionism as is now starting to happen this very week.  Even if you think these comments of secessionism are fringe and ridiculous, remember the social mood of any nation that has enough people to sign secessionist papers is one of corruption, pathology, systemic criminality and illegitimate authority.

Many outcomes we discussed years in advance, many that would have been considered fringe or preposterous, continue to become mainstream issues across a wide variety of data points.  State’s rights is something that I have been hammering the table with for years.  It is considered a fringe, lunatic element by the Dummnycrats.  Even though our constitutional framers included it for the very reason that now is being used as a basis for early secessionist movements.  These people don’t want to leave the United States.  They want to get out from under the corruption and illegitimate authority of a fascist political bureaucracy in Washington.

I have been saying for years that the U.S. is in the midst of its second civil war and that this time parallels both the social dynamics of the American Revolution and the American Civil War.  I think most people will be very disturbed at the parallels whenever I sit down and type of my long-promised post up on our second civil war.  

Now, in the face of the mockery called the fiscal cliff, would be the perfect moment for democracy to dismantle Wall Street, create a public banking system and swallow all of our nation’s debt.  And, in the process neuter pathocrats who become wealthy by enslaving a democratic society.  By living off the backs of productive people.   There is no fiscal cliff.  This is the continuation of the debt-based myth perpetuated by the status quo to maintain their control over you and our democracy.  To keep us enslaved to a pathocratic and plutocratic class of predators and looters enabled by Dummycrats and RepubliKKKlans.

Jamie’s infinite wisdom here.  (I’m sure these words of wisdom will be written into the halls of the great library of timeless knowledge..  You know, along with Brawndo’s got what plants crave.)

posted by TimingLogic at 6:50 PM

Friday, November 16, 2012

Apple Update

aapl

Apple is a stock I love to hate.  I love to hate it because the rise in the value of the company had no reflection to sustainable fundamentals.  Zero.  The price of the stock outstripped all sustainable valuation measurements by magnitudes.   And the hyper-consumerism that has created a mania around its products is completely unsustainable.  Just as the mania surrounding the company’s stock is driven by a massive, leveraged liquidity bubble and a runaway financial system.  I have put up quite a number of posts on the company over the years.  This is a company that literally stands for everything that is wrong with our country from sweat shop labor practices to the mindless hyper-consumerism mania to the corporate advertising propaganda that creates a reptilian brain impulsivity and mindless stupidity in the sensationalism of its products.  It also stands for some of what was oftentimes right with our country from its maniacal focus on the user experience to its inventiveness to its creative destruction of a dying intellectual property or digital rights management space. 

As I have noted on here before, there are tipping points and small perturbations that often are overlooked in any ecosystem.  That includes a company’s ecosystem or the fundamentals surrounding a company’s success.  Apple was doomed ten years ago to suffer its coming fate.  Most people who don’t appreciate the fundamentals the world is experiencing today simply don’t get that.  And, that doom was certainly exacerbated the day Steve Jobs left the company.  Not doomed to complete failure but most certainly doomed to a very different future where Apple will certainly lose the aura of invincibility.   The fact is the Apple we all know today existed in only one place.  In the mind of Steve Jobs.   That company died when Steve Jobs passed. 

There most certainly is a lot of talent at Apple but the culture is already changing.  In a power move that would make Joseph Stalin proud, Tim Cook, the new leader at Apple, recently purged a few of the most capable minds in the company, including one of the leading candidates to take the CEO job when Jobs stepped down.  A leader who rules through autocratic control and cannot constructively encourage dissent & disagreement from talented team members is doomed to failure. 

Back in mid September of this year I showed a graphic of Apple’s stock and its very poor volume characteristics that weren’t confirming its rapid rise to new highs.  Also included in that post was the broadest index in the United States, the Russell 2000, whose poor volume characteristics were also not confirming its rising prices.  Both peaked simultaneously just a few days later, as did all broader markets.   This happened just as the major turn dates I wrote were coming in September actually came to pass.  In other words,  as of late September of 2012, something has again changed in all financial markets and it is affecting all prices.  We didn’t get the potentially catastrophic weakness that I was concerned about in late September and October but markets have most definitely been impacted and some assets like Apple have actually experienced mini crashes.   Apple lost one fifth of its value in less than two months. 

That said, I expect we will see a temporary stabilization and some attempt of a rally as early as next Tuesday or as late as the first week of December.   We shall see.  Shorter term movements are very difficult to project.  But Apple is still in an uptrend and above its linear regression channel that I have shown again above.   As I have noted on here for at least the last five years, my downside target on Apple remains less than $50 a share.  That’s about a 93% drop from its peak.  And, as I noted before the 2008 crash, we could see Apple back below $35 as this cycle ends.   People generally don’t appreciate how unsustainable fundamentals have led to a mania in Apple products and its stock.   Yet the carnival barkers are already out in force telling people to try to catch a falling knife because the stock is now apparently so cheap. 

I doubt Apple will ever see $700 a share again.   As I noted before, Apple was trading at a valuation greater than all of the publicly-trade companies in Italy and closing in on the value of all of the publicly-traded companies in Russia.  The criminal manipulation of financial assets bears no reflection on reality.  It is simply a mechanism of looting by a criminal financial class.  

The same bulloney the Wall Street carnival barkers use to rationalize Apple was used to rationalize Microsoft’s stratospheric rise into the internet bubble.  The Microsoft bubble was another bout of criminal behavior by the looting financial class.  At the time Microsoft had more cash on its balance sheet than any company in history and the stock collapsed regardless.  In fact, again today, the only company that has anywhere near the cash level of Apple is Microsoft that has again amassed a massive $60 billion in cash.  And the stock is still a pig and likely going much lower over the long term.  The cash hoard at Apple will not save the stock price.  And, if Apple uses that cash to diversify, or diworsify as I have called it on here, it will simply hasten the ultimate implosion of the company. Diversification is path that most corporations fail miserably at.  It is the kiss of death of corporations. 

Apple had an amazing run.  A run substantially driven by financial looting and the criminalization of our money, our financial system, our economy and our government.   All good things come to an end.   As do most “ungood” things. 

posted by TimingLogic at 10:04 AM

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Lunar Eclipse On November 13 And Solar Eclipse On November 28

There will numerous links on the web to watch both live.  Enjoy!  Live camera link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 10:56 AM

Update On The NYSE Composite Index

nya

I have shown this graphic probably four or five times in the last six years.  First, when the market was peaking before the 2008 collapse to show how overbought equity markets were.  This at a time when there was record bullishness on Wall Street as I highlighted in the January 2008 survey.   Just as today.  And, then quite a few times since to show upward projections off of the 2008 collapse low and downward projections from the post 2008 collapse highs. 

The NYSE composite is the land of the institutional and professional investor.  It is “the” index encompassing the broadest array of institutional investment.  The S&P is the most liquid futures trading vehicle but the NYSE is “the’ index. 

To date, the NYSE price projection high I have been anticipating has held as noted by the blue line starting at the 2008 collapse low and rising to the 23% horizontal Fibonacci line.  We have been flirting with the 23% line for what is now the third year.   The more price is attracted to a particular level, the more it becomes support or resistance.  In this case, resistance.   This is the third clear attempt to break through this level.  Anecdotally, the third time is usually the last in my experience.  In 2011 we marginally pierced the 23% line and rose up to the red linear regression line that started with the 1982 bull market.  But that attempt was immediately repelled back below the 23% line.

Now, as I have noted on here before, ABC patterns are my favorite for their effectiveness.  There are always two sides to any storm; the front and rear.  And, the rear is always the most violent. 

The two blue lightning bolt patterns above are ABC patterns.  They have three waves of A, B and C.  Sides A and C are the primary waves with B being a corrective wave or the calm before the back end of the hurricane.    These patterns are everywhere and in all time dimensions.  ie, Yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute, etc.    Some people would classify that as a fractal for what it’s worth.   Anyway, the two ABC patterns above are both of the same geometry.  In other words, if the 2000-2003 ABC pattern is followed again, we will see a downside correction of about 85% in the NYSE Composite.  And, as noted before, this is my downside projection for a multitude of reasons. (My long-time projection has and remains 200-450 on the S&P as noted on here throughout the years.) 

There is only price in the above projection analysis.  There is no time analysis.  ie, This graphic does not show when I expect this to happen.  It is only upward and downward price projections.  Honestly, I thought there was a reasonable probability it would have already happened.  But, every time there has been weakness, every central banking criminal in the world has squirted the largest amount of money ever, and I do mean ever, as a percentage of the global economy, into this global monstrosity of deregulated capitalism.   All they have done is make the mess even larger and the ultimate outcome even more devastating.  ie, As noted on here many times, financial markets as we know them could completely disappear.  Forever.  That would be a very good thing in the long run.  But not likely for those alive today.

So, let me pull three dates out of past posts.  1995 used to be discussed a lot on here.  What isn’t shown on here is another ABC pattern that starts in 1995 and ended in 2008.  It is again of the same geometry of the other two ABC patterns above.  That pattern is finished.  Now we are in the unresolved downward ABC pattern.  (That is, if one believes that pattern will ultimately resolve itself.)  I suppose there is some chance the NYSE could rise to the red linear regression line one more time before completing this B wave although fundamentals I have noted on here throughout the year would make that a lower odds scenario.  But, austerity coming to the U.S. could have strange consequences in the short term and could possibly give capitalism one final gasp before a massive collapse.  Unlikely given the macro factors.  The second date is 2016 and the third is 2022.  Those are the two plausible downside dates that I have noted before.   Dates when we hit rock bottom in the economy and likely float, likely violently, along that level for some time.   Failure is the best method of learning.   The belief systems of the manifested self simply won’t let go until we experience massive trauma or loss. 

If we do meet this downside target, and it does happen in 2016, that means the next four years of the Obama administration will most certainly be the worst economic collapse in American history.  We already have near 25% unemployment today.  What would it be then?  50%?   What better way to finally cleanse the system?  To awaken those supporting a massively corrupt two party political system and rationalizing votes for the lesser of two evils regardless of which party one supported?  Enlightenment is a violent and uncomfortable process. 

How many belief systems and deluded rationalizations will collapse were that to happen?  All of them.  Including the omniscience and megalomania held by Wall Street criminals and their dimwitted political marionettes.  By the way, a Romney win would not have changed any of this.  Zero.   Both Obama and Romney have proven to be the same dumbed-down corporate state clowns our corporate masters love.   And, if you can’t see that, I suspect you will soon enough. 

posted by TimingLogic at 10:07 AM

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Cornel West And Tavis Smiley On Poverty And Why Obama Is Not A Progressive

Yesterday Obama gave a speech on his first payback agenda item for his corporate masters.  Well, the second.  The first was to bomb Yemen.  His second will be to cut social programs to ensure the criminal banking syndicate gets their payback, cutting the national debt, while ensuring there remains plenty of money to pay for corporate welfare.  Gotta keep those campaign contributions rolling in.  Poverty has nothing to share with the ruling neoliberal elite.  Politician’s corporate masters pumped  six billion dollars into this past election.  Six billion dollars that could feed, clothe and provide shelter for hungry children or homeless citizens or health care for those unable to afford it.  But our political masters never once blinked an eye while spending that money for the benefit of the self.   

I have found as a general rule that the less one if focused on material wealth, the richer one is in spirit.  The old saying that one cannot serve two masters is most definitely a universal truth.   The only people who have ever offered me the proverbial last shirt off of their back had almost nothing of material wealth.  That includes my mother.  And, I have also found that the more material “stuff” one acquires in life, the more one becomes worried that someone is going to take something from them.  But the reality is those people who are so focused on what-they-have-as-opposed-to-who-they-are really have nothing for anyone to take.  They have already taken everything worthy from themselves.  They have taken their own humanity and their soul. 

How great is the loss our nation has experienced by marginalizing those who seemingly have nothing to share as measured by politicians and our corporate masters?  Who, for countless reasons, aren’t able to buy a politician.  Who, for countless reasons, aren’t wealthy in the measurements of this world.  Who, for countless reasons have been thrown under the bus.  How much has our nation lost by not experiencing the richness of spirit from so many while exalting those who are consumed by their own self-importance, vanity and greed? 

Our nation suffers from a great sickness.  Our political and corporate masters remain silent while millions and millions of Americans become more and more marginalized.  More and more invisible.  More and more unable to share the richness of their spirit with our nation. Jill Stein wrote on her blog a few days before the election that neither Obama nor Romney uttered the words poverty or homelessness once during the campaign.   And Obama, Democrats and Republicans are getting ready to make poverty even worse with coming cuts to social programs.  Obama, Democrats and Republicans tell us this is what the American people want.   To have both political parties come together on behalf of our corporate masters to bludgeon our government’s services and instead hand that money to banking criminals.  Actually, how do Americans know what they want when no one has ever explained what our choices are or taken the time to consider suggestions from the citizenry on how to deal with this crisis?  They don’t.  It’s not about what we want.  It’s about what our masters want.   And, as Democrats and Republicans come together on behalf of their corporate masters to take money from the poor and give to the rich, they call it compromise and portray it as valiant and noble when it is truly criminal.  

These are some of the greatest crimes in the history of our nation.   Who is willing to testify and stand to account?  Apparently, almost no one since the only two candidates to ever utter a word on poverty received less than one percent of the final presidential vote.  Will we ever be forgiven?  One thing is certain.  Karma is indeed a bitch. 

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 8:05 PM

Friday, November 09, 2012

100,000 Greeks Clash With The State As Unemployment Hits Record 25.4%. Is Civil War Imminent?

I have been promising to put up a post on America’s second civil war for a long time now.  As I have noted before, I am not stating that the U.S. will devolve into internal armed conflict.  But, we most certainly are in the midst of a second civil war.  I’m still not sure when I will get that post up but in the mean time, this clash with police in Greece would equivalently compare to 3 million Americans involved in a mass protest and clashes with the state.  Will that day ever come here?  I dunno if the system will last that long.  But, if it does, it’s highly plausible.   I think it is quite plausible that the only dynamics that have kept these types of protests from our nation are social safety nets, massive government spending and the atomization of dissent that has manifested itself quite substantially since Reagan’s green light to capital to obliterate collective bargaining and use the backing and force of the state to accomplish it. 

The Greek state has just passed a new round of austerity.  Greece is run by criminals and the more they shake the bottle, the more it’s eventually going to fizz. 

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 1:33 PM

German Exports Fall At Fastest Pace In 2012 And General Remarks About The Global Economy And Financial Markets

I have been beating the drum most of this year that change was coming.  Just not in the form of hope most people believe they are going  to see.  Early this year I remarked of an upcoming turn date.  That date turned out to be the literal tipping point in the European bond market and global equity markets.   Few global equity markets have regained their March 2012 high since.  The American equity indices have been the strongest in the world in the last six months and they marginally regained that March high by just a few percentage points on some of the weakest market internals I have ever seen.  As of today, the S&P is back below that March high.   I expect March 2012 to hold as the turn date to the back end of this crisis but we shall see.   To date, there most certainly is no chance that high will be taken out for any period of time based on market breadth and participation.  

While I am not on my computer to pull and post a graphic right now, the Volume Cycle Count Algorithm I have posted on here quite a few times is signaling the possibility of extreme weakness ahead.  Just as it did before the 2008 collapse.   Of the data points I use to determine the fate of equity markets, the key remaining piece I need to consider this a very high probability correction or worse is for the S&P to finish today below 1372.  I’m dubious that will happen even though we will start today below that level. 

For the last six months we have discussed numerous times that money is draining out of the global economy and off of corporate balance sheets faster than the lead up to the 2008 crisis and faster than at any time in the last dozen years.  ie, The start of this crisis.  Since those many remarks I have a few data points in confirmation.  That includes my September post that Reuters reported corporate earnings revisions were the worst in eleven years.   Confirmation of what I had written  months before Reuters even had the data to make that call.   And, now we see this report out of Germany.  It takes time for changes to be seen in such a complex system, but quantifiable changes are starting to appear. 

Although I most certainly have never told readers how I am able to “predict” with such accuracy, let me just say it takes a lot of hard work and I’m not about to share intellectual property just for the heck of it any more than Apple is going to give away its iPad for free.   

So…  let’s discuss a more esoteric point to consider regarding our future and our fate now that everyone is once again happy their favorite football team has won the election game.  Popularity now determines intelligence and competence in our nation--  

We see a very high degree of desensitization again setting in with all of the carnival barkers in the bubble.  They grow bolder as they perceive this crisis has passed and they have consolidated their power.  Illegitimate power.   Included in that are the politicians who glibly take credit for getting us out of this “recession”.  This is a massive megalomaniacal delusion that exists only in their mind.  They have done nothing but make this ultimate crisis worse as we will eventually find out.   This is not a recession.  A recession is when you decide to double down on bologna once in a while rather than eating steak. 

Like Pavlov’s Dog, the knuckle-dragging lever-pullers in the dumbed-down corporate state have once again become conditioned to a perception of reality that the Federal Reserve is going to save them, their system of looting and the global economy.  Just like before the 2008 crisis.  And, just like I said in 2008 before the collapse, I have again said this year that the Fed won’t be saving anyone.  That their policies were instead coincident with other factors that conspired to stabilize the global economy over the last three years.  And, that current Fed policy will prove ineffectual.  In other words, as noted before, the Fed does not cause Christmas.  But, that doesn’t stop the self from experiencing desensitization due to its own conditioning.

The flip side of this is that society is becoming desensitized as well.  We are becoming desensitized to crisis after crisis after crisis.  That includes economic crisis, the toll this crisis is taking on our societies and our loved ones and the endless crises we see developing in the natural world.  And, with that desensitization, we are becoming much less motivated by fear.  But, fear is the primary tool the corporate state uses to maintain its grip.   My point?  You can only cry wolf so many times without it having almost no effect.  The status quo is losing its ability to strike fear into society; a necessary tool to maintain their grip.   Remember, the same thing happened in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere.   There is no greater leverage in the system than the fear and propaganda used by the 1% to maintain its grip over the 99%.   Desensitization diminishes that paper tiger to the point where it eventually will have little intended effect.

I was most certainly concerned about the last few months, especially late September and October, but we passed through those dates easily.  I’ll tell you why I believe why we passed through the last few months without a scratch in a post yet this month.  Let me just say it isn’t a bullish reason but rather a very disconcerting one.  In the mean time, I expect we are due a an attempted stabilization here soon.  Early to mid November volatility isn’t uncommon but we generally bottom and head higher through the end of the year.  That said, the dynamics I have been writing about aren’t getting any better.  

I have what I believe is a really good post on Europe and Germany that I will stick up here by the end of the year as I promised a few months ago.  Everything you are being told by the financial carnival barkers, economists, politicians and the press is nothing more than a big pile of dog poo.   

Title link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:27 AM

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Solar Maximum Peaking Early And Weaker Than Expected?

An already extremely weak solar cycle may be peaking well below what was anticipated.  Bad news for Al Gore’s Nobel Prize and for the global economy.  Buckle up.  The cycle of volatility continues in full force.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:54 PM

Meet Your New Boss, The Same As The Old Boss

Our corporate masters and the shady political party bosses who do their will won the presidential election.  No great surprise.  The only two choices for most were both party bosses.  Romney lost his home state by the largest count in 150 years and Ryan’s home district was lost as well.  Most certainly this election was a lesser of two evils; an unfortunate bout of rationalizations.  As of 5AM this morning, the total popular vote for the presidential election was down 14 million over 2008. Obama received 24% of the popular vote.

Our corporate masters also defeated Proposition 37.   Almost unbelievably, corporate money continues to convince society that we don’t want to know what we are eating.  Of course, that’s simply a continuation of why our society is so amazingly sick and so unbelievably overweight.   Belief systems in the corporate state remain, to a large degree, in tact.   At least with those who vote.  

A major reason why GMO labeling lost is because we have reports like the Time magazine nonsense below.  Journalists have generally become  unqualified to tackle complex topics involving discovery and critical thought.   They are a product of the dumbed-down corporate state that has also hijacked our educational system.   They teach us what to think rather than how to think.  Not necessarily because teachers want to teach this way but because all-knowing politicians force teachers into how and what to teach.   Our society will never become educated on substantial issues when we are reliant on our press, politicians and the corporate state.  These are the most incompetent and ineffectual people in our society that embrace a dumbing-down that happens when bureaucrats grant themselves almost total control over our lives.   So, instead, continued future crisis will be our guide for learning and education as our belief systems continue to be chipped away at in an unpleasant awakening process. 

But here’s the thing: mainstream scientists say there is little evidence that there are any harmful health effects associated with consuming GM crops. The National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Academy, the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association and many other major scientific bodies have said publicly that GM food is not dangerous. Americans have been eating food made from GM crops for years and no one has yet been able to demonstrate a single case of someone actually getting sick from it. (See Keith Kloor’s piece on Slate on the scientific view of GM crops.) The board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) released a letter last month recommending against the special labeling of GM food and quoted from a recent E.U. report on GM crops.

Remember, many of the same captured bureaucracies cited above (Bureaucracies are not driven by science and discovery regardless of their titles.  They are driven by ego and control.) are telling you that human-caused global warming is the source of natural disasters around the world.   Next thing you know, they’ll be telling you the massive earthquakes and volcanism we see, that are both responsible for most of the natural disasters we see, are caused by people.

These are the same captured bureaucracies, who either through complicity in dumbed-down science or outright silence on substantive issues, have endorsed artificial sweeteners, industrial farming’s devastating use of antibiotics, feeding meat to cattle, (Mad Cow’s likely culprit or a major contributor) feeding chickens arsenic, pumping Americans full of pharma drugs with substantial side effects and on and on. 

Any time discovery and the search for truth is turned into a popularity contest, you know the fix is in.  (But here’s the thing: mainstream scientists say there is little evidence that there are any harmful health effects associated with consuming GM crops.)

I find it more than interesting that the “mainstream” Russian Academy of Sciences has come out with frightening studies on genetically-modified foods and has also stated that the planet’s future would be towards cooling as the sun enters a new cycle.   The Russian Academy of Sciences has some very heavyweight scientists as brilliant as any around the world.  But, there is one difference.  They are out of reach of the propagandized hijacking of education and science by politicians and corporate interests that are so prevalent in the U.S. and Europe.  Someone is very wrong on both of these issues.  

The leaderless society marches on.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:02 AM

Monday, November 05, 2012

Chris Hedges–The Sadomasochist Election

posted by TimingLogic at 6:05 PM

The 2012 Elections As A Tipping Point And The Fallacy Of Voting For The Lesser Of Two Evils

Honestly, I don’t really care who wins the 2012 presidential election.  There is no way either major party candidate can actually stop the future.  Nor can they embrace it without creating their own demise.  There was a time for action but it has passed.  It just doesn’t matter anymore.

Back in 2009 soon after Obama took office and showed this true definition of change – corporatism, cronyism, secrecy, the expansion of wars and running interference for Wall Street criminal investigations – I said that I thought it was highly likely a third party would rise in 2012.  There are four third parties challenging the status quo; the Constitution, Libertarian, Green and Justice Parties.  And, they had their own debate a few weeks ago.  While that hasn’t translated into victory, I’m not familiar with any such dynamic ever happening in our history.  And, as noted in the last election, the largest political party in our nation, by a wide margin, is now the independent voter.  

I most definitely think our nation’s cumulative mindset has reached a tipping point regardless of how this presidential election turns out.  I view Proposition 37 in California to be a far more important proxy of that tipping point.  Because it tells me when faced with a choice of corporate rule or self-rule in an issue that involves daily decision-making, food, is the nation ready to take responsibility.   In other words, embrace democracy or personal responsibility.  We shall see.

I don’t have a prediction for who will become president.  I have no method of determining any such outcome that gives me some type of advantage.  But, I will go out on a limb and say that I believe it is quite possible that this president will be elected with the approval of less than 20% of the voting population.   Less than one in five Americans voting for the winning presidential candidate would most certainly mean a tipping point has most certainly passed us. 

So, with the most recent BLS data, 20% of the popular vote would be less than 48 million people.   Of course, let’s be frank.  Neither political party wants every American to vote.  Voter suppression in both parties is as American as apple pie.  The Republicans don’t want all of those people they have thrown under the bus to come to the polls.  And, the democrats don’t all of those voters showing up that they endlessly lie to with empty promises.  If one person-one vote democracy was really an intent under a system controlled by political parties, money couldn’t buy a politician, we would have a national voting day where everyone had the day off, we would have a system that truly educates people on issues rather than one of demagogy and lies, we would provide free public transportation to those unable to get to the polls themselves and numerous other incentives for people to vote.  The smaller the turnout, the more the status quo benefits in a system of looting, pillaging, exploitation and corruption.   Or so their perception goes.  Of course, the flip side of this  perception is that waning participation will eventually lead to political collapse.   That people’s belief systems are being rebuilt around a world that excludes the current system of control. 

I want to close with this dilemma that both political parties pose to voters regarding the vote for a third party candidate.  That unless you vote for a Democrat or Republican, your vote is wasted.  This false paradox is how they keep people enslaved in a system of massive corruption and the subversion of democracy.  This is how they keep you enslaved in a hell that they create.  It is why we have systemic poverty in this nation while a class of looters prey upon the most vulnerable and pillage our country.  I want to use an allegory or example to make a point.  This isn’t a religious example and you don’t need to be religious or of a belief system that includes heaven and hell.  It’s just one that fits nicely and is understandable by everyone -- 

Let's say you lived in hell and you had three choices to vote for who was going to run hell;  the devil, the devil's son or God.  You know God is never going to win the election because you are in hell and there is no support for truth, honesty or justice.  So, you limit your choices to the devil and his son.  ie, Determining which of those two candidates are the lesser of two evils and will win your vote.  You know that voting for God will mean your candidate will not win or as the Democrats and Republicans tell us, your vote will be wasted.   Voting for any evil means your mind is embracing dissonance in this decision because your belief system is at odds with truth and you are rationalizing.  Rationalizing is a trademark of the self and its rigid, control-based belief system.  The German people rationalized their support for Hitler.  Obama rationalizes the use of drone murders in an unconstitutional use of force involving enormous collateral murders of innocent people including women and children. 

But, there is a truth here.  That truth is.........  If you want to change the world, first you have to change yourself.  You have to relinquish control of that rigidly constructed perception of self and its illusory belief system.   You have to bring reality into your conscious mind and accept a new belief system that marries with reality.  In doing so, you have to stand up and be held to account by taking personal responsibility for embracing justice, honesty and truth within yourself and resist rationalizing a support for evil.  And, doing so means taking a stand for principles of justice, honesty and truth even if you won't directly create the outcome in life you wish.  Or, even if the outcome may harm you.  Isn’t this what many religions teach?  An acceptance of a higher good in lieu of rationalizations?  And denial of that higher good by embracing evil, be in the lesser of two evils or not, will not lead to salvation or truth?  The alternative of voting for a perceived lesser of two evils is, in fact, still embracing evil.  

Alternatively, voting for God, even if he has no chance of winning an election in hell, is a vote for justice, honesty and truth.  Your mind is free of the guilt, shame and depression that eventually comes by making rationalizations rather than embracing truth.   And, no matter what anyone ever says, you know a greater truth.  That you did what was right.  You stood to account and no one can ever take that away from you.  That you supported righteousness.  That you supported goodness, kindness, human dignity and most importantly, the universal force of love and emotional freedom over fear, hatred and evil. 

This election is really quite simple.  Will you vote for evil or the lesser of two evils or will you vote for justice, honesty and truth with a clear conscience?  Will you embrace the heaven of emotional freedom over the hell of rationalizations?  Even if doing so may not be in your self-interest.  Are you able to see beyond the self and embrace a greater good?  Or will you be just like all of those people on Wall Street who you will now be hypocritically criticizing for rationalizing their own behavior because it was convenient.  Because it benefited the self and all of its rationalizations?  Is supporting the lesser of two evils in any election really any different than the behavior of Wall Street?  Or Germans who rationalized their support of Hitler?  Or any of the other countless rationalizations of the self?   It’s difficult for all of us to take responsibility for our behavior.  It’s difficult to embrace emotional freedom over rationalizations.  Oftentimes it seems nearly impossible.  Especially when it may mean that we become separated from untruthful social values that define so much of who we believe we are.  And, it becomes ever more difficult with every new rationalization we make. 

Just remember, rationalizing and dissonance are why we are in hell in the first place.  How do we ever expect to get out of hell unless we end the rationalizing?  Have we learned nothing?

posted by TimingLogic at 9:41 AM

Friday, November 02, 2012

Update On China, Huawei, Deregulated Capital(ism), The Democratic Party, Treason And The Rise Of Global Fascism

“The last thing I want to say is that the final principle ought to be
we should be for more open trade, but we have to build a global
economy with a more human face. We win in the trade wars…  or the trade…  not wars… the trade competition. And I know that Nebraska is more…  I have not persuaded my fellow Americans of that either, entirely, but in Nebraska, because of the agricultural presence here, has been generally more pro-free trade.  But these 300 trade agreements, from NASA to the World Trade Organization and many others that we negotiated, 300 of them, have given us the longest economic expansion in history. Over 25 percent of our growth is tied to trade now.”
--  Bill Clinton, December 8, 2000  "A Foreign Policy for the Global Age" address to the University of Nebraska. 

Free Trade?  Trade Wars?  The Global Age?  300 Trade Agreements?  A busy little bee, Bill Clinton was.  Not only did he decimate financial markets including commodities futures regulations and Glass-Steagall, he was very busy destroying democracy, social safety nets, welfare, economic determinism and the American economy.  No president in American history has come close to anything like this.  I think Reagan signed two trade agreements.  George Bush, a handful.  And, while Obama isn’t nearly as prolific as Clinton, he is working on many more corporatist-inspired, secret trade agreements  than either Bush or Reagan.  Trade agreements that destroy our sovereignty and constitutional rights.  How many of these trade agreements were debated in the public forum by democracy?  How many did you have any say in creating?  How many did you even know about?  I bet the Chamber of Commerce and global corporations knew about all of them.  And, more importantly, your corporate masters crafted all of them. 

William Jefferson caught himself in that speech quoted above when he said trade wars.  He stuttered and corrected himself by replacing it with trade competition – the same hyper-competitiveness and aggression that I have written about a few times.  The same hyper-competitiveness and aggression that is  destroying modern corporate capitalist-based societies.  Hyper-competitiveness and aggression that benefits sociopaths, predators and looters who rise to levels of authority in this system.   What might we be able to draw about the Gore-Clinton personalities based on this? 

There is no denying the Gore-Clinton world view - and that of other modern day liberal idiots who mindlessly follow them and their kind – is that American workers and American democracy should have to compete as the foot soldier in the trenches of economic war for our political and corporate masters.   And who would be in the trenches with us?  In the trenches to please our masters?  Labor sweat shops in corrupt banana republics and communist countries around the world.  They too fight to survive our sociopathic masters.  And, in our forced march, we compete against others enslaved by our masters for our economic and democratic determinism.   And, the Gore-Clinton team used the force of the state to make it so.  300 times so.  For whom were they doing this, you might ask?   Was it democracy?  To enrich the lives and freedoms of American citizens?  To spread freedom throughout the world?   Or did Gore-Clinton take corporate capitalism’s looting to an art form by selling out our democratic offices of public service to force this hyper-aggressive, sociopathic insanity and looting upon society?   Free?  Global?  Trade?  Wars?

I want to put up this post involving China and the global economy. And, I want to do so before the elections because there are a whole lot of people who have built up these lies, rationalizations, dissonance and delusions in their minds that this is a Republican-created crisis. And, that in order to stop the Republicans, society must vote for the Democrats. Nothing could be further from reality.   Nothing. 

Capitalism is a creation of the state.  War is the health of the state.  Capitalism therefore always turns global trade into an economic war.  A war that enriches the state and capital.   A war that turns our economy and our democracy into a slave pool for statist economic policies of aggression, looting and economic war.   A war that we fight so that our capitalist and political masters become wildly rich off of the backs of the most productive assets in our society.  That would be you, your friends, your children and your family.

I haven’t discussed China much over the last few years other than sporadic updates on the state of their unfolding economic disaster.  But that’s because I wrote so extensively of China leading up to this crisis.   I’ve laid all of my marbles on the table as to what my analysis concludes is  going to happen.  My analysis is not dependent on any opinions or useless rhetoric or political idiocy or manipulated pablum regurgitated in the mainstream media but instead data-driven interpretation of the complex system we call globalization. 

As I noted on here years ago, economically China and the U.S. are in what could be described as a Nash Equilibrium.   Essentially, a stable or quasi-stable state between the two players in the game of global trade.   But as noted back before the 2008 collapse, at some point in time that equilibrium state is going to change.  The state is going to transition to a new, most likely very unstable state.   A new normal.  All we need is the appropriate inputs to create that flip.  Until this equilibrium is interrupted, China’s complete bust may simply be a slow train wreck unfolding before our eyes.  And, it is one hell of a massive train wreck.   Well beyond anything discussed in the mainstream media or financial community.   Regardless, you can most certainly be assured that breakage in that equilibrium state is going to happen.  It is imminent.  When it happens, the entire world will certainly shudder and shake. 

I don’t know for certain what is going to break this equilibrium state between China and the U.S.  I wrote extensively what factors are going to happen in some macro form during many of my older posts. What the actual trigger to those macro events is depends on too many variables.   But it most certainly will involve some sort of volatility.  It could be the default on China’s holdings of U.S. debt, it could be growing trade tension or other factors. 

While U.S. policy towards China is more overtly belligerent, at least what we see being reported in the mainstream press, the fact is China’s policy is very belligerent towards all democracies and it is becoming even more so as spats increase between it and other G20 nations; something I said was going to happen years before this mess unfolded.   As noted on here numerous times, China is responsible for half of the counterfeit goods produced around the globe that costs America and other democracies millions of jobs.  It manipulates the secretive and corrupt Gore-Clinton-created WTO trade deal that has cost Americans tens of millions of jobs and democratic economic determinism.  And, it is very actively involved in espionage, stealing both military and corporate intellectual property in this country and around the world.  

Deregulated capital(ism) created this mess.   ie, Free market capitalism.  The United States is the architect of global neoliberal economic policies, the WTO and all global trade agreements through its voting control at the World Bank, the IMF, the dollar reserve currency and the largest economy in the world.   China is simply a slave state for American corporate labor needs.   From an economic perspective, it’s really no different than the African slave trade or the Indian slave colony under the English empire.  Truly.  Both are examples of private, for-profit banking and corporations endorsed by the force of the state to maximize profits for a looting class of psychopaths and predators.  Both are examples of unregulated free market capitalism endorsed by the state.  One day China is going to realize this.  Probably when the final dupe is played out.  No one likes to be played for an idiot.

The U.S. corporate-fascist monster is now adopting a more belligerent foreign policy towards China.  The U.S. is now moving entire battle fleets to Asia for permanent deployment.  It is involving itself in local territorial disputes with China.   And, Mitt Romney has clearly upped the hyper-aggressive statist belligerence aimed directly at China.  Of course the flip side is Obama still remains silent while his corporate masters continue to loot China while he seeks to extend this type of corruption with the secretly-negotiated TPP corporate slavery agreement. 

Now we have this recent fiasco over Huawei being denied access to U.S. data and telephony carrier sales.  And, if you think this Huawei issue is all about nothing, well, you would be wrong.  Huawei most certainly is an organization with many dubious dealings.  Being that Huawei is a creation of the state, it most certainly has secret and dubious ties to the communist China state.  Ties that involve espionage and corruption -  the company’s founder is a former People’s Liberation Army officer. 

I have an acquaintance that works for a major Japanese technology company.  They sell “stuff” into the U.S. nuclear industry.   He told me a handful of years ago that “stuff” manufactured in their Chinese factories were found to have been tampered with by Chinese workers for the purposes of espionage or spying once the equipment was installed at customer sites abroad.   Those conversations were nonconfidential and he never shared any specifics with me but I got the clear message.  That is, the communist Chinese government had access to their factory workers and were involved in espionage by meddling with this company’s products.  And just a few weeks ago Defense Secretary Panetta talked about the possibility of a cyber Pearl Harbor, obviously referring to China as the attacker. The fact of the matter is, we have already had our cyber Pearl Harbor.

You have to realize capitalism is an invention of the state.  And corporations of any ilk not held to open, democratic principles and transparency that is subservient to We The People, in other words, that don’t serve society and democracy, will most certainly become tools in statist-driven or statist-endorsed chicanery, stealing, espionage, looting and the like.  That a communist country has embraced capitalism most certainly means China has become a communo-fascist police state that now extends statist chicanery to its corporate inventions.  We should simply expect that Chinese companies are in some way, knowingly or unknowingly, involved in statist chicanery just as they often are in the United States and other fascist  nations around the world.  ie, Every capitalist society. 

I wrote numerous times half a dozen ago that we were entering a period of rising nationalism.  And, later that the seeds of global war had been sewn by capitalism and may possibly be reaped by that nationalism.   Not that we have to see another world war but all of the dynamics are most certainly in place.   Today when reading this, it doesn’t seem far fetched but writing that in times of unprecedented perceptions of global peace and prosperity, my writings would have been laughed out of the room. 

There are essentially two examples of nationalism in a broader sense and we see them both at work today. That is, the nationalism of citizens and nationalism of the state.  Nationalism of citizens is centered around democracy, the rule of law, sovereign economics, sovereign food, local self-rule, freedom from endless encroachments of state power, state nationalism, etc.  Contrarily, the nationalism of the state is focused on economic and political control- both at home and abroad, statist-militarism and illegitimate authority of a looting ruling class and elites.  In other words, the rising nationalism we see in Tunisia and Spain, as two examples, are much different than the rising nationalism we see in China.   At least, so far.  Yet, even in democratic nationalist movements we see tremendous conflagration and manipulation of the state.   We see attempts by elites and the state to hijack these movements and/or manipulate them for their own self-interest and authority.   The violence in Egypt is one such example of statist thugs attempting to turn a democratic movement inward onto itself through the use of violence.  Anarchy and violence bogeymen need the authority of state in order to restore order.  What better way than to retake power than to create a demand for order through violence?  Ditto in the United States where the Tea Party started as a grass roots movement similar to the Occupy Movement.  Both were airing legitimate grievances  for democracy.  Both have been hijacked by statist thugs with an allegiance to political parties, nondemocratic forces and elites. 

We see China’s flagrant use of statist nationalism in its belligerence involving Japan and the stoking of anti-Japan violence with its citizens. At the same time the Chinese communist party is attempting to reassert its grip within the country.  This as economic chaos continues to spread within the country.  The violence stoked in Chinese officials was clearly manipulated by the communist party to deflect public anger towards an external enemy.  This trick is as timeless as the state.  Solon wrote of this  thousands of years ago as I have cited on here before.    I said this type of chaos and nationalist-stoking was coming to China when it appeared they would rule the world to the uninformed and economically-illiterate economists and Wall Street dopes.  And, now we see the first seeds germinating today.

What one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away. It’s coming. And, I have been saying for a long time that it’s coming. It’s inevitable. People like statist corporatists Clinton, Bush, Obama and Romney perpetuate this chaos, violence and economic war.

This all makes you wonder how all of these schemes were started in the first place.  How did the United States ever form such close economic ties with a nation that is the world’s greatest counterfeiter, the world’s most prolific thief of American technology and the world’s most bloody and butchering state that has killed upwards of 70 million of its own citizens not including the state-based policy of infanticide.   An economic “relationship” that has resulted in the largest capital flight in the history of the world.  Literally.  A clear act of using public office to commit high crimes and misdemeanors if there ever was one.   

Well, while we don’t have specific knowledge of secret conversations and negotiations by the state, we most certainly know who is responsible.  The Republican-controlled Congress and the Gore-Clinton Whitehouse that is behind the WTO, the WTO agreements with China and countless other “free trade” schemes.  But, even more importantly, the Gore-Clinton presidency’s deregulation of national borders for capital.  The first such deregulation of capital beyond national borders since the massive looting that led to the economic collapse of the Great Depression. 

Makes you wonder if Bill Clinton’s ChinaGate was swept under the rug?  And, how deep the possible treason actually went.

Of course, at the time the New York Times quoted Clinton and said Chinese communist party political donations to his campaign didn’t influence policy.   The real question isn’t if it influenced policy.  It’s why is communist China money flowing into our political system to support a Democratic candidate?  Republicans are involved too.  The New York Times and others uncovered so much evidence under the Gore-Clinton reign of terror that one has to wonder why all of that evidence went no where in the public forum.   The use of public office to subvert the truth?  That most certainly has happened in Obama’s policies of dealing with Wall Street crimes.  But under Gore-Clinton it went even further than possible political corruption and treason resulting in a communist government trying to buy an American politician.  Clinton’s Whitehouse papered over political maneuvering when it seemed as though political crimes may have been committed in the sale of American nuclear missile and guidance systems technology ended up in China’s hands.    Voice of America, courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists here.  A constitutional lawyer’s summarization here.  And an article on Clinton’s involvement in the transference of nuclear sensitive technology here.   

While some may question the legitimacy of any data in an environment where the politics of winning is at any and all cost, the reality is we do know one thing for certain.  One thing that lends credence to the suspected issues regarding China and Clinton-Gore.   That is, it was Al Gore and Bill Clinton that pushed through the “free trade” deal with China.  A corporate fascist scheme that led to the largest fight of capital outside of any nation’s borders in the history of the world.  Corporate and investment capital leaving this country left massive economic and democratic devastation in its wake as Clinton’s deregulation of capital stomped on the face of democracy until it was no longer recognizable.  And, in return for benefiting their corporate and elite masters, when these two and the Republicans who controlled Congress at the time left office, they made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars as crony payback from their corporate and elite masters.   Barack Obama continues this trend with the desensitization of American defense technology as it pertains to both Russia and China.  Links here and here.   And with his attempts to further deregulate the national borders of democracy’s capital – effectively the greatest looting scheme in the history of the world.  Literally.

Liberal idiots, not to be confused with liberal democracy, as in liberal rights of We The People that grant us primacy to capital and the state, have killed our nation.  They have done so by tampering and destroying with the rule of law as modern-day liberals believe they know what’s best for the rest of us and we should just shut up and follow our fearless leaders.  Whether those liberals are members of the Republican or the Democratic Party really doesn’t matter.  

Those who hold Democrats as somehow above the fray of the idiocy of Republicans are living in a mass delusion.  The vast majority of jobs that have left our country have been at the hands of Democrats.   Reagan and Republicans deregulated capital within our national borders and created the trickle down madness that started the beginning of the end.  The Democrats deregulated the national borders of capital that resulted in the largest exodus of democratic capital and jobs in any nation’s history.  Those were acts of treason against the sovereign people of this great country. 

Capitalism, being birthed by the state, solely derives its power from the state.  It will therefore always have an intent of seeking greater power and control through manipulating, bribing and corrupting that which created and is responsible for regulating it; the state.  In other words, the comingling of capitalism and the state, fascism, is a natural conclusion to deregulating capital(ism).   It isn’t government corruption that taints free market capitalism.  It is free market capitalism that creates government corruption.   And, now that dynamic has gone global. 

Welcome to the world of global fascism.   People who believe the U.S. is headed towards fascism are a century too late.  As I have noted on here before, the comingling of private, for-profit money and politics is as old as this nation.  Bribery of federal politicians was actually legal for the first 80-odd years of this nation’s existence.  And, corporate personhood took hold soon after that.  Fascism gained a death grip on democracy with the fascist formation of the private-public partnership we call the Federal Reserve one hundred years ago.   We aren’t living through a cycle where we need to worry about the U.S. become a fascist state.  We are living through a cycle where democracy is going to bust the fascist grip that has held our democracy in bondage to varying degrees for the last two hundred years. 

Fascism is as American as apple pie and baseball.  Robber barons, slavery, indentured servitude, child labor, corporate-owned towns, corporate-inspired trade agreements, the Federal Reserve, prison labor outsourced to private corporations, private for-profit banking backed by the force of the state, union-busting, the private creation of our money, the use of state force to murder native Americans for the expansion of private business interests, labor exploitation, politicians picking economic winners (corporations) and losers ( American citizens and democratic economics), immigrant exploitation, the military-industrial complex, proactive wars of choice, the national security  state and on and on and on and on.   In fact, one could argue that capitalism can’t exist without fascism.  It most certainly never has existed any other way from its inception with the fascist English empire.

Make sure you vote for that change you can believe in.  It’s those damn Republicans that are the problem. 

posted by TimingLogic at 10:25 AM