Actually I advocate that the US put a $2000 floor under gold prices and start swapping that pesky cash stuff for glod and silber to demonstrate the might of the dollar.
We shall pile the shiny stuff high in Ft. Knox and worship it. Price for silber $75.
Why not! That would stimulate as cash was liberated from jewelry boxes and pawn shops across america.
You are so unimaginative. I advocate that the US put a $2000 floor under beanie babies. If we're going to throw money out of the helicopter, there's no reason we need to reward the people who were against us.
So let me understand this. Bernanke and Treasury tell us they didnt have the legal framework and authority in place to put AIG and others into bankruptcy. This is the BS excuse they gave to why they paid out AIG counterparties at PAR.
FED allows by a stroke of the pen and change in the law for GMAC to become a bank holding company - even though we know it clearly wasnt.
FED requests GMAC swap debt that Gross owns for equity in order to be compliant with bank holding company leverage requirements and Gross would take a massive haircut.
Gross tells the FED to pound sand and refuses to convert his bonds into equity.
Much to the amazement of many people on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, which declined to comment, still allowed GMAC to become a bank holding company and the government later guaranteed all of its debt, meaning that Mr. Gross’s GMAC bonds would be worth 100 cents on the dollar when they mature.
Why do these idiots hide behind laws and rules when they are clearly arbitrary and irrelevant. AIG could have been made into a bank holding company and Sheila could have put it out of its misery WAMU style.
Go F yourself Gross - you are just another millionaire welfare queen
"are the official depository for gold bullion.
Just as Fort Knox, Kentucky, is for the United States.
We know the amounts we each hold and the amounts deposited in other banks.
We can estimate what is being held for industrial purposes.
Thus, both governments can establish
the true value of the dollar and the pound.
Consequently, we are concerned with unauthorised leakages.
I take it you mean smuggling.
Yes.
Gold, gentlemen, which can be melted down and recast, is all but untraceable,
which makes it, unlike diamonds, ideal for smuggling,
attracting the biggest and most ingenious criminals.
- Thank you, Brunskill. That'll be all. - Thank you, sir.
Have a little more of this... rather disappointing brandy.
- What's the matter with it? - I'd say it was a -year-old Fine,
indifferently blended, sir.
With an overdose of Bons Bois.
Colonel Smithers is giving the lecture, .
Gentlemen, Mr Goldfinger has gold bullion on deposit
in Zurich, Amsterdam, Caracas and Hong Kong-worth £ million.
- Most of it came from this country. - Why move it?
The price of gold varies from country to country.
If you buy it here at $35 an ounce, you can sell it in, say, Pakistan at $102
and triple your money.
- If you have facilities for melting it down. - And has he?
Apart from being a legitimate bullion dealer, Mr Goldfinger poses...
No, that's not quite fair.
Is, among his many other interests, a legitimate international jeweller.
He's legally entitled to operate modest metallurgical installations.
His British one is down in Kent.
We've failed to discover how he transfers his gold overseas.
And Lord knows we've tried.
If your department can establish that it is done illegally,
the bank can take action to recover most of his holdings.
I think it's time Mr Goldfinger and I met.
Socially, of course.
I was hoping you'd say that."
Nothing like a good villan.
All I can say is I really like that movie. It has been responsible for some very profitable transactions.
The Las Vegas case against Kahre is BS............
"They’ve embarrassed U.S. officials by exposing what the Federal Reserve has done to people’s money, which is a likely reason that Federal Reserve officials, along with the IRS, are pushing this criminal prosecution."
.......a second, third, fourth time?? Amazing how much taxpayer money can be spent sending attack dogs from the DOJ and IRS all the way to Vegas.......a little egg on the face sure ticks the FedGov off - the original prosecutor had to be taken off the case - he was sued personally by attorney Hanson I believe - talk about "huevos"! Go Kahre!
Then the blogger that got a little heated - the DOJ wants ID's of all the bloggers? Can you say BIG BROTHER? Nutso.
impossible to spend $1B - it's not about spending, it's about accumulating... Whoever dies with the highest score wins, but the money stays here - often to be spent by heirs... I dont know if Gross has any heirs though...
Ah well, last call is occurring for the giant 7 year old, I fear I must go to sleep now too.
My son is ridiculously large. Just a shade under 4'9" at 7.66 in age and over 100 pounds. He is a new Shaq.
And I really don't much care for basketball- but he plays quite well when he feels like it.
Hard aluminum bleachers.
Must buy more food to feed him. And more brandy with a very good mix of bois;-}
OT but if energycon is awake, swine flu question. One brother is principal of grade school for disabled kids. Buffalo school system just announced death of 9year old from swine flu, another critical. However, numbers of students known to be infected is being withheld from parents and teachers...admin says illegal to give out that info. Is that possibly true?
He says school nurse says MRSA also spreading quickly...but again, school admin is withholding numbers, claiming illegal to release info.
Comrade Coinz (homepage, profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 2:54 am
Anyone following the second Kahre case?
Construction company paid his employees with American gold and silver bullion coins, which are legal tender, and paid taxes based on the face value of the coins.
Gold eagle 1 oz has a face value of $50, and silver eagle 1 oz has a face value of $1. IRS wants taxes to equal the market value of the bullion. Interesting case.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/46074037.html
So Calvinball says fiat value only counts sometimes?
Let the IRS win that case and then everyone can pay income tax only on the commodity value of their paper or digital paychecks.
Honestly I have no idea what to do with my cash. I've gotten stopped out of a number of trades recently (miners, plus agriculture trade)... so I've got some cash... and I've been avoiding holding cash. Now maybe its not bad right now to hold cash as we are on the verge of another September 2008... which those in the deflation camp would argue for... so right now its not bad and I can be nimble.
Instead of going into TBT I'm gonna probably buy some TLT puts. Other than that play... I have no freaking clue what to do. Perhaps a number of targeted puts?
I see the question of the day has turned to "how much does one need". Tolstoy answered that in a famous short story, easily worth 10 minutes of your time, especially if your last name is Gross: How Much Land Does a Man Need" (1886).
In GD1, the best investment was bonds... If this is really GD2 then probably Gnma bonds or the total bond market would be the best bet... VFIIX or BND... money market yield now is less than .4%.... almost nothing... Of course if the SP500 actually gets down to 158 then that would probably be a screaming buy, or maybe just screaming...
@YLSP: I too am not sure what to do, and neither are most of my relatives right now. The Calvinball is getting too intense. While cash and Treasuries best survived the Fall 2008 crash, Treasuries didn't do so well between December and March, perhaps even Cash may become trash when we reach the fall 2009 season of "Market Mayhem"? I suppose the charts will tell us where to go, but the whipsawing could be nasty...
When I was a kid, we got dollar coins from the Tooth Fairy. I collected mine. Those are now worth much less than they used to be. My kids are getting silver coins!
@ShadowInventory: I think we may be coming to the place where we discover that the post-Greenspan Depression isn't so much like GD1. GD1 had a gold standard, and it had a far more fiscally prudent political climate. The gold standard took a Calvinball hit in the middle of the mayhem then, and Roosevelt pushed fiscal prudence as far as he was able, but in the end it Gold was still a standard and the Federal Government didn't threaten hyperinflation until WW2. So I'm not so sure about the bonds this time. (That said, I am holding some CA munis of all things, because I think the bondholders will generally be made whole and the yields appear to compensate for the default risk. But I am holding only a small position, and even that with a hair trigger.)
hell i am almost all cash. new paradigm now, about which i lack conviction. the gross, trillion, numbers are beyond normal conception, which makes them easy to state or even flaunt, since they are in a sense ,sorrowfully meaningless. . anyone know a site which translates these in to per capita numbers-the only metric that most, especially the unsophisticated, can relate to?
"The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed."
i have a large cache of old frames that are made from partially gold. I estimate it to be about 2-3 ounces BFD but otherwise they would get thrown away. What is the best way to get money from this?
"Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.
But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats."
~~~~
How'd they print this .... LOL
That's right , all the big shots are at the US Open !
"Sixty-four percent said they thought the federal government should guarantee coverage, a figure that has stayed steady all decade. Nearly 6 in 10 said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to make sure that all were insured, with 4 in 10 willing to pay as much as $500 more a year."
~~~~~
Senator Baucus was heard to say " F public plans, they're not taking away my gravy train. "
Tom Dashle was heard to say " F public plans because I'm paid to be a whore. "
mmckinl,
I don't get what you mean. I have a hard time following the health care debate stuff. There was one plan I read about that looked like the way to go. It was a bi-partisan plan proposed maybe last year by 2 Senators? Drat's kind find the name anymore since apparently Dole and Daschle did some event where they said they wanted bi-partisan healthcare.
The name of the plan I saw was the Bennett-Wyden plan. I believe it is currently in the Senate as the Healthy Americans Act. It seemed like a reasonable starting point.
The problem with any legislation is that whereas we are told that the Congress comes up and deliberates on these things; all laws are actually started for and written by lobbyists, who then lobby hard and find Congressional sponsorship who create and pretend there is a problem.
I have no doubt that Bennett-Wyden would be better than whatever Dole and Daschle are proposing...
"Then there is Professor Kane’s second condition: Regulators’ commitment to these bailout policies “must be continually nourished by praise and other forms of tribute from the bankers, borrowers and investors whose losses are being shifted to less-influential parties.”"
"Daniel I. Okimoto, former director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, points out that Japan’s banking industry and economic bureaucracies were too interdependent. Studies from Okimoto’s center and the Bank of Japan concluded that data revealing the scope of the economic malaise were suppressed and that regulations were developed with governmental interests in mind. At the height of financial industry bailouts, there was little transparency or public accountability."
Isn't it impossible to spend $1B in one's lifetime?
Buy up all the GM stock and take over the pension liabilties,...wait,....am I limited to only one billion?
I honestly truly haven't spent much time looking at health care. I have a plan with my job and am happy with it; I'm probably in the minority. I am probably over-paying for my health care. All I know is if we are going to go "single payer" which all of this mandated insurance seems to be... somewhat of a faux single payer... lets go all the way and not pretend. If I were a shill for the insurance company as you are implying... would I be advocating that.
You already have me profiled; I was just joking regarding the paying for the plan but didn't realize I hit a nerve. This health care debate is all the rage to discuss etc but I don't have a good grasp on the details. It seems to me like unchaining health-care from a job is the right way to go...
Most west-european countries pay their doctors less than half of what we pay.. spend about half what we spend and still get a better outcome. How does that work?
No use talking healthcare with mmckinl -- he's already made up his mind. Despite the fact that the government is managing everything else into the ground these days he has this mystifying faith that somehow they'd have their act together when it came to that. Unfortunately, that ignores the overwhelming evidence that the government is the primary cause of all healthcare's ills these days, that Medicare is rife with fraud, and that nobody aspires to VA-level care.
What about insurance companies denying legitimate claims..
//Unfortunately, that ignores the overwhelming evidence that the government is the primary cause of all healthcare's ills these days, that Medicare is rife with fraud, and that nobody aspires to VA-level care.//
Well for the Europeans, I imagine. Word is that Cuba has the best cost-to-life-expectancy ratio of all, but for some reason they're not a migration magnet. Go figure.
Let's see... while we're fantasizing about how good a government plan could be, let's also recognize that:
- Innocent people NEVER go to jail
- Legitimate tax deductions are NEVER denied by the IRS
- Senior, secured bondholders are NEVER screwed in bankruptcy court
- Foreign countries without WMDs are NEVER invaded under false pretenses
Shall I go on?
Nobody is saying that the government is honest.. they are just not as bad as some others. What about private firefighters, ambulances, utilities, water, sewage, police.. why did we make them public?
Don't know where you get that from. It's those that work and pay taxes that'll rebel at those that feed off them, and that's an attack on the socialists.
And you're free to not use gov'ts healthcare and pay for your own!
Which means you pay twice, just like a lot of Los Angelenos have to do when they send their kids to private schools (where they can get a real education and not get shot).
In a post-industrial society, consumers are more important than workers.. If consumers don't consume ,workers have no jobs.. Technology has created a world where most people are not required for production, but everyone has to consume to keep the workers going..
//It's those that work and pay taxes that'll rebel at those that feed off them, and that's an attack on the socialists.//
What about private firefighters, ambulances, utilities, water, sewage, police.. why did we make them public?
Lucifer,
Red herring. You can't compare basic infrastructure services (that are inherently monopolistic) to healthcare. Nor can you compare police, when justice is a central tenet of the Constitution.
Fat chance of that. The former can't exist without the latter, but not the other way around. The latter could just work a fraction as hard and then take the rest of the day off.
The latter could just work a fraction as hard and then take the rest of the day off
We eagerly await the day when they finally grasp that.
However, we suspect that if consumers disappeared (as they have), workers would simply redouble their efforts to "improve efficiency" with layoffs & outsourcing.
I am not against finding ways to improve our healthcare system, and I fully expect government regulation / oversight / enforcement to be a part of that, I just don't see any upside to having the government involved in the finances or decision making, two areas where they've proven especially weak time and again.
Sure, some foreign countries have systems that work for them, but just assuming their system can be simply copied here is ludicrous. That ignores the very real differences that exist between their overall government systems, culture, expectations, business environment, etc. Selected things can't be just plugged in, and attempting to do so could have a host of negative effects on things that make America what it is (or at least has been).
“I believe we will look back on the Chinese economic miracle as the sickest joke yet played on investors,” Edwards wrote yesterday in a report. To support his argument, he cited falling earnings at the country’s industrial companies.
"Selected things can't be just plugged in, and attempting to do so could have a host of negative effects on things that make America what it is (or at least has been)."
Americans are so uniquely screwed up ? The basic problem is that you guys have one representative in Congress per about almost one million. Most functioning democracies have much better ratio, Nordics one per few ten thousands and even Germany one per about 200000 plus their state level institutions. So only the very rich will get elected in the USA. Middle class candidates does not stand a chance unless they do some very serious asskissing of those with the money.
Unless the representatives truly REPRESENT the people, the rich will get away with murder. Congress Representatives must be ordinary folks, nurses, firemen, small business owners etc etc, not just the rich folks. That means in practise USA is finished as one big monolith. California might accidentally lead the way if they declare default or something similar. Then they might even declare something more "outrageous" too....
....TJ .... somewhat related to Iran but not all , rather better reason is domestic firm protection ...... N Korea doesnt allow outside Internet access for a long time .......
I'm Californian and I'm listening, timmyone. What "more outrageous" thing do you have in mind? I've got nothing better to do tomorrow than start a revolution.
NYTimes - Frank Rich
"A tip-off to what was coming appeared in a Washington Post op-ed article that the administration’s two financial gurus, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, wrote to preview their plan. “Some people will say that this is not the time to debate the future of financial regulation, that this debate should wait until the crisis is fully behind us,” they wrote by way of congratulating themselves on taking charge.
Who exactly are these “some people” who want to delay debate on the future of regulation? Not anyone you or I know."
....
as much as I have tried I don't remember anyone on this arguing that this is not the time...
Your thoughts...
....
I do know of 2 Times reporters who read CR.... but they are far too busy usually to get to this 'whole sick crew'....
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but again, that's not the way the system was intended to function. 99% of the power was supposed to reside within the states, with only interstate & international issues addressed in DC. So much for that great idea, eh?
"You know, you think we'd have an old-fashioned goldbug vs. not debate"
that's because the fiat crowd has been so discredited by recent events. wheras the health care debate is interesting, on one hand we spend a ludicrous amount of GDP on healthcare, on the other hand, do you really want the same people that run the TARP running your healthcare?
PPiP is DOA. The banks cannot take the hit to their capital base IMO.
Unfortunately, what Bill Gross pointed out is that he can buy toxic assets for $1 on the $1 even if they are worth a third of that, take the 15% income stream and get a 5% return on the one third performing assets and in the end, when he takes a write down of $0.70 it will be the taxpayer that will bear it under the PPIP. This way the banks get paid off without taking any losses, the managers get a revenue stream at a good interest rate during the operating period, and at the end when the principal must be written down, the taxpayer eats the loss.
If I've misunderstood the implication, I'd appreciate a correction and an explanation.
First off, timmyone, we'd have to build another state capitol, because there's no way the state wouldn't split in two. Sacramento would be the capitol of Northern California. Long Beach, maybe.
Now, the state of Southern California would still end up with Laura Richardson and Dana Rohrerbacher, so we'd have to excise their voter strongholds when we secede from the Union. They can represent the State of Confusion or the State of Denial, but not the new state of Southern California.
"Is that before or after the "$25 / 40 / 60 billion" is paid off?"
From wiki: California is responsible for 13% of the United States' gross domestic product (GDP). The state's GDP is at about $1.7 trillion (as of 2006).
Southern cluster (Texas plus few other states) would be next? Then New York cluster, Florida....
broward
no, the concubine of con dao isn't quite right... more like that fly caught in that jam jar in a well known Pinter play about the menace underlying this certain relationship bwt. a man and woman...
...
on that island I suffered the wages of Brad Pitt like 'fame' ...
...
once I went snorkeling with a group of friends and the Duchess obtained a large with a 12 man crew,
once in the water the 2 couples headed one way and I headed another, every hour or so I'd pop up and look around
and notice the skiff that brought us into to the coral reefs about 40 metres away. for the rest of the day
the skiff maintained its position... when we got back to her compound which sits high above an old pier built by
the US in the 60s (complete with heli-pads) and a new pier builts entirely by her family and is even larger, although
w/o the helipads... I asked one of her minions what the deal was on that boat.....
her answer: 'Miss Phuong was afraid you might drown since you had 2 Heinekens for lunch!'
.... we then all sat down to an all you can eat crab and lobster dinner (right off the boat) with more Heinkens....
In Nicaragua, doctors are require to work half the day in government health care.
The other half of the day they can run a private practice if they want.
Anyone who can afford to, goes to the private practice. However, anyone who does not gets free medical care--from the same doctors. (Drugs must be paid for out of pocket.)
NYT... Rich:
There are some worthwhile protections in the Summers-Geithner legislation, especially for consumers, but there’s little that will disturb these unnamed “people” too much. I’ll leave it to financial analysts to detail why the small-bore tinkering in the administration blueprint won’t prevent another perfect storm of arcane derivatives, unchecked (and risk-rewarding) executive compensation and too-big-to-fail banks like Citi. Suffice it to say that the Obama team has not resuscitated the Glass-Steagall Act.
....
screw the financial analysts, he should have written I leave to the Commentariat on CR to detail why the ... blueprint won't prevent another perfect storm...
....
now, see how thematically I was able to weave in a personal story that no one cares to hear with a frank Rich column....
Clive Clusler, newly appointed Comptroller of the Fiat has announced a shift to a more stable currency base; Byzantium. The US reserves are safely stored in the wreck of the Titanic. Critics are busting at the historical parallels.
broward,
the main island is simply gorgeous... it was for the French their Devil's Island and today on it stands an old prison from the 1830s and a newer one built in
the 1920s - very similar to what you see in Papillon, at that prison the French created the 'tiger cage'....
it is also one of only 2 national reserves in all of Vietnam but it's impossible to see from Google Earth
since it has 3 military bases on it... 2 I have located, the other is a training deep in the primeval that never was deforested or bombed in any war...
....
we use to have lunch many times with the commander of the Coast Guard who spoke very good English, her English when we first met was almost zero
yet she could speak a fair amount of German because in 1989 due to a famine in 'Nam her mother sent her to live and work for a few years in Dresden
...
she once said to me, I can not protect you in Ho Chi Minh City but here I can protect you... (to this day I'm unsure whether they paid off the former
husband to get lost, she had 2 children by him, or he befell some accident... the island has a great Amalfi coast like drive ... one pass is called Shark's Teeth (mieu ca map)
and if you wanted to nail a person...
....
you must understand this woman never said alot, like a Sphinx, a great listener and never raised her voice to me once! but, last one she said cryptically, the police (meaning military) and me are the same....
....
my younger brother gave me another less stellar moniker - douche bag of con dao
after we got married we were going to live in the US.... the empress dowager (mom) ordered such
without ever asking me... she thought a Westerner can't be happy in Vietnam, truly... (this I tend to agree
with... in Asia it is all about ethnicity, they Cambodians, Burmese, Vietnamese, Chinese don't understand
citizenship... you may speak their language perfectly and even possess a dual citizenship (cost for a
Khmer citz. 45,000) but unless you are of their tribe you will always be an outsider, period, period, period.
....
the empress dowager was going to fund her business in the States (I thought, not a bad idea)
...
now, we applied for a tourist visa at the US Consulate in HCMC and she was rejected and this
was after my dad called his friend Senator Lugar (he had raised a lot of money for him over the years)
and he sent a letter to the consulate. I was beside myself... called the consulate and talked someone in
a relatively high position for hours... went over all the things she needed... she can't be too young (marriage scam)
or too old (come to US get on the dole) at 40 she was exactly where she should be.... I thought... now, next thing
is to show you will not jump your visa and return, this is where you bring in all your papers of holdings, the businesses
which she had to return to....
....
3 months later with everything t crossed and i dotted we made another attempt to get a tourist visa to the US
and she again was rejected! they questioned her about relationship with me...! do you speak English and she said
no, not well at all, and they said does your boyfriend speak Vietnamese and she answered no. (even if I instructed to lie
she can not) the interview lasted from what she said maybe 3 minutes (100 dollar fee) ... and she was rejected!!
....
so, don't tell me how screwed up the USA is...
....
I should add that her mom could have called Hanoi and pulled strings all the way up to the Politburo, Yes She Can...
but she would have lost face for asking a favor....
and they thought this problem was my problem with my government...
she became convinced that the USA did not want her person to visit...
....
and then came the marriage complications, she started hearing how Vietnamese
who married other US Viets or even westerners who married in Vietnam were sitting and waiting for their papers in Vietnam for at least
18 months and longer....
....
I had one plan... we could get a visa to Mexico and then jump the Rio Grande....
"So let me understand this. Bernanke and Treasury tell us they didnt have the legal framework and authority in place to put AIG and others into bankruptcy. This is the BS excuse they gave to why they paid out AIG counterparties at PAR."
The insanity is that not one elected official has asked anyone to explain in detail, on the public record, what "systemic risk" is other than finance companies and investors losing a ton of money. No for-private-profit entity is ever too big to have its equity shares wiped out, or to require its lenders be reimbursed by the public.
1 currency now -yogi: The insanity is that not one elected official has asked anyone to explain in detail, on the public record, what "systemic risk" is
Well, you know, zombies and stuff. Jeez!
If you have to ask you don't know what Civilization is Made Of!
Seriously, it sounded like that. Napoleon Dynamite sort of stuff.
no more Con Dao...
....
since NYT Rich's column today is a column that would fit here in CR land I hope to see many of your names in his comment section, get
your voices out there a bit more... that means you mp, broward, black star, nemo, EHP, MLM, MrM, counterpointer,GDD9000, Tim Waiting for 2012, and of course Lucifer and
even Rob Dawg!!! and if you're out there Ticker Tape of Doom.... and finally one of the boyz in da hood 1 currency yogi... and all the rest of the whole sick crew (of Lot 49)
....
that's right, the duke is throwing the gauntlet... you'all can crowd out some of the more feeble minded and knee jerk commenters who appear every week like clockwork...
... they are so uniform sometimes I think they are produced by one of Nemo's escaped monkeys...
....
they cut off comments at about 500
If AIG did not keep enough cash to safely maintain its casualty or other valid INSURANCE policies, all their assets should immediately have been seized by eminent domain, as in the public interest, and no financial contract should have been honored. Any bailout should have only gone to policy holders, and not 100% of their claims, as there must be some reward to those consumers who paid a higher premium (in theory) for a company which was better and more safely run.
@yogi - AIG would have been allowed to fail - if it would have screwed anyone other than GS and the boy's club. This whole mess has been really good for GS - wipe out the competition, thanks to the gov't, change the rules so that there basically are no rules, and not only keep the party going, but shrink the guest list, and have even better door prizes (bonuses).
thanks timmyone!
...
every time I watch Apocalypse Now I always laughing when Kurtz's tribal warriors are shown wearing their
garb with their butt cheeks hanging out ... they were all Filipinos, not one Khmer in the bunch... and don't get me started on how Kurtz could be so fat living in
'the bush'... finally, I watched the Director's Cut of Blade last week... many times over... the studio was dead wrong to add that happy ending with the stock aerial footage from The Shining... and to open the film with a Voice Over because the audience would be confused without it! for me, the use of the Voice Over is the last refuge of hack screenwriters! (ok, Wilder did it in Sunset Boulevard but there was no other way to do it... the story was told in flashback and that was the voice of a dead man... Wilder experimented with flashback but was unhappy with it, in the end)... since I just pounced on the studio for Blade Runner, a film I may add that holds up beautifully today!
I don't know about you all but Sean Young in that movie was the Bomb! Pity life isn't like the movies. Sean in real life is a bit nutty. Like Cary Grant once famously said, I would like to be Cary Grant in life.
... the Directors Cut of Apocalypse is not as good as the studio release, Coppola is wrong... the studio was right, once they get on that boat don't get off until the end - there lies the tension - like adding that plantation killed that tension, plus that ridiculous scene of Kilgore chasing them around for that surfboard, c'mon Francis...
has anyone read the Tom Friedman piece in the Times yet?
he writes "The playwright Tom Stoppard once observed that democracy is not the voting, “it’s the counting." "
I believe this line is from the play The Real Thing, sadly, I don't have my books with me to check but if it is
it's a slight mis-reading of that scene where the protagonist is speaking to his wife about Billy and the protest movement...
he is speaking from an elitist Hamiltonian point of view against the mob's POV...
"Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth." (Benjamin Disraeli)
I know it Altered, and I've said so many times. I had a long legal debate with sportsfan one night about AIG's contracts being voidable, even before I came across this superb article :
Treasured Altered Reality ....
lot of Vietnamese in B.C, Mexico sounded easier... who knows, I could've run into the bones of Ambrose Bierce or Castenada's shaman
I don't harp on GS only because I have a large bet on their stock. (Yup, fighting the FED, under the careful balance sheet analysis by Reggie Middleton)
£42bn losses are predicted to hit Britain as a result of a three per cent fall in gross domestic product (GDP) due to the swine flu pandemic, according to a new report from the Oxford Economics think tank, due to be released tomorrow. Researchers claim that swine flu could threaten already fragile businesses and put further strains on financial markets in what could become a "vicious cycle that postpones the recovery".
Deflation is a "significant risk" as a result of the pandemic's impact on the economy – putting back economic recovery by two years, says the report. The predictions are based on a 30 per cent infection rate, should a pandemic begin in October and last for six months.
A $2.5 trillion cut in global GDP is a possibility – with a flu outbreak in the autumn hitting the world economy just as it starts to recover from the credit crunch.
I looked up Ambrose Bierce, thanks for the impetus. What can you say about someone who was a civil war hero, asthmatic, adventurer and wrote for Fun magazine?
don't you believe it...
not sure what you're getting at....
....
Tim Waiting for 2012
‘Bubble of Belief’ in China Economy Seen Bursting
for some time now I have not been one in the choir about the Chinese production leviathan,
... I know all to well their nature... stats out of China? transparency? ever look at the comparison of
what the CCCP claimed and what was the actual facts were after their downfall? Me and dictatorial regimes
have had some interesting dances and they haven't cut my legs off yet.....
Rex - think 'employment'. You just came up with a way to hire a million+ workers, operating manual respirators 24/7. I'd suggest going with continental shifts, and don't forget break and lunch coverage - the customers might not appreciate holding their breath that long.
Bierce was my father's favorite author, and his short stories are brilliant, with Hemingway's (later) gift for brevity but with an appreciation for the absurd.
My money says eventually the gov't will give up on saving bank equity when the facade crumbles.
There is a general sense of paralysis I see in society, and feel in myself. I have personally the apprehension that something lightning fast is setting up, and I would by nature rather be advancing towards it rather than retreating away.
But I am becalmed. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink.
in a private conversation I had with Jack Welch in 1986
he said they were pulling their 6 to 7 deals out of there...
most were manufacturing and something offshore, if memory serves...
I quote, "China is a shell game." He went on to say that he could not see
how money could be made there, and that "they were mostly interested in
not so much in trade but in stealing our technology."
This conversation took place for all you scoring at home in the library
of the president's house at Columbia...
....
as someone who a number of years before I had taken the time to study the speaking,
reading and writing of Mandarin, plus studying the cultural and political history of China and
it's present political system, I also studied Law in the Communist World and also Soviet Law from John Hazard
who studied under Visinski (sp) of Moscow Show Trial fame as an exchange student in '39, all at the Law school...
these words from Jack Welch changed my trajectory ....
....
on a sad note I had an acquaintance with a guy named John who was a great student in this area, esp. all things Chinese,
both of us chased and dated the same beautiful Shanghaiese girl at Columbia (did she screw up my Mandarin terribly)
sadly, he died on his way over to Beijing on that KAL 007 flight!
TJ and The Bear (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 1:34 pm
wrote " Word is that Cuba has the best cost-to-life-expectancy ratio of all, but for some reason they're not a migration magnet. Go figure."
....
don't get trapped in Michael Moore land, what he saw is not indicative of the Cuban medical system....
....
acquainted with a man who lived in Cuba from '91 to '99,
her is what he said, you go into a hospital room where 3 corners stink of urine and it hasn't been painted since the Revolution,
he said, you see doctor for a mere flesh wound and they want to cut off your arm...
....
and don't get him started on the castro brothers owned shops around Cuba where they import cheap shoes and mark them up 400%...
I could on....
"You suppose events in Iran are freaking out TPTB in China?"
They have one thing between them and Iran--the Khyber Pass. Presently, the US has a forlorn straddling the only land route from China to the ME. Strategically, China is pleased to have our forces doing what they would otherwise (eventually) need to do.
don't you believe it...
what jack said was they were completing those projects and he did mention
turbines, although I now realize I thought he was talking about jet engines....
and maybe he was at that... I was not nor have ever been an engineer
but I could read a Chinese trade contract given the right amount of effort...
he also mentioned something to do with what sounded like car manufacturing... or assembly units...
now this was in early '86, but in mid '92 he was on the cover of Business Week, I believe....
touting him as a visionary with a backdrop of China! my head nearly exploded!
...
I had one other conversation with Jack in '90 but we did not touch on China, I had done my time
at Solly in bonds and China was a distant dream... did quiz him about selling NBC,
he said, "NBC is not for sale... you don't sell beachfront property." This interview was driven
by a market report research I was engaged in by IDC on HDTV... I did two reports and made a lot
of forecasts... I spoke to ever major player in the world, I think in that sphere... inc, all my Hollywood
connects (that was the hook why they hired me as a rookie... a former bond research analyst) for instance, Edward Blier,
former Warner Studio honcho and later cable & Pay-per-view (a subsection of my report) head...
Iran might have another revolution...maybe there is still hope for Americans too. Who knows, maybe some US army captain in year 2013 says "fck this sht, who is with me?!" And the rest is history...
There seems to be continued paranoia about H1N1 influenza (swine flu). Instead of asking regular bloggers, why not just go to the source of much of the data itself?
H1N1 is a novel influenza. Nobody knows what the future will hold for it. However, as I said yesterday thus far it is NOTHING like the dreaded avian influenza. And in fact it is behaving much more like regular influenza. Yes, some people have died and will die from H1N1 influenza. However, people die EVERY year from regular influenza (influenza is one of the most common causes of death in America).
The chief reasons for H1N1 acting differently thus far are
1) it is novel, and thus nobody has had it before, thus the entire population is susceptible
2) there is not a vaccine vs the disease (since it's new) and thus again the entire population is susceptible.
3) it is a new strain. (every strain is a little different)
I've seen a lot of fear mongering out there in both the mainstream press and also some bloggers here. Thus far their fear mongering is unjustified. Yes, H1N1 is a pain in the butt. Yes, some people have and will die from it. Yes, its season is extended compared to routine influenza which is not overly surprising (mostly due to the reasons elucidated above). yes, it is POSSIBLE (but unknown) that this winter will be "bad".
HOWEVER, please keep some things in mind:
ONLY the very worst cases of H1N1 get confirmed. why is this? because we don't have the time or money or equipment to test everybody. thus, if you come in with mild "swine flu" you'll get sent home with NO TEST and tylenol/ibupfofen.
If you get a moderate case, then you MIGHT be tested with the rapid test (which is inaccurate, they're coming out with a better test)
If you're hospitalized then you get the "real test"
So for every 1 CONFIRMED (by lab) test there are most likely HUNDREDS of unconfirmed cases
For every 1 case you hear about in your child's school, it MAY OR MAY NOT be confirmed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is suspected.
I, as example, am seeing about 8-9 patients a day that I suspect has H1N1. I'm testing maybe 1 of them per 1-2 days using the rapid test (what's the point? the rapid test isn't accurate enough yet and there is no treatment for most people. thus their positive test doesn't change ANYTHING)
I'm confirming about 1 case a month using culture.
thus, for every 1 case that I personally confirm (by true culture), I suspect about 200
For every 1 person I bother rapid testing, I suspect 10-20. (and I'm decreasing my use of the rapid test now to more like 1 person out of 40-60)
Then the people I tell that I suspect (without test/culture) have H1N1 go and tell their school/work/friends/family that they have swine flu.
Also, I am AGGRESSIVE in my use of the rapid test. Some of my colleagues haven't done a single test. they just diagnose clinically. My ER colleagues are doing almost no testing. just treating (in appropriately I might add)
So when you ask your school about Swine flu, are you getting
-the number of culture confirmed cases?
-the number of rapid test positive cases? (which has a high false positive rate?)
-the number of people told they have swine flu by a doc without culture or rapid test?
you must understand what this data does mean and what it does not.
interestingly, one thing that happens due to this selection bias
-the numbers of H1N1 cases reported will be drastically smaller than the true number
-the "fatality" or "morbidity/mortality" rates will appear far worse than they actually are (in percentage terms) because the denominator is smaller (due to the vast numbers of unconfirmed cases).
Yesterday some blogger tried to disprove my claims by using some sensationalistic crappy news article where a reporter is trying to make a story. They find an ICU doc who says "I've never seen this before with influenza". Perhaps he isn't really an ICU doc? or is it just like that in his/her particular ICU??? Last year 5 people in my state and 2 people in my ICU died from regular influenza. (compared to one death from H1N1 so far). This year in my ICU the number of people admitted with H1N1 is no higher than typical influenza SO FAR. (that can obviously change. we are all waiting to see what happens this fall/winter)
again, it is always scary (for everybody) when something "new" comes along.
And we should all be careful (wash hands, stay home when sick, GET THE VACCINE AS SOON AS IT COMES OUT FOR EVERYBODY ESPECIALLY YOUNG CHILDREN AND OLD PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH MEDICAL ISSUES NO MATTER HOW AFRAID YOU ARE OF VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS etc). But spreading paranoia is not going to help.
most everybody has by now been exposed to H1N1 in some fashion if they live in any sizeable Metro location.
so if you ask "has my child been exposed in their school?" My knee jerk response would be "yes".
timmyone (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 3:22 pm
"Duke is already living in the ruins of USA already...helipad built in the 60's. Don't tell me you actually own a Huey helicopter there..?"
....
the USA built a small cinder block prison there but our prisons were in 3 places I believe in mainly I Corp territory ....
....
the ownership of private planes, helicopters and even pleasure craft is prohibited... , on Con Dao the ownership of cars is restricted to 4 hotels and the military only and of course her family... she can't drive but she always has a driver...
....
had some great times. gonna miss the place....!
Since I work for UCD, does this mean I'll have a 4% to 8% less chance of exposure beginning 8/1/09? >; )
(I'm convinced I've been exposed already but couldn't resist the snark)
Now to go make coffee and watch the sun come up over the water....
'A Bee investigation of internal shareholder documents and public lending records found that at Community Business Bank, those likely to benefit most from the taxpayer-funded windfall are a small group of insiders and their associates. From its inception 3 1/2 years ago, the bank has steered many of its assets to a handful of directors, as well as their relatives and business partners.'
Good morning - missed the night shift - while it is possibly true, it doesn't appear to be under the auspices of HIPAA as the protection there is against linkage of the information to an individual as I understand it.
Gurus. I do not think that word means what they think it means.
--People who chant meaningless mantras, have no idea how the world really works , but nontheless lay claim to "ultimate truth"? Sounds about right to me.
I'm sitting here in the Duke's version of the Brown Derby in Phnom Penh @ 7:40 pm...
since it's father's day (not that I am one... but I'm always looking for an excuse... the Irish in me) I think a drink is in order...
...
a young, very attractive Cambodian waitress just served me a flaming B52 quite unaware of the irony....
irony you ask? perhaps first you need to check the B52 bombing patterns and tonnage of bombs
dropped across Kampuchea by our USAF... in my humble opinion we should have a number of Americans in prison today for that
massive crime against humanity including politicians and the military starting with my boyhood hero (in HS)
Henry Alfred Kissinger... sorry HAK for calling you out but "I see no method, sir."
"in my humble opinion we should have a number of Americans in prison today for that massive crime against humanity including politicians and the military starting with my boyhood hero (in HS)"
Asians got their revenge (maybe not Cambodians but Vietnamese at least) ...the bombardment of cheap electronics and other products into USA continues unabated while stealing the US manufacturing base Double-whammy.
Treasury-Altered Reality Plan (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 6:39 pm
@Duke - any youtube vids with the duchess in them?
(no film site)
TARP... I had two YouTube videos of the Duchess posted on YouTube... one is still there...
but you're asking for the unmasking of the Lone Deranged Ranger since I appear in it briefly....
sooner or later Louis had to get wise about Clarke.... what the hell...
.....
in two shots you see a distant small mountain, that island is on the other side of the bay, they own a chunk of that
and almost all the land on the opposite port side... my name for that island is Fortress Phuong, she never never understood
why I called the island such or her the Duchess...
....
I made this on the island one afternoon as a quick sort of Valentine...
I might post a more interesting vid I've been working on....
thanks Bobby Darin for the use of your music &
the snow scene is on east 11th st, NYC
...
and finally, happy hour 2 for 1 here comes another bombing run....
TARP
I am Big, it's the World that's Gotten Smaller
Good morning all
Chinese Xinhua breaks the news of the day from Iran Daughter of Iran's Rafsanjani arrested TEHRAN, June 21 (Xinhua) -- A daughter and four other family members of Iran's influential former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have been arrested for provoking "riots," Iran's satellite channel Press TV reported on Sunday.
Faezeh Rafsanjani and four other unidentified family members of Rafsanjani were arrested after they allegedly took part in "unauthorized protest rallies" in central Tehran, Press TV said.
"The detainees have been accused of provoking the riots," the channel said, without giving more details.
State television has shown pictures of Faezeh Rafsanjani attending a rally and speaking to opposition supporters last week.
I haven't observed any paranoia over H1N1. Perhaps where you are? I'm in DC.
And you don't work for the Army, because the paranoia level about the virus was pretty high where I work.
---Mandatory reporting of ALL (personal and business) travel to states where H1N1 had been reported. That was quickly simplified to ALL travel.
--Had to rewatch "pandemic flu" training which we had just completed in Feb (20 minutes of video to say "cover your mouth and wash your hands."
--When calling in sick, must give an exacting list of symptoms.
They are young and vibrant and mad. Unlike ConDao's drunk and stoned westerners living in paradise.
The Mullahs are in for a rude awakening to the power of the street.
I have come to the conclusion that any country with a lot of young people is inherently unstable as they do not easily find a place in society and engage in productive work.
High unemployment is a sign that you are in serious trouble- kinda like the direction we are staggering into.
Screw this whole set-your-Twitter-locale-to-Tehran meme. What we need to do is find a way to smuggle some SAWs and antitank missles in there.
Actually, I'm for ridding the world of codger preachers wherever they may attempt to control lives. Maybe the revolution will spread to the US next and we can overthrow the tyranny on our own soil.
Actually, I'm for ridding the world of codger preachers wherever they may attempt to control lives. Maybe the revolution will spread to the US next and we can overthrow the tyranny on our own soil.
That is way to much reality for a financial board. Let's talk about bond prices.
Citizen Allen M
yes, you're right... one czar freed the serfs and instituted free or very cheap education across Russia...
but he made one mistake... forgot to make some jobs..
and what did it produce?
people like V.I. Lenin, ... educated, unemployed malcontents who sat around cafes plotting various revolutions...
Good intro to shadow banking over at BaselineScenario. Uncle Billy even shows up to point out the obvious.
But back to the topic at hand, Off the Rails in Phnom Penh is not a bad precis of the wild southeast farang waster stylee. At least it was ten years ago. I'm sure everything's cleaned up and straightened out since then.
As unemployment here surges, kindly remember many young folks mustering out of our foreign adventures are going to be a tad angry at the disaster that await them here upon their return.
Now, even should oil fall back to $40, our economy looks destined to keep slowing.
Structural change is forced upon us once again. Can the mandarins recover the mandate of Heaven and make us all happy?
I doubt it, so get ready for some more really weird things to pop up and smack us in the head as the housing crisis grinds on.
Alan Blinder writes in today's NY Times: The central bank is holding the Fed funds rate at nearly zero and has created a mountain of bank reserves to fight the financial crisis. Yes, these moves are unusual, but these are unusual times. Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy.
Yet, it is the credible "incompetence" on the side of the Central Bank that is one of the key tools in fighting deflation in a liquidity trap. This is the idea first suggested by Krugman and then formalized in the classic paper by G.B. Eggertsson The Deflation Bias and Committing to Being Irresponsible.
Whaddya know - maybe all those missteps and mishandling of the current crisis by the Fed are all part of a carefully crafted plan to appear reckless and incompetent in order to force everybody believe the inflation is around the corner? Maybe that's what was explained to Krugman over the roast beef dinner?
When elected government officials secretly collude with bankers to create a non-governmental
Federal Reserve Bank that controls the currency of the country and systematically generates
inflation to allow government to spend at an ever increasing rate.
Taxing citizens to create bureaucratic government agencies and programs that fail to
accomplish their mission while continuing to grow in size as politicians use them to reward
the contributors to their re-election campaigns.
Obammi is an empty suit, that's for sure. He will be out in 2012. Hillary & McCain were
right regarding his lack of experience and appeal to working, hard working white people.
OK that's funny.
Does the U.S. still have gold reserves?
I think my favorite phrase of the month is the "Goldfinger trade":
Loving only gold, expecting Mr. Bond to die.
(Shamelessly stolen from Macro Man)
Actually I advocate that the US put a $2000 floor under gold prices and start swapping that pesky cash stuff for glod and silber to demonstrate the might of the dollar.
We shall pile the shiny stuff high in Ft. Knox and worship it. Price for silber $75.
Why not! That would stimulate as cash was liberated from jewelry boxes and pawn shops across america.
Nothing like a real cash for trash program!!!
Someday this war's gonna end...
What do you have against Mr. Bond?
Well,it does make more sense than some of the other recent policies.
AllenM -
You are so unimaginative. I advocate that the US put a $2000 floor under beanie babies. If we're going to throw money out of the helicopter, there's no reason we need to reward the people who were against us.
Whether you are rich or poor, it's always good to have a lot of cash...
So let me understand this. Bernanke and Treasury tell us they didnt have the legal framework and authority in place to put AIG and others into bankruptcy. This is the BS excuse they gave to why they paid out AIG counterparties at PAR.
FED allows by a stroke of the pen and change in the law for GMAC to become a bank holding company - even though we know it clearly wasnt.
FED requests GMAC swap debt that Gross owns for equity in order to be compliant with bank holding company leverage requirements and Gross would take a massive haircut.
Gross tells the FED to pound sand and refuses to convert his bonds into equity.
Much to the amazement of many people on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, which declined to comment, still allowed GMAC to become a bank holding company and the government later guaranteed all of its debt, meaning that Mr. Gross’s GMAC bonds would be worth 100 cents on the dollar when they mature.
Why do these idiots hide behind laws and rules when they are clearly arbitrary and irrelevant. AIG could have been made into a bank holding company and Sheila could have put it out of its misery WAMU style.
Go F yourself Gross - you are just another millionaire welfare queen
I couldn't get the video to play......
Oh - you are incorrect - Mr. Gross is worth a billion, and has the only stamp collection in the world which has every stamp ever printed...
why nothing my dear:
"are the official depository for gold bullion.
Just as Fort Knox, Kentucky, is for the United States.
We know the amounts we each hold and the amounts deposited in other banks.
We can estimate what is being held for industrial purposes.
Thus, both governments can establish
the true value of the dollar and the pound.
Consequently, we are concerned with unauthorised leakages.
I take it you mean smuggling.
Yes.
Gold, gentlemen, which can be melted down and recast, is all but untraceable,
which makes it, unlike diamonds, ideal for smuggling,
attracting the biggest and most ingenious criminals.
- Thank you, Brunskill. That'll be all. - Thank you, sir.
Have a little more of this... rather disappointing brandy.
- What's the matter with it? - I'd say it was a -year-old Fine,
indifferently blended, sir.
With an overdose of Bons Bois.
Colonel Smithers is giving the lecture, .
Gentlemen, Mr Goldfinger has gold bullion on deposit
in Zurich, Amsterdam, Caracas and Hong Kong-worth £ million.
- Most of it came from this country. - Why move it?
The price of gold varies from country to country.
If you buy it here at $35 an ounce, you can sell it in, say, Pakistan at $102
and triple your money.
- If you have facilities for melting it down. - And has he?
Apart from being a legitimate bullion dealer, Mr Goldfinger poses...
No, that's not quite fair.
Is, among his many other interests, a legitimate international jeweller.
He's legally entitled to operate modest metallurgical installations.
His British one is down in Kent.
We've failed to discover how he transfers his gold overseas.
And Lord knows we've tried.
If your department can establish that it is done illegally,
the bank can take action to recover most of his holdings.
I think it's time Mr Goldfinger and I met.
Socially, of course.
I was hoping you'd say that."
Nothing like a good villan.
All I can say is I really like that movie. It has been responsible for some very profitable transactions.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Isn't it impossible to spend $1B in one's lifetime?
Selling the gold can have a very high ROI when you also have the armed force to confiscate the gold you sold.
What do you have against Mr. Bond?
Things related to bonds have been messing with my head lately.
I looked in Wikipedia and they say that he is actually worth 2 billion, and he is one of 3 people to have a complete US stamp collection...
The Las Vegas case against Kahre is BS............
"They’ve embarrassed U.S. officials by exposing what the Federal Reserve has done to people’s money, which is a likely reason that Federal Reserve officials, along with the IRS, are pushing this criminal prosecution."
.......a second, third, fourth time?? Amazing how much taxpayer money can be spent sending attack dogs from the DOJ and IRS all the way to Vegas.......a little egg on the face sure ticks the FedGov off - the original prosecutor had to be taken off the case - he was sued personally by attorney Hanson I believe - talk about "huevos"! Go Kahre!
Then the blogger that got a little heated - the DOJ wants ID's of all the bloggers? Can you say BIG BROTHER? Nutso.
girlbear: If you are using Firefox with the Adblocker, disable it, refresh the page, and wait a while.
CR might have taxed the their system a bit.
NW
impossible to spend $1B - it's not about spending, it's about accumulating... Whoever dies with the highest score wins, but the money stays here - often to be spent by heirs... I dont know if Gross has any heirs though...
Ah well, last call is occurring for the giant 7 year old, I fear I must go to sleep now too.
My son is ridiculously large. Just a shade under 4'9" at 7.66 in age and over 100 pounds. He is a new Shaq.
And I really don't much care for basketball- but he plays quite well when he feels like it.
Hard aluminum bleachers.
Must buy more food to feed him. And more brandy with a very good mix of bois;-}
Someday this war's gonna end.....
impossible to spend $1B
You've obviously never met my wife.
Girlbear, you can search "gold reserves" on The Onion site.
AllenM - Divert a little money from the brandy supply for a stadium seat. If anyone asks, mutter about a back injury and stress at work.
To spend $1B in 70 years...
How much would that be per day? Just curious. I'll have to get my calculator out.
70 years x 365 days = 25550 days.
$1,000,000,000 / 25550 days = $39,139 per day.
$39,139 every single day of your life (figure from the time you're 18 until you're 88).
And $1B is not enough for these people. They want the tax dollars of the average joe making $39,139 per year, not per day.
When you sit back and think about it, it's really pretty mind blowing.
..
OT but if energycon is awake, swine flu question. One brother is principal of grade school for disabled kids. Buffalo school system just announced death of 9year old from swine flu, another critical. However, numbers of students known to be infected is being withheld from parents and teachers...admin says illegal to give out that info. Is that possibly true?
He says school nurse says MRSA also spreading quickly...but again, school admin is withholding numbers, claiming illegal to release info.
Comrade Coinz (homepage, profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 2:54 am
Anyone following the second Kahre case?
Construction company paid his employees with American gold and silver bullion coins, which are legal tender, and paid taxes based on the face value of the coins.
Gold eagle 1 oz has a face value of $50, and silver eagle 1 oz has a face value of $1. IRS wants taxes to equal the market value of the bullion. Interesting case.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/46074037.html
So Calvinball says fiat value only counts sometimes?
Let the IRS win that case and then everyone can pay income tax only on the commodity value of their paper or digital paychecks.
I would probably go with 365.25 days per year. Or round to $39k.
Unless you plan to take every Feb 29 off and not spend anything.
What is mind blowing is how much money people can make for contributing precisely nothing to the world.
And others who contribute so much and make close to nothing. Eh, wealth is obviously not the measure of a man.
Honestly I have no idea what to do with my cash. I've gotten stopped out of a number of trades recently (miners, plus agriculture trade)... so I've got some cash... and I've been avoiding holding cash. Now maybe its not bad right now to hold cash as we are on the verge of another September 2008... which those in the deflation camp would argue for... so right now its not bad and I can be nimble.
Instead of going into TBT I'm gonna probably buy some TLT puts. Other than that play... I have no freaking clue what to do. Perhaps a number of targeted puts?
"Whoever dies with the highest score wins, but the money stays here..."
Having attended seemingly countless funerals, I can honestly say I've never seen any hearses towing cash-stuffed U-Haul trailers.
I've never seen any hearses towing cash-stuffed U-Haul trailers.
You just haven't met the right girl yet.
Other than that play... I have no freaking clue what to do.
IMHO, the last couple years were a period for making money. Now is a time for not losing money. There's no huge rush.
I see the question of the day has turned to "how much does one need". Tolstoy answered that in a famous short story, easily worth 10 minutes of your time, especially if your last name is Gross: How Much Land Does a Man Need" (1886).
In GD1, the best investment was bonds... If this is really GD2 then probably Gnma bonds or the total bond market would be the best bet... VFIIX or BND... money market yield now is less than .4%.... almost nothing... Of course if the SP500 actually gets down to 158 then that would probably be a screaming buy, or maybe just screaming...
@YLSP: I too am not sure what to do, and neither are most of my relatives right now. The Calvinball is getting too intense. While cash and Treasuries best survived the Fall 2008 crash, Treasuries didn't do so well between December and March, perhaps even Cash may become trash when we reach the fall 2009 season of "Market Mayhem"? I suppose the charts will tell us where to go, but the whipsawing could be nasty...
When I was a kid, we got dollar coins from the Tooth Fairy. I collected mine. Those are now worth much less than they used to be. My kids are getting silver coins!
@ShadowInventory: I think we may be coming to the place where we discover that the post-Greenspan Depression isn't so much like GD1. GD1 had a gold standard, and it had a far more fiscally prudent political climate. The gold standard took a Calvinball hit in the middle of the mayhem then, and Roosevelt pushed fiscal prudence as far as he was able, but in the end it Gold was still a standard and the Federal Government didn't threaten hyperinflation until WW2. So I'm not so sure about the bonds this time. (That said, I am holding some CA munis of all things, because I think the bondholders will generally be made whole and the yields appear to compensate for the default risk. But I am holding only a small position, and even that with a hair trigger.)
Off to bed...
From what I've read we don't really know how much gold we have and they refuse to audit it.
Wow, wisdom speaker, that Tolstoy story was true to Russian literature - depressing! Shortest Russian story I've ever read tho.
hell i am almost all cash. new paradigm now, about which i lack conviction. the gross, trillion, numbers are beyond normal conception, which makes them easy to state or even flaunt, since they are in a sense ,sorrowfully meaningless. . anyone know a site which translates these in to per capita numbers-the only metric that most, especially the unsophisticated, can relate to?
"Isn't it impossible to spend $1B in one's lifetime?"
~~~~
Larry Ellison will get it done ... no problem ...
Over $300 million just for the yacht ... $100 million for one house ...
Then there are the jets and the racing schooner ... well on his way ...
Onion: Are violent video games adequately preparing children for the apocalypse?
Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse? | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Onion: Are violent video games adequately preparing children for the apocalypse?
Now THAT's looking at the bright side.
**
Something about Obama scaling back goals after visiting Denny's? wtf was that?
Hoax.
Obama couldn't survive a meal at Denny's.
"The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed."
Poll Finds Wide Support for Idea Of Government-Run Health Plan - NY Times
I think it was an Onion link; and Outsider is editing it... haha... I've done caught you!
If the onion is the new new york times, we are living in a dystopia.
Obama couldn't survive a meal at Denny's.
"I said baby spinach"
"What'd you call me, you skinny bitch?"
NYT has less credibility than the Onion.
And 20% said they would be willing to pay for it; whereas 70% said they didn't want to pay for the plan.
We are turning into California...
Tj and the bear,
and that is why it is a dystopia.
"If the onion is the new new york times, we are living in a dystopia."
~~~~
We aren't living in a distopia ?
War is Peace, Peace is War ... Obama is a Socialist! ... Taxing employer paid healthcare ...
Mandatory healthcare enrollment and billing ... trillions for banksters ... nada for working people and the unemployed ...
YLSP
"And 20% said they would be willing to pay for it; whereas 70% said they didn't want to pay for the plan."
~~~
How"s your health care company job YLSP?
Big money for denying benefits ...
i have a large cache of old frames that are made from partially gold. I estimate it to be about 2-3 ounces BFD but otherwise they would get thrown away. What is the best way to get money from this?
"Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.
But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats."
~~~~
How'd they print this .... LOL
That's right , all the big shots are at the US Open !
"Sixty-four percent said they thought the federal government should guarantee coverage, a figure that has stayed steady all decade. Nearly 6 in 10 said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to make sure that all were insured, with 4 in 10 willing to pay as much as $500 more a year."
~~~~~
Senator Baucus was heard to say " F public plans, they're not taking away my gravy train. "
Tom Dashle was heard to say " F public plans because I'm paid to be a whore. "
Too Big to Fail, or Too Big to Handle?
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: June 20, 2009
FAIR GAME; Too Big To Fail, Or Too Big To Handle? - NY Times
Onion: Treasury recalls all US dollars.
Treasury Department Issues Emergency Recall Of All U.S. Dollars | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
mmckinl,
I don't get what you mean. I have a hard time following the health care debate stuff. There was one plan I read about that looked like the way to go. It was a bi-partisan plan proposed maybe last year by 2 Senators? Drat's kind find the name anymore since apparently Dole and Daschle did some event where they said they wanted bi-partisan healthcare.
The name of the plan I saw was the Bennett-Wyden plan. I believe it is currently in the Senate as the Healthy Americans Act. It seemed like a reasonable starting point.
The problem with any legislation is that whereas we are told that the Congress comes up and deliberates on these things; all laws are actually started for and written by lobbyists, who then lobby hard and find Congressional sponsorship who create and pretend there is a problem.
I have no doubt that Bennett-Wyden would be better than whatever Dole and Daschle are proposing...
Hahah... Gretchen!
"Then there is Professor Kane’s second condition: Regulators’ commitment to these bailout policies “must be continually nourished by praise and other forms of tribute from the bankers, borrowers and investors whose losses are being shifted to less-influential parties.”"
~~~
Ya don't say ...
Onion: US workers outsource their own jobs.
More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
YLSP ...
save the BS ...
I don't play games with twits, suckups or shills ...
"Daniel I. Okimoto, former director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, points out that Japan’s banking industry and economic bureaucracies were too interdependent. Studies from Okimoto’s center and the Bank of Japan concluded that data revealing the scope of the economic malaise were suppressed and that regulations were developed with governmental interests in mind. At the height of financial industry bailouts, there was little transparency or public accountability."
Isn't it impossible to spend $1B in one's lifetime?
Buy up all the GM stock and take over the pension liabilties,...wait,....am I limited to only one billion?
I honestly truly haven't spent much time looking at health care. I have a plan with my job and am happy with it; I'm probably in the minority. I am probably over-paying for my health care. All I know is if we are going to go "single payer" which all of this mandated insurance seems to be... somewhat of a faux single payer... lets go all the way and not pretend. If I were a shill for the insurance company as you are implying... would I be advocating that.
You already have me profiled; I was just joking regarding the paying for the plan but didn't realize I hit a nerve. This health care debate is all the rage to discuss etc but I don't have a good grasp on the details. It seems to me like unchaining health-care from a job is the right way to go...
The health care question boils down to this..
Most west-european countries pay their doctors less than half of what we pay.. spend about half what we spend and still get a better outcome. How does that work?
There's a good chance we'll all have a billion dollars to spend soon.
YLSP,
No use talking healthcare with mmckinl -- he's already made up his mind. Despite the fact that the government is managing everything else into the ground these days he has this mystifying faith that somehow they'd have their act together when it came to that. Unfortunately, that ignores the overwhelming evidence that the government is the primary cause of all healthcare's ills these days, that Medicare is rife with fraud, and that nobody aspires to VA-level care.
What about insurance companies denying legitimate claims..
//Unfortunately, that ignores the overwhelming evidence that the government is the primary cause of all healthcare's ills these days, that Medicare is rife with fraud, and that nobody aspires to VA-level care.//
How does that work?
Well for the Europeans, I imagine. Word is that Cuba has the best cost-to-life-expectancy ratio of all, but for some reason they're not a migration magnet. Go figure.
What about insurance companies denying legitimate claims..
Yeah, that NEVER happens with Medicare or the VA.
Crappy healthcare is better than none.
what about..
france, germany, italy, spain, england, greece,belgium, denmark, finland, norway, sweden.. ?
What about the free market religion..
//Crappy healthcare is better than none.//
Lucifer
All the idiots are out tonight ...
I leave them with you ... buena suerte ... adios ...
Certain outcomes (life expectancy) depend on patient behavior and do not necessarily measure health-care efficiency well.
Doctor A treats Patient A and Patient A goes home and reads a book.
Doctor B treats Patient B and Patient B goes home and hangs himself.
Doctor B has the worse outcome.
Not One Cent,
Religious beliefs.. how charming.
Let's see... while we're fantasizing about how good a government plan could be, let's also recognize that:
- Innocent people NEVER go to jail
- Legitimate tax deductions are NEVER denied by the IRS
- Senior, secured bondholders are NEVER screwed in bankruptcy court
- Foreign countries without WMDs are NEVER invaded under false pretenses
Shall I go on?
There's something wrong with Doctor B if he caused his patient to kill himself.
At the very least, Doctor B should offer a discount.
See preceding "crappy healthcare" reference
check out some of pimco funds cash holdings:
PTTAX: Holdings for PIMCO FUNDS TOTAL RETURN FUND C - Yahoo! Finance
PASDX: Holdings for PIMCO ALL ASSET CLASS D - Yahoo! Finance
PFIUX: Holdings for PIMCO UNCONSTRAINED BOND FUND, - Yahoo! Finance
(click holdings)
cash on hands was even higher couple of weeks ago, : ) ) ; looks like an unexpected case of green shoot skepticism...
france, germany, italy, spain, england, greece,belgium, denmark, finland, norway, sweden.. ?
What about them? You're free to move.
TJ and The Bear,
Nobody is saying that the government is honest.. they are just not as bad as some others. What about private firefighters, ambulances, utilities, water, sewage, police.. why did we make them public?
What about them? You're free to move.
And you're free to not use gov'ts healthcare and pay for your own!
Canadians do it all the time.
TJ and The Bear,
At the rate things are going, I expect free market worshipers to be lynched by angry mobs within a year or two. So it won't be a issue..
broward,
you are questioning their religious beliefs.. this is not about reason.
//And you're free to not use gov'ts healthcare and pay for your own!//
Lucifer,
Don't know where you get that from. It's those that work and pay taxes that'll rebel at those that feed off them, and that's an attack on the socialists.
Maybe Dr. B could be burnt on the stake... along with his family?
//There's something wrong with Doctor B if he caused his patient to kill himself.//
And you're free to not use gov'ts healthcare and pay for your own!
Which means you pay twice, just like a lot of Los Angelenos have to do when they send their kids to private schools (where they can get a real education and not get shot).
In a post-industrial society, consumers are more important than workers.. If consumers don't consume ,workers have no jobs.. Technology has created a world where most people are not required for production, but everyone has to consume to keep the workers going..
//It's those that work and pay taxes that'll rebel at those that feed off them, and that's an attack on the socialists.//
It's those that work and pay taxes that'll rebel at those that feed off them
they're free to stop working in protest.
What about private firefighters, ambulances, utilities, water, sewage, police.. why did we make them public?
Lucifer,
Red herring. You can't compare basic infrastructure services (that are inherently monopolistic) to healthcare. Nor can you compare police, when justice is a central tenet of the Constitution.
consumers are more important than workers
Fat chance of that. The former can't exist without the latter, but not the other way around. The latter could just work a fraction as hard and then take the rest of the day off.
The latter could just work a fraction as hard and then take the rest of the day off
We eagerly await the day when they finally grasp that.
However, we suspect that if consumers disappeared (as they have), workers would simply redouble their efforts to "improve efficiency" with layoffs & outsourcing.
Personal behavior is a first-order variable for health outcomes and health costs.
Compare US to Europe:
Obesity Driving Rising U.S. Health Costs - Drugs.com MedNews
For the record...
I am not against finding ways to improve our healthcare system, and I fully expect government regulation / oversight / enforcement to be a part of that, I just don't see any upside to having the government involved in the finances or decision making, two areas where they've proven especially weak time and again.
Sure, some foreign countries have systems that work for them, but just assuming their system can be simply copied here is ludicrous. That ignores the very real differences that exist between their overall government systems, culture, expectations, business environment, etc. Selected things can't be just plugged in, and attempting to do so could have a host of negative effects on things that make America what it is (or at least has been).
Personal behavior is a first-order variable for health outcomes and health costs.
That reinforces Broward's point (that I totally agreed with).
‘Bubble of Belief’ in China Economy Seen Bursting
‘Bubble of Belief’ in China Economy Seen Bursting: Chart of Day - Bloomberg.com
“I believe we will look back on the Chinese economic miracle as the sickest joke yet played on investors,” Edwards wrote yesterday in a report. To support his argument, he cited falling earnings at the country’s industrial companies.
Geez,
You know, you think we'd have an old-fashioned goldbug vs. not debate going on considering the topic, but no, we stray into healthcare. Oh well!
A goldbug debate would be too serious and depressing for a Saturday night.
Much better to discuss health care problems.
TJ, combine the topics by discussing the health benefits of silver.
Not One Cent,
LOL! That would have some synergy, wouldn't it?
........China tells Google to end foreign site access..........
........ FT.com / Companies / US & Canada - China tells Google to end foreign site access .........
Jay D.,
You suppose events in Iran are freaking out TPTB in China?
"Selected things can't be just plugged in, and attempting to do so could have a host of negative effects on things that make America what it is (or at least has been)."
Americans are so uniquely screwed up ?
The basic problem is that you guys have one representative in Congress per about almost one million. Most functioning democracies have much better ratio, Nordics one per few ten thousands and even Germany one per about 200000 plus their state level institutions. So only the very rich will get elected in the USA. Middle class candidates does not stand a chance unless they do some very serious asskissing of those with the money.
Unless the representatives truly REPRESENT the people, the rich will get away with murder. Congress Representatives must be ordinary folks, nurses, firemen, small business owners etc etc, not just the rich folks. That means in practise USA is finished as one big monolith. California might accidentally lead the way if they declare default or something similar. Then they might even declare something more "outrageous" too....
....TJ .... somewhat related to Iran but not all , rather better reason is domestic firm protection ...... N Korea doesnt allow outside Internet access for a long time .......
I'm Californian and I'm listening, timmyone. What "more outrageous" thing do you have in mind? I've got nothing better to do tomorrow than start a revolution.
zzzz...
NYTimes - Frank Rich
"A tip-off to what was coming appeared in a Washington Post op-ed article that the administration’s two financial gurus, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, wrote to preview their plan. “Some people will say that this is not the time to debate the future of financial regulation, that this debate should wait until the crisis is fully behind us,” they wrote by way of congratulating themselves on taking charge.
Who exactly are these “some people” who want to delay debate on the future of regulation? Not anyone you or I know."
....
as much as I have tried I don't remember anyone on this arguing that this is not the time...
Your thoughts...
....
I do know of 2 Times reporters who read CR.... but they are far too busy usually to get to this 'whole sick crew'....
timmyone,
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but again, that's not the way the system was intended to function. 99% of the power was supposed to reside within the states, with only interstate & international issues addressed in DC. So much for that great idea, eh?
the administration’s two financial gurus, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner
Gurus. I do not think that word means what they think it means.
"What "more outrageous" thing do you have in mind? "
If California were independent it would be about 10th largest economy in the world...why is there this "if"
?
10th largest economy in the world
Is that before or after the "$25 / 40 / 60 billion" is paid off?
"You know, you think we'd have an old-fashioned goldbug vs. not debate"
that's because the fiat crowd has been so discredited by recent events. wheras the health care debate is interesting, on one hand we spend a ludicrous amount of GDP on healthcare, on the other hand, do you really want the same people that run the TARP running your healthcare?
Tim waiting for 2012 wrote:
PPiP is DOA. The banks cannot take the hit to their capital base IMO.
Unfortunately, what Bill Gross pointed out is that he can buy toxic assets for $1 on the $1 even if they are worth a third of that, take the 15% income stream and get a 5% return on the one third performing assets and in the end, when he takes a write down of $0.70 it will be the taxpayer that will bear it under the PPIP. This way the banks get paid off without taking any losses, the managers get a revenue stream at a good interest rate during the operating period, and at the end when the principal must be written down, the taxpayer eats the loss.
If I've misunderstood the implication, I'd appreciate a correction and an explanation.
First off, timmyone, we'd have to build another state capitol, because there's no way the state wouldn't split in two. Sacramento would be the capitol of Northern California. Long Beach, maybe.
Now, the state of Southern California would still end up with Laura Richardson and Dana Rohrerbacher, so we'd have to excise their voter strongholds when we secede from the Union. They can represent the State of Confusion or the State of Denial, but not the new state of Southern California.
This is starting to sound like a viable plan.
"Is that before or after the "$25 / 40 / 60 billion" is paid off?"
From wiki: California is responsible for 13% of the United States' gross domestic product (GDP). The state's GDP is at about $1.7 trillion (as of 2006).
Southern cluster (Texas plus few other states) would be next? Then New York cluster, Florida....
Is that "10th economy of the world" before or after the CA economy implodes from not getting a Federal bailout?
Totally OT:
The Oregon PUC says a new telephone area code is coming in January 2010.
It will OVERLAP the two area codes now in the state.
And EVERYONE in the state will now have to dial 10 digits for EVERY phone call.
Oh, yeah, that's gonna improve productivity.
broward
no, the concubine of con dao isn't quite right... more like that fly caught in that jam jar in a well known Pinter play about the menace underlying this certain relationship bwt. a man and woman...
...
on that island I suffered the wages of Brad Pitt like 'fame' ...
...
once I went snorkeling with a group of friends and the Duchess obtained a large with a 12 man crew,
once in the water the 2 couples headed one way and I headed another, every hour or so I'd pop up and look around
and notice the skiff that brought us into to the coral reefs about 40 metres away. for the rest of the day
the skiff maintained its position... when we got back to her compound which sits high above an old pier built by
the US in the 60s (complete with heli-pads) and a new pier builts entirely by her family and is even larger, although
w/o the helipads... I asked one of her minions what the deal was on that boat.....
her answer: 'Miss Phuong was afraid you might drown since you had 2 Heinekens for lunch!'
.... we then all sat down to an all you can eat crab and lobster dinner (right off the boat) with more Heinkens....
Is that "10th economy of the world" before or after the CA economy implodes from not getting a Federal bailout?
Easy. They just say, "Montana is responsible!" and get away with it
"California - next one pays!"
In Nicaragua, doctors are require to work half the day in government health care.
The other half of the day they can run a private practice if they want.
Anyone who can afford to, goes to the private practice. However, anyone who does not gets free medical care--from the same doctors. (Drugs must be paid for out of pocket.)
We could do worse here.
Oh, wait, we do.
Is that "10th economy of the world" before or after the CA economy implodes from not getting a Federal bailout?
As we go, so goes the nation.
Duke is already living in the ruins of USA already...helipad built in the 60's. Don't tell me you actually own a Huey helicopter there
btw - Florida RE was bubblicious long before California. Nyah nyah.
NYT... Rich:
There are some worthwhile protections in the Summers-Geithner legislation, especially for consumers, but there’s little that will disturb these unnamed “people” too much. I’ll leave it to financial analysts to detail why the small-bore tinkering in the administration blueprint won’t prevent another perfect storm of arcane derivatives, unchecked (and risk-rewarding) executive compensation and too-big-to-fail banks like Citi. Suffice it to say that the Obama team has not resuscitated the Glass-Steagall Act.
....
screw the financial analysts, he should have written I leave to the Commentariat on CR to detail why the ... blueprint won't prevent another perfect storm...
....
now, see how thematically I was able to weave in a personal story that no one cares to hear with a frank Rich column....
But look at the bright side, Super Bowl would be actually INTERNATIONAL event!
As we go, so goes the nation.
Ahh, California, the Egotistical Nation.
I daresay that the World itself revolves around California and once informed of this fact, will readily supply its own global bailout.
the World itself revolves around California
That's more like it. No need for applause. Just throw coinz.
the Duchess obtained a large with a 12 man crew
I'm thinking "concubine" was more appropriate than I first thought.
Clive Clusler, newly appointed Comptroller of the Fiat has announced a shift to a more stable currency base; Byzantium. The US reserves are safely stored in the wreck of the Titanic. Critics are busting at the historical parallels.
broward,
the main island is simply gorgeous... it was for the French their Devil's Island and today on it stands an old prison from the 1830s and a newer one built in
the 1920s - very similar to what you see in Papillon, at that prison the French created the 'tiger cage'....
it is also one of only 2 national reserves in all of Vietnam but it's impossible to see from Google Earth
since it has 3 military bases on it... 2 I have located, the other is a training deep in the primeval that never was deforested or bombed in any war...
....
we use to have lunch many times with the commander of the Coast Guard who spoke very good English, her English when we first met was almost zero
yet she could speak a fair amount of German because in 1989 due to a famine in 'Nam her mother sent her to live and work for a few years in Dresden
...
she once said to me, I can not protect you in Ho Chi Minh City but here I can protect you... (to this day I'm unsure whether they paid off the former
husband to get lost, she had 2 children by him, or he befell some accident... the island has a great Amalfi coast like drive ... one pass is called Shark's Teeth (mieu ca map)
and if you wanted to nail a person...
....
you must understand this woman never said alot, like a Sphinx, a great listener and never raised her voice to me once! but, last one she said cryptically, the police (meaning military) and me are the same....
....
my younger brother gave me another less stellar moniker - douche bag of con dao
we've had this since forever in CA.
after we got married we were going to live in the US.... the empress dowager (mom) ordered such
without ever asking me... she thought a Westerner can't be happy in Vietnam, truly... (this I tend to agree
with... in Asia it is all about ethnicity, they Cambodians, Burmese, Vietnamese, Chinese don't understand
citizenship... you may speak their language perfectly and even possess a dual citizenship (cost for a
Khmer citz. 45,000) but unless you are of their tribe you will always be an outsider, period, period, period.
....
the empress dowager was going to fund her business in the States (I thought, not a bad idea)
...
now, we applied for a tourist visa at the US Consulate in HCMC and she was rejected and this
was after my dad called his friend Senator Lugar (he had raised a lot of money for him over the years)
and he sent a letter to the consulate. I was beside myself... called the consulate and talked someone in
a relatively high position for hours... went over all the things she needed... she can't be too young (marriage scam)
or too old (come to US get on the dole) at 40 she was exactly where she should be.... I thought... now, next thing
is to show you will not jump your visa and return, this is where you bring in all your papers of holdings, the businesses
which she had to return to....
....
3 months later with everything t crossed and i dotted we made another attempt to get a tourist visa to the US
and she again was rejected! they questioned her about relationship with me...! do you speak English and she said
no, not well at all, and they said does your boyfriend speak Vietnamese and she answered no. (even if I instructed to lie
she can not) the interview lasted from what she said maybe 3 minutes (100 dollar fee) ... and she was rejected!!
....
so, don't tell me how screwed up the USA is...
....
"CR: Nemo, that is good, but I was hoping for a yoga joke"
After Yogi B.: "That yoga studio is too crowded. Nobody goes there anymore."
(Sorry but yoga just isn't funny)
I should add that her mom could have called Hanoi and pulled strings all the way up to the Politburo, Yes She Can...
but she would have lost face for asking a favor....
and they thought this problem was my problem with my government...
she became convinced that the USA did not want her person to visit...
....
and then came the marriage complications, she started hearing how Vietnamese
who married other US Viets or even westerners who married in Vietnam were sitting and waiting for their papers in Vietnam for at least
18 months and longer....
....
I had one plan... we could get a visa to Mexico and then jump the Rio Grande....
"So let me understand this. Bernanke and Treasury tell us they didnt have the legal framework and authority in place to put AIG and others into bankruptcy. This is the BS excuse they gave to why they paid out AIG counterparties at PAR."
The insanity is that not one elected official has asked anyone to explain in detail, on the public record, what "systemic risk" is other than finance companies and investors losing a ton of money. No for-private-profit entity is ever too big to have its equity shares wiped out, or to require its lenders be reimbursed by the public.
maybe you should have tried Canada. How hard is it to walk across the border into Montana and N. Dakota?
1 currency now -yogi: The insanity is that not one elected official has asked anyone to explain in detail, on the public record, what "systemic risk" is
Well, you know, zombies and stuff. Jeez!
If you have to ask you don't know what Civilization is Made Of!
Seriously, it sounded like that. Napoleon Dynamite sort of stuff.
no more Con Dao...
....
since NYT Rich's column today is a column that would fit here in CR land I hope to see many of your names in his comment section, get
your voices out there a bit more... that means you mp, broward, black star, nemo, EHP, MLM, MrM, counterpointer,GDD9000, Tim Waiting for 2012, and of course Lucifer and
even Rob Dawg!!! and if you're out there Ticker Tape of Doom.... and finally one of the boyz in da hood 1 currency yogi... and all the rest of the whole sick crew (of Lot 49)
....
that's right, the duke is throwing the gauntlet... you'all can crowd out some of the more feeble minded and knee jerk commenters who appear every week like clockwork...
... they are so uniform sometimes I think they are produced by one of Nemo's escaped monkeys...
....
they cut off comments at about 500
@yogi - systemic risk is when your money, and that of your buddies, is in danger of being lost.
You, me, and most of the rest of the taxpayers are not on the buddy list.
DoC D,
Your idea would require work and produce no useful result.
A condition I am wary and weary of.
If AIG did not keep enough cash to safely maintain its casualty or other valid INSURANCE policies, all their assets should immediately have been seized by eminent domain, as in the public interest, and no financial contract should have been honored. Any bailout should have only gone to policy holders, and not 100% of their claims, as there must be some reward to those consumers who paid a higher premium (in theory) for a company which was better and more safely run.
It's perfectly clear on its face.
Cambodia is so lucky to have so stand up Farang like Duke there...or not.
@yogi - AIG would have been allowed to fail - if it would have screwed anyone other than GS and the boy's club. This whole mess has been really good for GS - wipe out the competition, thanks to the gov't, change the rules so that there basically are no rules, and not only keep the party going, but shrink the guest list, and have even better door prizes (bonuses).
Saw the glossary definition for 'Rich' (in Duke's post above). Haven't seen the word 'pecuniarily' used in a long time.
Rich - Pecuniarily endowed. Maybe the def. should include 'artificially through gov't viagresse'?
Gotta love this:
Goldman to Make Record Bonus Payout
thanks timmyone!
...
every time I watch Apocalypse Now I always laughing when Kurtz's tribal warriors are shown wearing their
garb with their butt cheeks hanging out ... they were all Filipinos, not one Khmer in the bunch... and don't get me started on how Kurtz could be so fat living in
'the bush'... finally, I watched the Director's Cut of Blade last week... many times over... the studio was dead wrong to add that happy ending with the stock aerial footage from The Shining... and to open the film with a Voice Over because the audience would be confused without it! for me, the use of the Voice Over is the last refuge of hack screenwriters! (ok, Wilder did it in Sunset Boulevard but there was no other way to do it... the story was told in flashback and that was the voice of a dead man... Wilder experimented with flashback but was unhappy with it, in the end)... since I just pounced on the studio for Blade Runner, a film I may add that holds up beautifully today!
I don't know about you all but Sean Young in that movie was the Bomb! Pity life isn't like the movies. Sean in real life is a bit nutty. Like Cary Grant once famously said, I would like to be Cary Grant in life.
... the Directors Cut of Apocalypse is not as good as the studio release, Coppola is wrong... the studio was right, once they get on that boat don't get off until the end - there lies the tension - like adding that plantation killed that tension, plus that ridiculous scene of Kilgore chasing them around for that surfboard, c'mon Francis...
has anyone read the Tom Friedman piece in the Times yet?
he writes "The playwright Tom Stoppard once observed that democracy is not the voting, “it’s the counting." "
I believe this line is from the play The Real Thing, sadly, I don't have my books with me to check but if it is
it's a slight mis-reading of that scene where the protagonist is speaking to his wife about Billy and the protest movement...
he is speaking from an elitist Hamiltonian point of view against the mob's POV...
"Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth." (Benjamin Disraeli)
I know it Altered, and I've said so many times. I had a long legal debate with sportsfan one night about AIG's contracts being voidable, even before I came across this superb article :
The Institutional Risk Analyst: AIG: Before Credit Default Swaps, There Was Reinsurance
Treasured Altered Reality ....
lot of Vietnamese in B.C, Mexico sounded easier... who knows, I could've run into the bones of Ambrose Bierce or Castenada's shaman
I don't harp on GS only because I have a large bet on their stock. (Yup, fighting the FED, under the careful balance sheet analysis by Reggie Middleton)
Deflution. Stagflu. Swineflation. De-flu! De-Flu!
Sorry but we haven't been able to serve the page you requested - please try again -
Service - The Independent
Economic toll: Pandemic to cost Britain £42bn
£42bn losses are predicted to hit Britain as a result of a three per cent fall in gross domestic product (GDP) due to the swine flu pandemic, according to a new report from the Oxford Economics think tank, due to be released tomorrow. Researchers claim that swine flu could threaten already fragile businesses and put further strains on financial markets in what could become a "vicious cycle that postpones the recovery".
Deflation is a "significant risk" as a result of the pandemic's impact on the economy – putting back economic recovery by two years, says the report. The predictions are based on a 30 per cent infection rate, should a pandemic begin in October and last for six months.
A $2.5 trillion cut in global GDP is a possibility – with a flu outbreak in the autumn hitting the world economy just as it starts to recover from the credit crunch.
Hey Duke
Bored much? I need to do the annual on the plane next week but my hearts not really in it.
Tinder. Sparks. Anticipation.
"As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination."
-- The last line of the last letter from Ambrose Bierce,
December 26, 1913
Yogi - is your trip tomorrow?
I looked up Ambrose Bierce, thanks for the impetus. What can you say about someone who was a civil war hero, asthmatic, adventurer and wrote for Fun magazine?
Ambrose Bierce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OT: In a flu pandemic we Just Need Respirators, and lots of them. Last time I checked we had 35k, we need 350k, the world ... more.
Maybe we can convert kitchen appliances from vacant housing ...
@Duke - Lucifer should be able to tell you where Ambrose is - after all, the guy wrote Luci's dictionary.
@yogi - the smart money should stick with the horse the gov't is betting on - at least until they shouldn't anymore.
-- the smart money should stick with the horse the gov't is betting on --
OK, which Gov't?
don't you believe it...
not sure what you're getting at....
....
Tim Waiting for 2012
‘Bubble of Belief’ in China Economy Seen Bursting
for some time now I have not been one in the choir about the Chinese production leviathan,
... I know all to well their nature... stats out of China? transparency? ever look at the comparison of
what the CCCP claimed and what was the actual facts were after their downfall? Me and dictatorial regimes
have had some interesting dances and they haven't cut my legs off yet.....
I thought the Brooks Brothers ad was part of the humor! WASPs strolling on the grounds of their estate .... gold stored in the basement safe?
Rex - think 'employment'. You just came up with a way to hire a million+ workers, operating manual respirators 24/7. I'd suggest going with continental shifts, and don't forget break and lunch coverage - the customers might not appreciate holding their breath that long.
@Duke - China could make things really interesting if they ever decided to burn their (financial) ships.
No I'm travelling in July.
Bierce was my father's favorite author, and his short stories are brilliant, with Hemingway's (later) gift for brevity but with an appreciation for the absurd.
My money says eventually the gov't will give up on saving bank equity when the facade crumbles.
Treasury-Altered Reality Plan wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 4:00 am
Rex - think 'employment'.
This automation rage has certainly jumped the shark.
To enjoy wage arbitrage fully we'll have to down-tech.
Happy Father's Day to anyone here who is one.
Treasury-Altered Reality Plan (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 4:05 a
Happy Father's Day to anyone here who is one.
Thanks!
And Happy Self Restraint Day to anyone who isn't
@duke
-- not sure what you're getting at --
There is a general sense of paralysis I see in society, and feel in myself. I have personally the apprehension that something lightning fast is setting up, and I would by nature rather be advancing towards it rather than retreating away.
But I am becalmed. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink.
Literary references abound today...
in a private conversation I had with Jack Welch in 1986
he said they were pulling their 6 to 7 deals out of there...
most were manufacturing and something offshore, if memory serves...
I quote, "China is a shell game." He went on to say that he could not see
how money could be made there, and that "they were mostly interested in
not so much in trade but in stealing our technology."
This conversation took place for all you scoring at home in the library
of the president's house at Columbia...
....
as someone who a number of years before I had taken the time to study the speaking,
reading and writing of Mandarin, plus studying the cultural and political history of China and
it's present political system, I also studied Law in the Communist World and also Soviet Law from John Hazard
who studied under Visinski (sp) of Moscow Show Trial fame as an exchange student in '39, all at the Law school...
these words from Jack Welch changed my trajectory ....
....
on a sad note I had an acquaintance with a guy named John who was a great student in this area, esp. all things Chinese,
both of us chased and dated the same beautiful Shanghaiese girl at Columbia (did she screw up my Mandarin terribly)
sadly, he died on his way over to Beijing on that KAL 007 flight!
Duke, your stories continue to amaze and entrance.
OT! Seek and ye shall find. Ventilators on the Cheap.
Clip these instructions out and save them, kids, and be the first on your block.
The Pandemic Ventilator
Pandemic Ventilator Project
-- in a private conversation I had with Jack Welch in 1986
he said they were pulling their 6 to 7 deals out of there... --
So the GE turbines that line Tehachapi pass come from some other China then?
TJ and The Bear (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 1:34 pm
wrote " Word is that Cuba has the best cost-to-life-expectancy ratio of all, but for some reason they're not a migration magnet. Go figure."
....
don't get trapped in Michael Moore land, what he saw is not indicative of the Cuban medical system....
....
acquainted with a man who lived in Cuba from '91 to '99,
her is what he said, you go into a hospital room where 3 corners stink of urine and it hasn't been painted since the Revolution,
he said, you see doctor for a mere flesh wound and they want to cut off your arm...
....
and don't get him started on the castro brothers owned shops around Cuba where they import cheap shoes and mark them up 400%...
I could on....
@Duke - any youtube vids with the duchess in them? Do you have a filmography website?
"You suppose events in Iran are freaking out TPTB in China?"
They have one thing between them and Iran--the Khyber Pass. Presently, the US has a forlorn straddling the only land route from China to the ME. Strategically, China is pleased to have our forces doing what they would otherwise (eventually) need to do.
re stories that captivate and entrance: one can be whatever one can imagine on line
don't you believe it...
what jack said was they were completing those projects and he did mention
turbines, although I now realize I thought he was talking about jet engines....
and maybe he was at that... I was not nor have ever been an engineer
but I could read a Chinese trade contract given the right amount of effort...
he also mentioned something to do with what sounded like car manufacturing... or assembly units...
now this was in early '86, but in mid '92 he was on the cover of Business Week, I believe....
touting him as a visionary with a backdrop of China! my head nearly exploded!
...
I had one other conversation with Jack in '90 but we did not touch on China, I had done my time
at Solly in bonds and China was a distant dream... did quiz him about selling NBC,
he said, "NBC is not for sale... you don't sell beachfront property." This interview was driven
by a market report research I was engaged in by IDC on HDTV... I did two reports and made a lot
of forecasts... I spoke to ever major player in the world, I think in that sphere... inc, all my Hollywood
connects (that was the hook why they hired me as a rookie... a former bond research analyst) for instance, Edward Blier,
former Warner Studio honcho and later cable & Pay-per-view (a subsection of my report) head...
Iran might have another revolution...maybe there is still hope for Americans too.
Who knows, maybe some US army captain in year 2013 says "fck this sht, who is with me?!" 
And the rest is history...
Who knows, maybe some US army captain in year 2013 says "fck this sht, who is with me?!"
And those will be the last words anyone hears him utter.
Riff'n on Oz
Visas and Passports and Taxes, Oh My!
CDC 2009 H1N1 Flu
There seems to be continued paranoia about H1N1 influenza (swine flu). Instead of asking regular bloggers, why not just go to the source of much of the data itself?
H1N1 is a novel influenza. Nobody knows what the future will hold for it. However, as I said yesterday thus far it is NOTHING like the dreaded avian influenza. And in fact it is behaving much more like regular influenza. Yes, some people have died and will die from H1N1 influenza. However, people die EVERY year from regular influenza (influenza is one of the most common causes of death in America).
The chief reasons for H1N1 acting differently thus far are
1) it is novel, and thus nobody has had it before, thus the entire population is susceptible
2) there is not a vaccine vs the disease (since it's new) and thus again the entire population is susceptible.
3) it is a new strain. (every strain is a little different)
I've seen a lot of fear mongering out there in both the mainstream press and also some bloggers here. Thus far their fear mongering is unjustified. Yes, H1N1 is a pain in the butt. Yes, some people have and will die from it. Yes, its season is extended compared to routine influenza which is not overly surprising (mostly due to the reasons elucidated above). yes, it is POSSIBLE (but unknown) that this winter will be "bad".
HOWEVER, please keep some things in mind:
ONLY the very worst cases of H1N1 get confirmed. why is this? because we don't have the time or money or equipment to test everybody. thus, if you come in with mild "swine flu" you'll get sent home with NO TEST and tylenol/ibupfofen.
If you get a moderate case, then you MIGHT be tested with the rapid test (which is inaccurate, they're coming out with a better test)
If you're hospitalized then you get the "real test"
So for every 1 CONFIRMED (by lab) test there are most likely HUNDREDS of unconfirmed cases
For every 1 case you hear about in your child's school, it MAY OR MAY NOT be confirmed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is suspected.
I, as example, am seeing about 8-9 patients a day that I suspect has H1N1. I'm testing maybe 1 of them per 1-2 days using the rapid test (what's the point? the rapid test isn't accurate enough yet and there is no treatment for most people. thus their positive test doesn't change ANYTHING)
I'm confirming about 1 case a month using culture.
thus, for every 1 case that I personally confirm (by true culture), I suspect about 200
For every 1 person I bother rapid testing, I suspect 10-20. (and I'm decreasing my use of the rapid test now to more like 1 person out of 40-60)
Then the people I tell that I suspect (without test/culture) have H1N1 go and tell their school/work/friends/family that they have swine flu.
Also, I am AGGRESSIVE in my use of the rapid test. Some of my colleagues haven't done a single test. they just diagnose clinically. My ER colleagues are doing almost no testing. just treating (in appropriately I might add)
So when you ask your school about Swine flu, are you getting
-the number of culture confirmed cases?
-the number of rapid test positive cases? (which has a high false positive rate?)
-the number of people told they have swine flu by a doc without culture or rapid test?
you must understand what this data does mean and what it does not.
interestingly, one thing that happens due to this selection bias
-the numbers of H1N1 cases reported will be drastically smaller than the true number
-the "fatality" or "morbidity/mortality" rates will appear far worse than they actually are (in percentage terms) because the denominator is smaller (due to the vast numbers of unconfirmed cases).
Yesterday some blogger tried to disprove my claims by using some sensationalistic crappy news article where a reporter is trying to make a story. They find an ICU doc who says "I've never seen this before with influenza". Perhaps he isn't really an ICU doc? or is it just like that in his/her particular ICU??? Last year 5 people in my state and 2 people in my ICU died from regular influenza. (compared to one death from H1N1 so far). This year in my ICU the number of people admitted with H1N1 is no higher than typical influenza SO FAR. (that can obviously change. we are all waiting to see what happens this fall/winter)
again, it is always scary (for everybody) when something "new" comes along.
And we should all be careful (wash hands, stay home when sick, GET THE VACCINE AS SOON AS IT COMES OUT FOR EVERYBODY ESPECIALLY YOUNG CHILDREN AND OLD PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH MEDICAL ISSUES NO MATTER HOW AFRAID YOU ARE OF VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS etc). But spreading paranoia is not going to help.
most everybody has by now been exposed to H1N1 in some fashion if they live in any sizeable Metro location.
so if you ask "has my child been exposed in their school?" My knee jerk response would be "yes".
CDC 2009 H1N1 Flu
Electric Power Flash
All this talk about China and power being the real GDP metric made me wonder: what about the US?
from the latest data in the spreadsheet (April year over year):
Total electrical generation: -4.9% yoy
Industrial: -13.6% yoy
Coal storage is very high. In general fossil use has decreased while nuclear and renewables increased, which is peachy.
timmyone (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 3:22 pm
"Duke is already living in the ruins of USA already...helipad built in the 60's. Don't tell me you actually own a Huey helicopter there..?"
....
the USA built a small cinder block prison there but our prisons were in 3 places I believe in mainly I Corp territory ....
....
the ownership of private planes, helicopters and even pleasure craft is prohibited... , on Con Dao the ownership of cars is restricted to 4 hotels and the military only and of course her family... she can't drive but she always has a driver...
....
had some great times. gonna miss the place....!
Yearning, nice write up.
Since I work for UCD, does this mean I'll have a 4% to 8% less chance of exposure beginning 8/1/09? >; )
(I'm convinced I've been exposed already but couldn't resist the snark)
Now to go make coffee and watch the sun come up over the water....
too good not to share
404 - Not Found - sacbee.com
Bailed-out bank's deals raise concerns
'A Bee investigation of internal shareholder documents and public lending records found that at Community Business Bank, those likely to benefit most from the taxpayer-funded windfall are a small group of insiders and their associates. From its inception 3 1/2 years ago, the bank has steered many of its assets to a handful of directors, as well as their relatives and business partners.'
Not that many of didn't suspect this happening...
@Yearning to Learn
The economic impact of pandemic is worth evaluating, and the panic-mongering affects that analysis.
There has been no mention of H1N1 hitting Africa yet. Do you think that when it does, the story will be different due to AIDS?
"....the bank has steered many of its assets to a handful of directors"
.....the looting continues.
Good morning - missed the night shift - while it is possibly true, it doesn't appear to be under the auspices of HIPAA as the protection there is against linkage of the information to an individual as I understand it.
Gurus. I do not think that word means what they think it means.
--People who chant meaningless mantras, have no idea how the world really works , but nontheless lay claim to "ultimate truth"? Sounds about right to me.
I'm sitting here in the Duke's version of the Brown Derby in Phnom Penh @ 7:40 pm...
since it's father's day (not that I am one... but I'm always looking for an excuse... the Irish in me) I think a drink is in order...
...
a young, very attractive Cambodian waitress just served me a flaming B52 quite unaware of the irony....
irony you ask? perhaps first you need to check the B52 bombing patterns and tonnage of bombs
dropped across Kampuchea by our USAF... in my humble opinion we should have a number of Americans in prison today for that
massive crime against humanity including politicians and the military starting with my boyhood hero (in HS)
Henry Alfred Kissinger... sorry HAK for calling you out but "I see no method, sir."
@Duke - when people meet you in person, is the first question - "I thought you'd be bigger"?
"Iran Outlaws Public Protest"
.......I wonder if this includes griping about the weather?
thoughtful and well reasoned article and (even though some will say it is, for me, out of character) on topic:
The Actual Money Supply
"in my humble opinion we should have a number of Americans in prison today for that massive crime against humanity including politicians and the military starting with my boyhood hero (in HS)"
Asians got their revenge (maybe not Cambodians but Vietnamese at least) ...the bombardment of cheap electronics and other products into USA continues unabated while stealing the US manufacturing base
Double-whammy.
@BSR - I wonder if CR and Hoocoodanode are banned in Iran?
"I wonder if CR and Hoocoodanode are banned in Iran? "
Unfortunately, I imagine they'll be banned HERE before there.
....time to milk, water, feed & clean....Despues
"But spreading paranoia is not going to help."
I haven't observed any paranoia over H1N1. Perhaps where you are? I'm in DC.
Treasury-Altered Reality Plan (profile) wrote on Sun, 6/21/2009 - 6:39 pm
@Duke - any youtube vids with the duchess in them?
(no film site)
TARP... I had two YouTube videos of the Duchess posted on YouTube... one is still there...
but you're asking for the unmasking of the Lone Deranged Ranger since I appear in it briefly....
sooner or later Louis had to get wise about Clarke.... what the hell...
.....
in two shots you see a distant small mountain, that island is on the other side of the bay, they own a chunk of that
and almost all the land on the opposite port side... my name for that island is Fortress Phuong, she never never understood
why I called the island such or her the Duchess...
....
I made this on the island one afternoon as a quick sort of Valentine...
YouTube - Winter of Discontent Turns into a Sea of Love (music: Bobby Darin)
I might post a more interesting vid I've been working on....
thanks Bobby Darin for the use of your music &
the snow scene is on east 11th st, NYC
...
and finally, happy hour 2 for 1 here comes another bombing run....
TARP
I am Big, it's the World that's Gotten Smaller
Iran: roughly 60 percent of the population is under 30.
And now these old Iranian dudes banned public demonstrations?! Darwin Award candidate list of year 2009 just grew by one.
Good morning all
Chinese Xinhua breaks the news of the day from Iran
Daughter of Iran's Rafsanjani arrested
TEHRAN, June 21 (Xinhua) -- A daughter and four other family members of Iran's influential former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have been arrested for provoking "riots," Iran's satellite channel Press TV reported on Sunday.
Faezeh Rafsanjani and four other unidentified family members of Rafsanjani were arrested after they allegedly took part in "unauthorized protest rallies" in central Tehran, Press TV said.
"The detainees have been accused of provoking the riots," the channel said, without giving more details.
State television has shown pictures of Faezeh Rafsanjani attending a rally and speaking to opposition supporters last week.
I haven't observed any paranoia over H1N1. Perhaps where you are? I'm in DC.
And you don't work for the Army, because the paranoia level about the virus was pretty high where I work.
---Mandatory reporting of ALL (personal and business) travel to states where H1N1 had been reported. That was quickly simplified to ALL travel.
--Had to rewatch "pandemic flu" training which we had just completed in Feb (20 minutes of video to say "cover your mouth and wash your hands."
--When calling in sick, must give an exacting list of symptoms.
Gooood morning Mary-Nam!
That was quite a night shift. Still catching up with the articles.
@Duke - thanks for the shout-out. I'm doing my bit, but under a fake name that my parents came up with.
C
This country is positively old compared to Iran.
No wonder we are so sluggish in comparison.
They are young and vibrant and mad. Unlike ConDao's drunk and stoned westerners living in paradise.
The Mullahs are in for a rude awakening to the power of the street.
I have come to the conclusion that any country with a lot of young people is inherently unstable as they do not easily find a place in society and engage in productive work.
High unemployment is a sign that you are in serious trouble- kinda like the direction we are staggering into.
Someday this war's gonna end...
@volker - interesting article, but the guy seems to have blinders on while playing with a pet theory.
Duke - Re NY Times - IMO, the whole point of commenting is to start an intelligent discourse. I can't see it happening in the NY Times Comment section
@MrM - Don't tell Virginia that... oh, wait - wrong NY paper... carry on.
"Iran Outlaws Public Protest"
Screw this whole set-your-Twitter-locale-to-Tehran meme. What we need to do is find a way to smuggle some SAWs and antitank missles in there.
Actually, I'm for ridding the world of codger preachers wherever they may attempt to control lives. Maybe the revolution will spread to the US next and we can overthrow the tyranny on our own soil.
@Zack - you may have to wait a while for that. The boomers have the young guns outnumbered still, but the clock is ticking.
Actually, I'm for ridding the world of codger preachers wherever they may attempt to control lives. Maybe the revolution will spread to the US next and we can overthrow the tyranny on our own soil.
That is way to much reality for a financial board. Let's talk about bond prices.
Citizen Allen M
yes, you're right... one czar freed the serfs and instituted free or very cheap education across Russia...
but he made one mistake... forgot to make some jobs..
and what did it produce?
people like V.I. Lenin, ... educated, unemployed malcontents who sat around cafes plotting various revolutions...
Good intro to shadow banking over at BaselineScenario. Uncle Billy even shows up to point out the obvious.
But back to the topic at hand, Off the Rails in Phnom Penh is not a bad precis of the wild southeast farang waster stylee. At least it was ten years ago. I'm sure everything's cleaned up and straightened out since then.
C
@ghost - with 5%/day swings, is anyone except the PPT playing in bonds right now?
As unemployment here surges, kindly remember many young folks mustering out of our foreign adventures are going to be a tad angry at the disaster that await them here upon their return.
Now, even should oil fall back to $40, our economy looks destined to keep slowing.
Structural change is forced upon us once again. Can the mandarins recover the mandate of Heaven and make us all happy?
I doubt it, so get ready for some more really weird things to pop up and smack us in the head as the housing crisis grinds on.
Someday this war's gonna end...
re: who is trading: it's all big money and volumes are down
sure sign of a top, but I'm not predicting
volker not predict, volker dumb ass
volker salesman
Citizen Allen M: sounds like Rome...
another well reasoned article from TDR:
You're Rich and You Don't Know It
Alan Blinder writes in today's NY Times:
The central bank is holding the Fed funds rate at nearly zero and has created a mountain of bank reserves to fight the financial crisis. Yes, these moves are unusual, but these are unusual times. Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy.
Yet, it is the credible "incompetence" on the side of the Central Bank that is one of the key tools in fighting deflation in a liquidity trap. This is the idea first suggested by Krugman and then formalized in the classic paper by G.B. Eggertsson The Deflation Bias and Committing to Being Irresponsible.
Whaddya know - maybe all those missteps and mishandling of the current crisis by the Fed are all part of a carefully crafted plan to appear reckless and incompetent in order to force everybody believe the inflation is around the corner? Maybe that's what was explained to Krugman over the roast beef dinner?
(yes, /sarcasm off)
See you all later
Feckless, no we weren't.
Njah njah youself.
Pigged!
When elected government officials secretly collude with bankers to create a non-governmental
Federal Reserve Bank that controls the currency of the country and systematically generates
inflation to allow government to spend at an ever increasing rate.
Taxing citizens to create bureaucratic government agencies and programs that fail to
accomplish their mission while continuing to grow in size as politicians use them to reward
the contributors to their re-election campaigns.
good website: Econ & Finance Articles Updated Daily
Obammi is an empty suit, that's for sure. He will be out in 2012. Hillary & McCain were
right regarding his lack of experience and appeal to working, hard working white people.