Just consider for a second... the vast number of jobs, money and resources devoted to keeping the public captive to buy-and-hold equity investing, when they would have been better served in simple treasury bonds over the last dozen years.
Met with a number of friends this past weekend. A couple mentioned that stocks were still at "historic" lows and they were finally thinking of jumping in. They sat out the past three months and are now ready to deploy their capital.
"I think there' s a good probability that the culture is hopeless corrupt now and will never recover. "
Really bad times are a really good time for people to reevaluate what they're entitled to and what they'll accept. Most people are able do this -- when they have no choice, and our choices grow increasingly limited. There was a fair amount of personal reevaluation going on back in the '30s, if I'm told correctly.
So I'm hopeful, though not counting out the possibility that you raise. Of course we could simply accept endless refugees from all the industrious cultures and let them rebuild a healthy culture for us; why not, we import or outsource everything else
i was seeing a ton of head and shoulders stuff on the russell last week, if any of you are real tea-leaf tech types are out there...
i also remember seeing that kind of russian doll h&s stuff on citibank two years ago this august... (h&s patterns on daily, weekly, monthly charts at the same time...) how did that work out?
nades, I think so too, just didn't want to quote without the actual numbers in front of me. But I do recall 7 - 8% long bonds in 2009. That would've been at least a 4-bagger.
Closely followed analyst Meredith Whitney continues to caution investors away from U.S. financial stocks as consumer fundamentals are now worse than her previous bearish expectations. And they are devolving rapidly.
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
What I saw was a lot of trendline breaks in the big indices in the last week or so.
The first trendline breaks were in the PMs and energy. My trailing stop got hit on every single long I had in these. That trade felt alternately stupid and smart. Jury's still out.
I had a waiter tell me that he was looking at SHORTING gold and silver yesterday... now there's a confirmation of $1500 Au by christmas if ever there was one
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
Boomers have paid into SS all their lives and the only ones that might see a dime of it are the 1946 & 1947 models (just an appetizer course), and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out, or because of the dollar kerplunking, the grandido a month they were hanging their hopes on, has the buying power of a few hundred bucks...
"and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out"
juvenal, your wordsmithing is witty, but that's just stupid. no one will get shut out of SS - they'll just find new ways to print it. the issue is whether or not the greenback will devalue in response.
in any case, boomers tend to degenerate between the 1946 and the BHO models... i have the least sympathy for the 50s babies in the middle of the cluster, they're an unmitigated disaster
Going to Doug Short's home page, you can link to the "Four Bad Bears" graph with a logarithmic scale. One interesting observation looking at that version is that the previous three "bears" had the greatest rate of decline just before the eventual turnaround.
Maybe it's true that it's always darkest before the dawn.
"Funniest, more egotistical and more erroneous comment of the day."
erroneous insofar as the debt burden left behind by the likes of W and Bernanke will last far longer than they do - but i'm confident that we'll inflate out of it.
a friend just saw her insurance company billed 14 grand for a birth which didn't involve anything beyond a motrin, some lube for the kid's head on the way out, and a stay of less than 24 hours. 14 grand. do you really think that system will survive the boomer's "golden years"?
U.S. Rejects Auto Suppliers’ Loan-Guarantee Request (Update2)
By Mike Ramsey
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury denied a request from an auto-supplier trade group for as much as $10 billion in loan guarantees, in part because of a lack of disruption in the flow of parts, the organization’s leader said.
“I think we will see the disorderly chaos in the industry,” Neil De Koker, president of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, said in an interview today. Treasury officials also cited aid already provided to the industry, he said. The government might consider more help should supplier failures cause repeated production shutdowns, De Koker said. U.S. Rejects Auto Suppliers’ Loan-Guarantee Request (Update2) - Bloomberg.com
Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 3:20 pm
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
Boomers have paid into SS all their lives and the only ones that might see a dime of it are the 1946 & 1947 models (just an appetizer course), and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out, or because of the dollar kerplunking, the grandido a month they were hanging their hopes on, has the buying power of a few hundred bucks...
They will bear the real impact of their entitlement-world unwinding, as is appropriate since they created it. Doesn't make it proper to gloat or rejoice in their suffering however. We'll all be taking a hit one way or another, and we'll have our own alpha-male "toughest/cleverest guys in the room" fleecing future generations for disproportionate rewards of booty and booty. Nature never changes a time-tested model.
HomeGnome (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 4:28 pm replyIgnore user@ Basel
Charleston is nice. Love Dunlevy's on Sullivan's Island. Great Wings
Bert's got shut down....
HomeTeam BBQ is there now...
ok, back to the topic...or at least somewhere near it.
What are y'all's take on the market tomorrow? Denninger was commenting about Thursday and watching it closely.
I expect something similar along the lines of what happened in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism, but in a different context.
Agree.
Best case scenario is a ten-fifteen year stasis like Japan.
Theoretically, if Japan had refinanced enough debt to below-growth rates they could recover but I'm not liking what I see now.
Good chance that the stasis leads into a deeper collapse.
Boomers may become Zimbabwe millionaires. Most of my friends who really worked hard have their homes paid for, no debt, money in the bank and good investments. They also live well below their cash flow.
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was. the best years of their lives invested in nothing except a criminal party which just transferred assets to a few connected gangsters. i didn't realize that our boomers would be the equivalent of yeltsin's generation in their criminality, destruction and apathy to broader society. but now we know.
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was.
Go into 24/7 Wally World when the graveyard shift are restocking the shelves. It's only old-dudes and women. Very depressing, and I can guarantee there's some tax break involved.
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was. the best years of their lives invested in nothing except a criminal party which just transferred assets to a few connected gangsters. i didn't realize that our boomers would be the equivalent of yeltsin's generation in their criminality, destruction and apathy to broader society. but now we know.
The difference between communism and capitalism being what it was, made the Velvet Revolution almost entirely non-violent...
That guy from Prague in his 40's couldn't wait to kiss communism goodbye, whereas we can't stand to see capitalism go away.
There will be plenty of youth today that will piss their life away and happy to stock shelves on their elder years. Some thing will never change. I bet some don't even need the money and find life with out work extremely boring.
I got worked for two hundo a night.... I thought I could do some smooth haggling on the phone but they must have smelt the fear in my voice.... (it was 6 PM and I needed a place that evening...) next time I'll have to call a head... (note to self)
"The difference between communism and capitalism being what it was"
of course, everyone loved the open society, open borders, chance to partake in consumerism - and no one in a place like the DDR liked the stasi system, where 1/5 of society spied on the rest (or more).
but nothing really changed in much of the ex-communist world, except that the few that controlled everything could now be brazen enough to buy things like spanish villas and british soccer teams.
then
'' there was no problem so great that airlifting in pallets of shrink-wrapped C-notes wouldn't solve it ''
now
'' there is no problem so great that pallets of shrunken C-notes wouldn't solve it ''
Many of you have no idea what communism was like...
Let me give you a primer:
Our relatives behind the Iron Curtain could leave the country, but only if a family member was held hostage back in the old country. My aunt could come here (we paid her way over) but her husband couldn't come with her.
There was nothing, and I mean nothing to buy in the stores there. The most drab existence imaginable.
How bad was it?
My aunt told me that she preferred the Nazi occupation over the Soviet version.
Our relatives behind the Iron Curtain could leave the country, but only if a family member was held hostage back in the old country. My aunt could come here (we paid her way over) but her husband couldn't come with her.
Interestingly, this is still true. My girlfriend's parents can only visit her here if they come one at a time, for fear that if they come together they won't go back.
Only now it's the US that won't allow it, not their home country.
not arguing in the slightest. I was in commie central europe as a very small child in the late 70s, and vividly remember it (though wasn't present when my father was interviewed by the local authories for an hour or two, or spent equivalent time crossing the borders there, as they were curious as to just how crazy a tourist he was). i was also there in '91 and many times since.
but the anarchy of the 90s and destruction of the social safety net, at least in Russia, was far from paradise. I was just making the point that we're witnessing a similar process in terms of a total vacuum of leadership from an entire generation, though from a considerably higher basis in terms of our standard of living.
"Only now it's the US that won't allow it, not their home country. "
indeed - which is the country now with an entrenched kleptocracy, declining standards of living, thug paranoia at the borders and a gigantic infrastructure devoted to spying on itself?
"Would it have been different? We'll never know. "
much as we'll never know if our future would have been different if we had decided to continue with the semblance of fiscal balance we had as of ten years ago, instead of strapping on tens of trillions in debt and entitlements in misguided attempts to subsidize big pharma, enrich KBR and funnel trillions to GS insiders
even uglier when you consider that from 1929-1932, dollars were still real money and hard to inflate in lieu of genuine supply spikes like alaska, australia, south africa etc (none of which were happening in that era)... wheras now we can print at will and try to juice those charts as much as possible
I was just making the point that we're witnessing a similar process in terms of a total vacuum of leadership from an entire generation, though from a considerably higher basis in terms of our standard of living.
Unfortunately, being at a higher point in this context simply means we have further to fall. The saw about "when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose" is old, but it's true.
We, on the other hand, have raised an entire generation whose greatest personal crisis has been their local Starbucks running out of soy milk for their half-caf latte.
I remember driving from Bavaria into East Berlin about 30 years ago, what a contrast.
West German roads were built to high standards, whereas what passed for an autobahn in East Germany was a sloppy mess of a road with no Green Shoots visible for about 200 feet away from the road, and occasional machine-gun nests...
All of the communist world was like this in varying degrees. Even the lone-wolf commies (Yugoslavia, Albania, etc) were a mess. They called it communism, but it looked more like alcoholism to me. I never saw so many drunk people in my life, as I did in Belgrade.
A liter of vodka was a dollar, a black & white 12 inch tv was $300.
"A liter of vodka was a dollar, a black & white 12 inch tv was $300. "
When you have a system that destroys initiative, it's no surprise to find the populace medicated. The communist governments seem to have understood that if you can't give people hope, you have to at least keep them medicated.
" Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 5:02 pm
what passed for an autobahn in East Germany was a sloppy mess of a road with no Green Shoots visible for about 200 feet away from the road, and occasional machine-gun nests..."
Give those nests some speed activated cameras attached to machine guns...
Every time the market takes a breath from its steap climb I hear voices calling wolf. Then a day or two later the market continues it steep climb. We're only halfway back up to where we were before the market crash and well into the second half of the crash's lifecycle. If this is the case, whoever buys in at this point should get a nice little profit over the next few days.
Uh oh. Double inverted bat-signal formation, and you know what that means...
Seems like we are on the way down big-time. Will we approach terminal velocity?
third?
Nemo -
Uh oh. Double inverted bat-signal formation, and you know what that means...
That Batman got a wedgie? Actually I have no idea.
are these tiered housing prices?
Nice pump and dump by the schmucks/shylocks/shysters.
Only 100 more points down before I am back to breakeven on my poorly managed short bet.
I have learned my lesson, not to be greedy and to cover my short bets when I reach my target.
somebody remember to wake up timmay from his nap tomorrow
I'm actually watching bloomberg now and they are all talking about the next big move........ DOWN......
I dont watch this stuff much but I thought they usually were cheerleading the markets.....
looks like we're tracking the 20 month moving average.
Just consider for a second... the vast number of jobs, money and resources devoted to keeping the public captive to buy-and-hold equity investing, when they would have been better served in simple treasury bonds over the last dozen years.
Sell in June and pop the balloon....
HomeGnome....where in SC?
I live in Awendaw...Just north of Charleston
Met with a number of friends this past weekend. A couple mentioned that stocks were still at "historic" lows and they were finally thinking of jumping in. They sat out the past three months and are now ready to deploy their capital.
Pigged twice in a row, durnit! To repeat:
"I think there' s a good probability that the culture is hopeless corrupt now and will never recover. "
Really bad times are a really good time for people to reevaluate what they're entitled to and what they'll accept. Most people are able do this -- when they have no choice, and our choices grow increasingly limited. There was a fair amount of personal reevaluation going on back in the '30s, if I'm told correctly.
So I'm hopeful, though not counting out the possibility that you raise. Of course we could simply accept endless refugees from all the industrious cultures and let them rebuild a healthy culture for us; why not, we import or outsource everything else
i was seeing a ton of head and shoulders stuff on the russell last week, if any of you are real tea-leaf tech types are out there...
i also remember seeing that kind of russian doll h&s stuff on citibank two years ago this august... (h&s patterns on daily, weekly, monthly charts at the same time...) how did that work out?
U.S. Home Prices to Fall 14% More, Deutsche Says
U.S. Home Prices to Fall 14% More, Deutsche Says (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
They sat out the past three months and are now ready to deploy their capital.
Small money is a contrarian indicator, sort of like the idiots buying FAZ > $100. But I'm sure Mr.Beach's friends are the big money.
Zack - think thats actually the last 20+ years.... And that was before the current drop in equities.... (From a chart I saw 3 years ago)
In regards to the S & P Chart:
Most mountain climbing accidents occur on the descent...
Pig's Ears formation! Pig's belly next. Then Pig's green shoot exit.
"they would have been better served in simple treasury bonds over the last dozen years. "
would have been served best in gold, actually
I have learned my lesson, not to be greedy and to cover my short bets when I reach my target.
Smart, smart man. This is a hard, hard trading environment. Take what it gives you, long or short.
"I think there' s a good probability that the culture is hopeless corrupt now"
naw, once the boomers die, we'll be fine. that generation is a burden now and forever, however.
nades, I think so too, just didn't want to quote without the actual numbers in front of me. But I do recall 7 - 8% long bonds in 2009. That would've been at least a 4-bagger.
Adobe match earnings.... 0.35$ a share.... it trades at $27.42..... LOL ! ! ! ! (edited for poor math) 19.x P/E
They sat out the past three months and are now ready to deploy their capital.
Shouldn't that be "burn their capital" ?
Pigged
Hadn't seen this linked yet....
More from Meredith
Whitney: Consumer Still Chewed Up - Forbes.com
Closely followed analyst Meredith Whitney continues to caution investors away from U.S. financial stocks as consumer fundamentals are now worse than her previous bearish expectations. And they are devolving rapidly.
Generations X & Whine aren't all that either, they're just as corrupt as their elders...
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
"And they are devolving rapidly."
this can't be good
previous thread ...
I think that people who talk about how far back in house prices by year have it right ...
The high end will follow the low end down in terms of a time frame, not a percentage ...
@ Schools
Columbia, The CRAPITAL.
What I saw was a lot of trendline breaks in the big indices in the last week or so.
The first trendline breaks were in the PMs and energy. My trailing stop got hit on every single long I had in these. That trade felt alternately stupid and smart. Jury's still out.
I had a waiter tell me that he was looking at SHORTING gold and silver yesterday... now there's a confirmation of $1500 Au by christmas if ever there was one
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
Boomers have paid into SS all their lives and the only ones that might see a dime of it are the 1946 & 1947 models (just an appetizer course), and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out, or because of the dollar kerplunking, the grandido a month they were hanging their hopes on, has the buying power of a few hundred bucks...
Columbia, The CRAPITAL.
Hey... I have a POS house I'm renting out there; well Cayce. Used to go out to Awendaw almost weekly to eat at Sewee.
Here's your read of the day according to Tyler Durden and Naked Capital ...
Andy Xie: Tight Spot for Fed, Blind Spot for Investors
Andy Xie: Tight Spot for Fed, Blind Spot for Investors
Now you tell me, Zack. Where were you when I needed you back in late February/early March (ha, ha).
That is hilarious -- waiters talking shorting -- Hollywood.
naw, once the boomers die, we'll be fine
Funniest, more egotistical and more erroneous comment of the day.
Interesting double-top, double-bottom on the S&P.
It indicates the limits of optimism / pessimism.
We need to see a strong breakout to either side.
I'm guessing upward short-term for a third top and then long-term down.
faz at 4.91 up 4.91%---see you at 13!
faz at 4.91 up 4.91%---see you at 13!
"and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out"
juvenal, your wordsmithing is witty, but that's just stupid. no one will get shut out of SS - they'll just find new ways to print it. the issue is whether or not the greenback will devalue in response.
in any case, boomers tend to degenerate between the 1946 and the BHO models... i have the least sympathy for the 50s babies in the middle of the cluster, they're an unmitigated disaster
I will hold my FAZ (and not cover my SSO shorts) until S&P 500 falls to 600, which I think we will see as late as this September/October.
@ Basel
Where are you from, Basel?
"That is hilarious -- waiters talking shorting -- Hollywood. "
this was right after a tip on a penny stock biotech, incidentally
i live in DC but Charleston is my home...
@ Hack
Yep, SS will always be paid out. Just how much those payments will buy you is another issue all-together.
CR
How can you look at home prices without normalizing for mortgage rates. it is simply meaningless
Ex BSC worker? LOL!
Going to Doug Short's home page, you can link to the "Four Bad Bears" graph with a logarithmic scale. One interesting observation looking at that version is that the previous three "bears" had the greatest rate of decline just before the eventual turnaround.
Maybe it's true that it's always darkest before the dawn.
"Funniest, more egotistical and more erroneous comment of the day."
erroneous insofar as the debt burden left behind by the likes of W and Bernanke will last far longer than they do - but i'm confident that we'll inflate out of it.
a friend just saw her insurance company billed 14 grand for a birth which didn't involve anything beyond a motrin, some lube for the kid's head on the way out, and a stay of less than 24 hours. 14 grand. do you really think that system will survive the boomer's "golden years"?
but, after the forest fire - green shoots.
Basel, go across to Seewee Road (directly across from rest.) and go down to Come About Way...Romain Retreat...great place
Kurt/Julia (run Seewee Restaurant) are friends of mine. Julia moreso. Good eats and music....place is always packed and haven't been there lately.
nades, whatever happened with getting a hotel room in chicago?
U.S. Rejects Auto Suppliers’ Loan-Guarantee Request (Update2)
By Mike Ramsey
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury denied a request from an auto-supplier trade group for as much as $10 billion in loan guarantees, in part because of a lack of disruption in the flow of parts, the organization’s leader said.
“I think we will see the disorderly chaos in the industry,” Neil De Koker, president of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, said in an interview today. Treasury officials also cited aid already provided to the industry, he said. The government might consider more help should supplier failures cause repeated production shutdowns, De Koker said.
U.S. Rejects Auto Suppliers’ Loan-Guarantee Request (Update2) - Bloomberg.com
Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 3:20 pm
perhaps, but we're not nearly as narcissistic, nor does our collective demographic power enable us to create even a shadow of the damage that boomers have and continue to wreak on the (ex-)republic
Boomers have paid into SS all their lives and the only ones that might see a dime of it are the 1946 & 1947 models (just an appetizer course), and it's entirely possible that other Boomers might get shut out, or because of the dollar kerplunking, the grandido a month they were hanging their hopes on, has the buying power of a few hundred bucks...
They will bear the real impact of their entitlement-world unwinding, as is appropriate since they created it. Doesn't make it proper to gloat or rejoice in their suffering however. We'll all be taking a hit one way or another, and we'll have our own alpha-male "toughest/cleverest guys in the room" fleecing future generations for disproportionate rewards of booty and booty. Nature never changes a time-tested model.
I suspect that many people have seen this situation in a team.
I have a team of people - A, B, C, D, E (depersonalization is important!)
A stands for Alpha who made himself owner of 80% of the work.
The remaining members fight among themselves for the 20% scraps.
Q1) Is this a better situation than 20% work done by each member?
Q2) If not, do I fix this by
a) Berating and brow-beating the remaining members to "work harder"
or
b) take away work from A and redistribute it to the others.
"i have the least sympathy for the 50s babies in the middle of the cluster, they're an unmitigated disaster "
LOL
Hack,
I expect something similar along the lines of what happened in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism, but in a different context.
Soviet retirees still received their monthly stipend, but because of hyperinflation it could buy you some belly-button lint, and that was about it.
@ Basel
Charleston is nice. Love Dunlevy's on Sullivan's Island. Great Wings
HomeGnome (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 4:28 pm replyIgnore user@ Basel
Charleston is nice. Love Dunlevy's on Sullivan's Island. Great Wings
Bert's got shut down....
HomeTeam BBQ is there now...
ok, back to the topic...or at least somewhere near it.
What are y'all's take on the market tomorrow? Denninger was commenting about Thursday and watching it closely.
@ Juv
I agree but don't want to see seniors out on the street selling their meds for food money.
Or do I?
@ Schools.
Noooooooooooo!
energycon, I wonder if the Chinese put the fear of God into Geithner and Bernanke, resulting in closed strings for further bailouts?
Maybe the 'No' to California will stick.
I sure hope so on both counts.
-- A stands for Alpha who made himself owner of 80% of the work. --
c) make B,C,D and E redundant. As they already are.
I expect something similar along the lines of what happened in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism, but in a different context.
Agree.
Best case scenario is a ten-fifteen year stasis like Japan.
Theoretically, if Japan had refinanced enough debt to below-growth rates they could recover but I'm not liking what I see now.
Good chance that the stasis leads into a deeper collapse.
Boomers may become Zimbabwe millionaires. Most of my friends who really worked hard have their homes paid for, no debt, money in the bank and good investments. They also live well below their cash flow.
Shorted silver too. Trendline break a couple of weeks ago was the ideal time. Of course, I missed it then, still got some on around 15.25.
Gap down yesterday, tried to trade up a little early today on the weak dollar but all it succeeded in doing was making an inside day.
I think it goes lower for a bit. I'm only playing for about 7% from here.
c) make B,C,D and E redundant. As they already are.
Perfect answer.
B, C, D and E then elect a government that taxes the holy shit out of A, who gets all pissed off about "how hard he works".
(sound familiar?)
Now what?
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was. the best years of their lives invested in nothing except a criminal party which just transferred assets to a few connected gangsters. i didn't realize that our boomers would be the equivalent of yeltsin's generation in their criminality, destruction and apathy to broader society. but now we know.
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was.
Go into 24/7 Wally World when the graveyard shift are restocking the shelves. It's only old-dudes and women. Very depressing, and I can guarantee there's some tax break involved.
-- Now what? --
All work and no play makes Jack, and plenty. Don't piss off A.
Technology: kleptocrats tool of wealth transfer at the speed of light.
I remember walking past a guy in his late 40s in prague about a decade ago doing some serious manual labor, and thinking about how screwed his generation was. the best years of their lives invested in nothing except a criminal party which just transferred assets to a few connected gangsters. i didn't realize that our boomers would be the equivalent of yeltsin's generation in their criminality, destruction and apathy to broader society. but now we know.
The difference between communism and capitalism being what it was, made the Velvet Revolution almost entirely non-violent...
That guy from Prague in his 40's couldn't wait to kiss communism goodbye, whereas we can't stand to see capitalism go away.
There will be plenty of youth today that will piss their life away and happy to stock shelves on their elder years. Some thing will never change. I bet some don't even need the money and find life with out work extremely boring.
the great reflation (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 3:36 pm
Technology: kleptocrats tool of wealth transfer at the speed of light.
Looting at the speed of light. There have to be some physics principles that apply here.
I got worked for two hundo a night.... I thought I could do some smooth haggling on the phone but they must have smelt the fear in my voice.... (it was 6 PM and I needed a place that evening...) next time I'll have to call a head... (note to self)
A says to B and C, I'll give you 25% each, I'll keep 50, and we'll make D and E slaves.
"our boomers would be the equivalent of yeltsin's generation"
there was no problem so great that airlifting in pallets of shrink-wrapped C-notes wouldn't solve it
After France screwed the pooch in the early 1700s(John Law), they stayed screwed for 100 years.
"The difference between communism and capitalism being what it was"
of course, everyone loved the open society, open borders, chance to partake in consumerism - and no one in a place like the DDR liked the stasi system, where 1/5 of society spied on the rest (or more).
but nothing really changed in much of the ex-communist world, except that the few that controlled everything could now be brazen enough to buy things like spanish villas and british soccer teams.
A says to B and C, I'll give you 25% each, I'll keep 50, and we'll make D and E slaves.
Then D sulks in his cubicle and rants about boomers.
E comes in with a gun and blows B away.
Problem solved.
yes, the iwonies are many, elmer. all too weal.
j.p morgan says that when a bootblack gave him a tip on the markets he knew it was over and time to get out.
google j p morgan bootblack
" They sat out the past three months and are now ready to deploy their capital.
Shouldn't that be "burn their capital" ?"
I think it is called "fire and forget"
"Jobless Rate Will Reach 10% This Year Even as Recovery Starts, Obama Says"
What was the worst case for the stress test again?
then
'' there was no problem so great that airlifting in pallets of shrink-wrapped C-notes wouldn't solve it ''
now
'' there is no problem so great that pallets of shrunken C-notes wouldn't solve it ''
Many of you have no idea what communism was like...
Let me give you a primer:
Our relatives behind the Iron Curtain could leave the country, but only if a family member was held hostage back in the old country. My aunt could come here (we paid her way over) but her husband couldn't come with her.
There was nothing, and I mean nothing to buy in the stores there. The most drab existence imaginable.
How bad was it?
My aunt told me that she preferred the Nazi occupation over the Soviet version.
Jobless Rate Will Reach 10% This Year Even as Recovery Starts, Obama Says
The Obama administration’s economic plan is showing early signs of success and the government intends to intervene in markets only temporarily, said Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council.
What's the exit strategy? Increasing existing or creating more tax credits?
MoT did you just see that.... he was causal as could be about it.... that guy is teflon....
vix up almost 16% in two days.
Our relatives behind the Iron Curtain could leave the country, but only if a family member was held hostage back in the old country. My aunt could come here (we paid her way over) but her husband couldn't come with her.
Interestingly, this is still true. My girlfriend's parents can only visit her here if they come one at a time, for fear that if they come together they won't go back.
Only now it's the US that won't allow it, not their home country.
Certainly it is impossible for the Titanic to sink.
She is the largest, most well-made ship of her time.
not arguing in the slightest. I was in commie central europe as a very small child in the late 70s, and vividly remember it (though wasn't present when my father was interviewed by the local authories for an hour or two, or spent equivalent time crossing the borders there, as they were curious as to just how crazy a tourist he was). i was also there in '91 and many times since.
but the anarchy of the 90s and destruction of the social safety net, at least in Russia, was far from paradise. I was just making the point that we're witnessing a similar process in terms of a total vacuum of leadership from an entire generation, though from a considerably higher basis in terms of our standard of living.
"Only now it's the US that won't allow it, not their home country. "
indeed - which is the country now with an entrenched kleptocracy, declining standards of living, thug paranoia at the borders and a gigantic infrastructure devoted to spying on itself?
One must also wonder what life in the eastern bloc would have been like without aggressive undermining by the NATO countries.
Would it have been different? We'll never know.
"A stands for Alpha who made himself owner of 80% of the work.
The remaining members fight among themselves for the 20% scraps."
Re-assign some as telephone sanitizers. I think you have three of them.
"Would it have been different? We'll never know. "
much as we'll never know if our future would have been different if we had decided to continue with the semblance of fiscal balance we had as of ten years ago, instead of strapping on tens of trillions in debt and entitlements in misguided attempts to subsidize big pharma, enrich KBR and funnel trillions to GS insiders
The aggressive undermining came from Moscow, not NATO.
"B, C, D and E then elect a government that taxes the holy shit out of A, who gets all pissed off about "how hard he works". Now what? "
A goes venue shopping.
"What's the exit strategy?" BT
we will withdraw from the markets when they are secure and on a path to infinite growth.
then we will get back to the serious job of controlling inflation by ensuring the businesses aren't burdened by excessive wages
I am first and foremost including the USSR in the list of countries that were undermined, sabotaged and subverted by the west.
Whether or not it was right to do so is a separate question. It is indisputable that it happened.
Somewhat OT....
Here's some really UGLY chart porn:
The world economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression (September 2009 update) | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
From Bloomberg:
"Obama defended the central bank and praised Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke for doing “an extraordinary job” in trying circumstances.
Do not attempt to adjust your dial.
"he was causal as could be"
Nades, Freudian slip?
even uglier when you consider that from 1929-1932, dollars were still real money and hard to inflate in lieu of genuine supply spikes like alaska, australia, south africa etc (none of which were happening in that era)... wheras now we can print at will and try to juice those charts as much as possible
Heckuva job, Bennie.
I was just making the point that we're witnessing a similar process in terms of a total vacuum of leadership from an entire generation, though from a considerably higher basis in terms of our standard of living.
Unfortunately, being at a higher point in this context simply means we have further to fall. The saw about "when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose" is old, but it's true.
We, on the other hand, have raised an entire generation whose greatest personal crisis has been their local Starbucks running out of soy milk for their half-caf latte.
It's gonna be a looooooong way down.
"undermined, sabotaged and subverted by the west."
though it may have been the commodity bust in the mid 80s that really finished them off.
that or the vision of Don Simpson, which finally showed the world what true american-style freedom really meant.
I remember driving from Bavaria into East Berlin about 30 years ago, what a contrast.
West German roads were built to high standards, whereas what passed for an autobahn in East Germany was a sloppy mess of a road with no Green Shoots visible for about 200 feet away from the road, and occasional machine-gun nests...
All of the communist world was like this in varying degrees. Even the lone-wolf commies (Yugoslavia, Albania, etc) were a mess. They called it communism, but it looked more like alcoholism to me. I never saw so many drunk people in my life, as I did in Belgrade.
A liter of vodka was a dollar, a black & white 12 inch tv was $300.
OT:
The Los Angeles Lakers’ victory parade will be paid for by private donors after unions complained the city couldn’t afford to share the expense.
Think Sideways:
"I'm NOT drinking the dollar vodka!"
"A liter of vodka was a dollar, a black & white 12 inch tv was $300. "
When you have a system that destroys initiative, it's no surprise to find the populace medicated. The communist governments seem to have understood that if you can't give people hope, you have to at least keep them medicated.
Anti Depressants, anyone?
Terry, oopss nope.... I'm more of a math guy than a spella....
They called it communism, but it looked more like alcoholism to me.
They're drunk because they're so happy under communist rule. Who wouldn't be? (drunk/happy)
" Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote on Tue, 6/16/2009 - 5:02 pm
what passed for an autobahn in East Germany was a sloppy mess of a road with no Green Shoots visible for about 200 feet away from the road, and occasional machine-gun nests..."
Give those nests some speed activated cameras attached to machine guns...
That'll keep law and order
Every time the market takes a breath from its steap climb I hear voices calling wolf. Then a day or two later the market continues it steep climb. We're only halfway back up to where we were before the market crash and well into the second half of the crash's lifecycle. If this is the case, whoever buys in at this point should get a nice little profit over the next few days.