It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
No one can argue that the trend has been down. Volatility often signals a trend change. For how long, i don’t know.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It means that I can’t hold on to a position for a decent gain, and it means I get to practice trading through drawdowns. I hope
this choppy period is over soon, but I’ll keep taking my setups as they come no matter what. All I know is that streaks happen,
they’re unpredictable, and I sure like them better when they’re the winning kind!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I think nasty choppy trade like this indicates lighter volumes and itchy trigger fingers. There isn’t much conviction out there in
terms of market direction. We are clearly waiting for some significant macroeconomic event to drive the market in one direction
or the other. Of course I think that this will be some kind of reflationary event.
It’s hard to know what might be the trigger but it is clear that the $ will not go to the sky, and treasury yields will not go to zero.
I have been seeing quite a lot of volatility in the long bonds, and that often presages a fall in price, whatever the instrument.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This is, in my experience, typical as markets progress toward capitulation. The tempo increases, as do the violence of the
oscillations, until even the most dedicated traders are “thrown” from the horse or wisely decide to step back to the sidelines and
let others’ blood be shed instead of their own.
Kinda like playing Space Invaders, or musical chairs.
We’re some time away from the end of this game, IMHO. We’re not seeing swings increasing in size … yet.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
today the Dow was up 150, but the Nasdaq was flat, the Philly semiconductor index was down 2%, and the XLF was down nearly
1.5%. This baby’s going lower; however, I’d rather not initiate a new short position unless we get a significant rally (at least 8%).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The short interest data I have looked at recently tells me that hedge funds are not providing the liquidity they have in the past by
shorting stocks. They are deleveraging and are basically hamstrung. They will get creamed with redemptions, as who will pay 2
and 20 for mutual fund type returns? The result is a market that has lower than capitulation volume with choppy trading. Also a
market where no short squeezing can take place on a macro basis.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
As leverage leaves, paper stays, creating relatively light volume. Programs are moving levels quickly, as correlation rises. Arbs
can’t hold positions.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It’s bigger trouble than that because as equities continue to fall banks have less to loan. Why banks are all invested in each other
I have no idea but it’s going to be part of what will cause the total collapse. The Asian banks are now taking it from falling
housing. Each bank will take out the next. Who’s the next Lehman I have no idea. Puts are too expensive on banks.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Well, the market will go lower. It is simple. “Leverage” is another word for “Margin Financing”. When the “outsourcing” of
computer risk modeling is allowed…. the end result is extreme leverage on the non-fundamentally sound derivative CD “Swaps”
or “Insurance” if you prefer. You have to admit a great “Marketing” job was done all-around. Question(Thinking)…. If there were
less people around (Population) when the Great Depression occured (Industrial Economy, People with the means/mindset to
survive)……. Since there are alot more people now (Financial Economy) would it stand to reason that with a low unemployment
level say @10 to 15% and our special American social system (Unemployment Benefits and the like) in place could this lower rate
now be just as financially devestating as the Great Depression rate of @25%?? I think it might be. I think an economic belief is
dying. Monatary policy has its uses, but, when the pendulum swings further in one direction(Forced by a belief) it will swing back
harder in the other. (Chicago School). Heterodox is the only way to go. Understand the systems as if it were a living, breathing
entity.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
What I see in this is analogous to the screech when a mike gets too close to the speaker. Sometimes it is just unpleasant but it is
sometimes destructive of the speaker cone or amplifier components if it is allowed to grow too loud or go on unchecked for too
long. Even if not destructive, it is usually beneficial to stop the ringing so that the sound system can return to “normal” function
(even thought the ringing is also a normal characteristic of such systems).
To correct the deafening screech, one must either move the mike away from the speaker (reduce the feedback coupling) or turn
down the amplifier (increase the loss in the feedback loop) or change the time response (add delay) in the system.
If the analogy of amplifier feedback system analysis holds, in the economic feedback system of the stock market, to correct this
ringing (price volatility), the system must have a loss and or delay introduced to prevent excessive instability. This solution is
simple in concept but it is very difficult in the complexity of real world politics to make such an adjustment.
Thursday, 20 November 2008 at 1h 38m 23s
Grateful Dead quote
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.
-–The Grateful Dead , The Wheel
Saturday, 15 November 2008 at 5h 32m 9s
Deductions and Standard Deductions
Deductions and Standard Deductions on your taxes are the same thing as the government giving you a subsidy.
Think about it.
You’ve already paid the money. When you fill out the tax forms, you are applying to receive some of this money back or — god
forbid — how much you owe. But you already gave the government the money last year.
Subtracting from something you’ve already paid is the same as someone giving you money to pay for something.
I just thought I’d make this thought process clear for anyone out there who cares.
Saturday, 15 November 2008 at 4h 50m 3s
Socialistic Hubris
I am responding to this blog post by Matthew Yglesias, who is an interesting and intelligent fellow -- except that his economic
views tend to be colored more with a philosophical predilection than are flavored by a view of history.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
even if we manage to halt the slide into recession we’ll have created a situation in which it’s difficult to return again to
growth.
We ain't halting this slide. Every volcano must run its course, and right now the pyroclastic flow is still not near completion.
Also, government providing funds for an end result is different than government paying off the debts of the company, or buying
the shares of the company, or appointing officials to the management of the company.
Acting like this is a fluke or an historical aberration is indicative of someone who doesn't know the history of laws and
government interaction with the legal basis of the marketplace over the last 350 when we were a few British colonies on the East
coast, or the same said history for the entire 4,000 years of human civilization.
Corn is subsidized by the government. So are you. That's why you get "deductions" and "Standard deductions" on your tax form.
So are various vegetable crops, and peanuts, and steel, and even the big daddy, oil. More than 1,000 companies are allowed to
use Bermuda banks to skirt the tax laws. When toxins from China were found in baby food, when spoiled meat and poisoned
spinach spread across the nation, government actions had everything to do with the banning and recalls.
Selling government bonds and using government debt instruments as elements in the portfolio baskets of companies is an
inescapable fact.
And don't you ever wonder why a lot of "public service ads" appear on radio shows and various advertising outlets, ... yes, just
like the favored national newspapers back to the Andrew Jackson days, government business is another form of subsidization.
Did someone say Halliburton?
Government is always involved, one way or another. We however make the choice as to how government -- we the people -- is
involved and to what extent. We can choose the best use of resources or we can deny that those resources exist and call it
socialism like it was a whore.
And furthermore ... as for this comment ...
A lot of this talk has an air of socialistic hubris about it...outside of a relatively narrow range of utility-type activities,
[state-owned enterprises] are collosal flops
Utility-type activities only??
The post office
The FAA
The DMV
The Police
The National Forest Service
OSHA
The Coast Guard
The National Guard
CSPAN
The GAO
With all due respect, Mr. Yglesias, Me-thinks you applied the philosophical principle to thickly.
Thursday, 6 November 2008 at 2h 26m 23s
Yes indeed
After eight years of having Republicans call me an un-American troop-hating fag-loving socialist, after months of John McCain
embracing the hate to a level where his own supporters were calling out for Barack Obama to be assassinated, no one is going to
be permitted to tell me with a straight face that "oh you know, both sides do it."
Your side was abominable. Your side was hateful. Your side race-baited. Your side gay-baited. Your side lied like we've never
seen in recent presidential campaign history. Your side used a tax-cheat who would do better under Obama's tax proposal to be
your everyman on the issue of taxes. Your side, in a veiled effort at race-baiting, said Obama doesn't put his country first. Your
side had the audacity to call Obama a socialist. Your side suggested he was a Muslim. Your side suggested he was a terrorist.
Your side suggested he was Osama bin Laden.
Spare me the crap about how both sides do it. You people are a disgrace, you've been a disgrace for eight long years, and all
your hate and lying and venom and vitriol finally bit you in your collective fat ass.
Democrats don't do nasty, and they certainly don't do it well. Lord knows I wish they did, but they don't. Republicans elevate it to
a religion. You are the party of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Angry, bitchy, bitter and elitist. What do we
have to compare? Jesse Jackson, I often hear from my Republican friends. Um, maybe in 1980 when he was relevant. It's been 28
years, got any other examples? Michael Moore, you say? What has Michael Moore said - name one thing - that's comparable to
the filth that regularly issues forth from Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter and, of late, McCain and Palin?
Democrats, when they skewer (which isn't often enough), do it with biting truth. Republicans skewer, early and often, with vicious
lies. It goes back to a more general philosophy that liberals have: If we just tell them the truth, the people will agree with us.
Republicans are far less sanguine. They know that a good lie beats the truth any day of the week.
[SOURCE:John Avarosis | Americablog | 5
November 2008]
Thursday, 6 November 2008 at 1h 56m 1s
Nader is a poser
He may have done some good in the 1970's and 1980's when he was younger, but he's not the same person now.
Makes
me
wonder if someone has something on Nader (blackmail) because otherwise, WTF (what the f**k) is he talking about in this Fox
segment?
Really. It is quite pathetic.
Notice how Ralph's left eye ( on the right side of the screen) is droppy whenever he talks. Could this be cognitive dissonance
from the right side of his brain?
You tell me.
Ralph has now become a puppet, squawking about the duplicity of so-called reformers in order to avoid his own duplicity.
Thursday, 6 November 2008 at 1h 34m 54s
The Palin spending spree
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously
reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous
profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But
instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as
Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a
wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their
credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent
"tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some
articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting
Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
A Palin aide said: "Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that
staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more
about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."
McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on
clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech
Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.
If you click the link, the following is on page 2 at the very bottom of the bullet list.
When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a
good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You
know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that
you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What
I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my
house. It's because of something collective'."
Yeh, like Brian Williams knows something about "personal".
Systematic problems cannot be effectively managed if the method is dependent upon voluntary behavior.
We can't just advertise actors or real people who show us "the way" on the television. Some people will respond, but many others
will not. Yet the impression of the effect is still the same, because everyone will "see" the same advertisements. This is not how
you solve systemic problems.
If you want to improve the entire system, you can't think that a small percentage of the elements that create the system will
change the system if the remaining elements don't change. When you clean the house, you don't clean a small percentage of the
house and actually call it clean.
The only way to treat a systematic problem is to involve 100% of the elements that make up the system in the collective solution
to the systematic problem. The necessary functions of the government need to be paid for? Solution: assess taxes on every
single citizen, maybe even while taking into account income. Want to make sure everyone has access to sanitation and water?
Make a law that mandates every abode has to have running water and needs to get inspected by a government official.
I've spoken about this many times. The idea that we can run a government based on voluntary compliant with the law is
ridiculous.
Joe "the plumber" says its a matter of "principles" whenever he was asked why people making more than $250,000 (less than 2%
of the entire population) shouldn't pay more taxes. He'll talk about how people who "work hard" shouldn't be penalized in order
to help others who don't work. "Why should my hard earned money pay for someone else?" is the typical rhetorical question this
line of argument will use to unhinge the notion of collective responsibility. This is the selfish position. I makes my money and I
owns my property.
But it is also the most dysfunctional, because we are all connected and interdependent whether we like it or not. The right-wing
conservative belief in "liberty" and "freedom" from government presumes otherwise, and here is the important point: their linking
to those words are through the filter of this presumption. The idea that the roads they drive on, the toilets they flush, and the
telephone systems they use have anything to do with government and collective responsibility is vanished from these "principles".
Self-flattery will always use the most elated words as justification for selfishness.
Sunday, 2 November 2008 at 17h 32m 40s
Palin falls for prank phone call from French President
This is hella funny. She actually thinks President Sarkozy is calling her.
Friday, 31 October 2008 at 0h 9m 43s
Just another good ole boy
Village Voice::14 May
2002
''[The Wall Street Journal's John Fund] was supposed to spend Thanksgiving with me and didn't,'' she recalls. ''I questioned him
when he got home and he beat me up. I was cowering in the corner. He was screaming. He said, 'Get out, bitch,' and he left, and I
called the police. He came back and beat me up again. When the police arrived, I was shaking and crying and very upset. He was
very calm. A lady officer walked in and asked me if I was on drugs. John told me that none of the charges would stick.'' In mid
January, the mainstream media first reported on Fund's alleged abuse.
Around that time, Pillbury says, she moved out and Fund agreed to give her money to help pay her bills. He watched her write
checks from his account and deposit them in her account. Soon after, she says, ''I found out that my accounts were frozen and he
told me that they were going to stay frozen until I contacted these members of the media and gave them papers saying that I had
lied about the abuse.'' She says the bank did not return her calls. Says Pillsbury-Foster, ''This is obviously part of a pattern of
abuse and attempted control, and yet the D.A. refused to listen to her.''
SF Chronicle::5
February 2003
The California Federation of Republican Women holds its big two-day conference down in Ontario (San Bernardino County) over
the weekend -- but the private buzz isn't about President Bush, it's about John Fund. If the name escapes you, he's the Wall
Street Journal's online columnist who -- after taking aim at Bill Clinton's sexual exploits -- wound up with his own tabloid
troubles. Fund's fun in the sun began with an affair with Melinda Pillsbury-Foster some two decades ago. It ended in 1998 when
Fund took up with Pillsbury-Foster's grown daughter, who accused him of getting her pregnant and then asking her to have an
abortion -- all of which he's denied. Fund was later charged with domestic abuse, but a judge dismissed the case in December.
Bradblog(with video):18 May 2007
John Fund is an evil, unrepentant liar who despises democracy and the very American values that it represents.
[SOURCE:Cynthia Cotts | Village Voice | 14 May
2002]
[SOURCE:Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross | SF Chronicle | 5
February 2003]
[SOURCE:Brad
Friedmann | Bradblog.com | 19 May 2007]
Video: [SOURCE:interview
with John Fund | Bill Maher Show | 18 May 2007]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
John Fund wrote a book called "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" that is filled with lies and completely
fraudulent selective details. Look at his eyes when you watch the above video. Turn the sound off and just look at his eyes.
You see what I mean.
His eyes get tight and very deep with the darkness of deception. Funny how he resurfaces in 2007 with all the turmoil of 2002-
2003 behind him. But of course.