Financial topics

[aedens]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DROWNING OF NONSWIMMERS

"And, like Ahab, none of his crew on the Pequod questioned his judgment, even those who tacitly understood that his policies would lead to the eventual destruction of the Pequod, of home and hearth, of city and industry."

“We expect consolidation to continue in the sector, with U.S. and European firms looking for scarcity value and market-leading positions, Asian firms looking for technology and Middle Eastern firms looking for vertical integration,” the analysts wrote.

[Higgenbotham]

You were correct in your admonitions about shorting, aedens. Of course, I had mentioned several times that this type of meltup will be extreme and unpredictable as to its conclusion. My loss thus far is about 20 points on a 200% short position, thus 40 points relative to previous positions. I have bobbed and weaved to cut that loss by a small amount.

Of course it has become obvious that this monomanaical harpooning attempt of the deflation whale by Captain Ahab Bernanke , unless stopped by outside forces, will be taken to the extreme of sinking the Pequod of the world financial system. I talk a lot about polarity inversion or mirroring. In the last crisis, Hitler, the anti-Jew, was at the helm. Nobody dared criticize or confront him. Now we see the polarity inversion effect. The reverberations of past crises and hatreds are now sown so deep as to prevent regeneration and a new Dark Age resolution is nearly guaranteed complete in my opinion.

I would be remiss not to admit that those of us who have the impulse to counter Bernanke in the markets are mini versions of Captain Ahab. There is a monomaniac trying to harpoon the whale while those of us trying to counter this and restore order become similarly maniacal, as the loss of order creates that mental tendency and disorder within the population at large, with every person susceptible to different maladies depending on their makeup. For example, some may find themselves simply depressed, others angry, while, in my case, greed or pride may be at the root. It goes back to my comment about the magnification of the 7 deadly sins due to the debasement process.

Therefore, one can now expect to see the greatest extremes in all of the history of world finance coming in front of us, as well as the greatest extremes in other areas due to the magnification effect. This is notable in the Florida primary campaign at present, as an example. All precedents have been blown out in the mad harpooning process. As you stated, aedens, they make the Soviets look like pussies. Tass is kindergarten compared to Bernanke's new US style press conference.

For reference: The currently recognized version of the 7 deadly sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

[Marc]

Now we see the polarity inversion effect. The reverberations of past crises and hatreds are now sown so deep as to prevent regeneration and a new Dark Age resolution is nearly guaranteed complete in my opinion.

Very interesting commentary, Higgie. While I personally tend to not think that we're headed towards a new Dark Ages unless something really goes "nuclearly wrong," I have to admit that I'm amazed at the Hurculean efforts that the world has cobbled up so far (and will continue to cobble up for awhile) to prevent financial Armageddon. In fact, to be a bit "potentially contrarian" again, I actually somewhat wonder if we could see a Fifth Turning (following this Fourth Turning) in the USA and some other countries. Again, with all those weapons of mass destruction out there such that maybe even the Chinese Generation-X'ers may be a bit hesitant to use them (with their X'ers also being mindful of Sun Tzu's "wait-patiently" tactics), I do wonder if there could be a significant possibility of not having a crisis war in the next 10–15 years, followed by seeing something really blow in the not-too-distant future after that. Heck, if Bernanke can keep it up, maybe we can get China's Communist government to self-implode in about the year 2030 or so, although that might be wishful thinking. —Best regards, Marc

[aedens]

I am glad you got out intact Higg. The MA's are active in a few segments and from the past that when the bathtub level went down in relationship to liquidity from capital movements in global balancing events horizons it was consolidations of groups. I picked up the news off the wire and have not followed up yet on the closures on the formentioned topic. I am very nuetral to date in my view only. I do not want to under or overstate the Resilience of effective Business Teams. Like the rest of the public we will just have to wait and see. I can only induce thought to the trends and the inertia of those teams decisions cleared from regulatory endeavors. To derive the logic is to see the flow chain. Vital services and contracts will not abate from analyst's noise.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/category/ma ... uisitions/
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/category/by ... materials/

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/ ... -february/
This is were 4 ish percent of MF assets "was" and in the forums we noted it since these assets were considered tipping
point to control I read then. I still consider the law of expediency is higher than any current principle.
I was warned ever so long ago justice rarely meets reality.
Sometimes the PE is not the enemy of organic growth but targets I later found out from research later.
In the past I was unbraided by another for a topic which the original conversant totaly miscontrued the argument of observation
and the frequency of the failure analysis was correct and the distribution curve of the failure was valid also.
In the long run the cost was absorbed but it did not change the validity of the argument. Lesson learned
was the boat was leaking but overall it did not go under since failure is not a option and that was never the
point of the original inquiry. It is a weapon weilded on the unwary so when it runs the course you are not amused
or surprised.

[OLD1953]

Europe cannot get it in gear without breaking up the zone, at least as far as the EURO is concerned. You cannot tie a country with a negative balance of trade to another country that sells it tons of stuff, and have them use the same money and issue the same bonds. One will wind up a beggar at the other's gates, this is simply a fact of economics, no more and no less. Either Germany owns Europe, or they take a hit by letting everyone else inflate their debts away. Currently, they think they'd prefer to own Europe. Such ownership will lead to war, it is unthinkable that everyone in Europe will roll over and widdle themselves at the bark of a German shepard. Inflation or abandon the EURO, otherwise, WAR!

And the same applies to China and the US. As long as the US could inflate away the trade deficit, there was no problem. But tying the renminbi to the dollar means China cannot deflate, and deflation in the world has closed that window for the reserve currency. This situation will lead to war. And that is why Bernake is so eager to see some inflation. He set a low target because that's the best he can expect to do, and he won't get that. He'd love 4% inflation for a few years, or I misread him entirely. I think a lot of people on the hill do understand, we either inflate, stop buying, or go to WAR!

Nobody wants WWIII, but nobody will take the roads that don't lead to WWIII, because they require too much effort and are sure political career killers. So war we will have. Simply looking at the world, you see the sides being chosen.

[Higgenbotham]

I am glad you got out intact Higg. I still consider the law of expediency is higher than any current principle.

aedens, I am still in, but intact. However, I am recognizing the reality and the message that has been sent. I can't remember the exact quote, but in the 1930's the US Central Bank was quoted as saying to the effect that, "We did all we could to stop the deflation." Now I need to add to that, "We did all we could to stop the deflation within the moral precepts that confined activity at that time." The harpooning process and press conferences that put the Tass News Agency to shame have nothing to do with "the moral precepts that confined activity at that time." The current process is a Dark Age process. It is strictly mechanical and physical from the standpoint of where we are going. All post year 1500 models are broken and there are not enough records pre year 1500 to contruct a model. What that means in my view is the system will be run hot to its physical limit, as described by the flutter effect and the stimulation effect to the dying patient, the theory being that the structure has already collapsed and the patient is already terminal. The idea is to blast the structure with enough high pressure air to keep it standing before the vibrations collapse it, or to give the patient enough stimulation to keep the organs functioning and the patient moving. There will be no stock market crash that is regenerative or cleansing, in that the cleansing process of the crash takes the economy to new heights as has been the case for 5 centuries of Western civilization. Instead, the economy will be run hot to it's dying breath (note the irony of my statement), then it will completely collapse.

[John]

> The harpooning process and press conferences that put the Tass
> News Agency to shame

Actually, these days the Tass News Agency (now a component of
Itar-Tass) is probably no worse than the NY Times or the Washington
Post (or the Wall Street Journal, for that matter).

John

[Higgenbotham]

> The harpooning process and press conferences that put the Tass
> News Agency to shame

Actually, these days the Tass News Agency (now a component of
Itar-Tass) is probably no worse than the NY Times or the Washington
Post (or the Wall Street Journal, for that matter).

John

John, you probably remember the ridiculous statements that came out of Tass in the 1970's - especially ridiculous from our vantage point (I was just a kid but was fascinated by the propaganda the Soviets put out). From where I try to sit and be neutral, what Bernanke put out in that news conference last week is similar to what I used to hear come out of Tass in the 1970's but even more ridiculous. It sounded like something out of Brezhnev's playbook but I think old Leonid would have said, you know, Ben, this is just too ridiculous to put out onto the world stage - people aren't going to buy this load of crap.

[John]

> John, you probably remember the ridiculous statements that came
> out of Tass in the 1970's - especially ridiculous from our vantage
> point (I was just a kid but was fascinated by the propaganda the
> Soviets put out). From where I try to sit and be neutral, what
> Bernanke put out in that news conference last week is similar to
> what I used to hear come out of Tass in the 1970's but even
> more ridiculous. It sounded like something out of Brezhnev's
> playbook but I think old Leonid would have said, you know, Ben,
> this is just too ridiculous to put out onto the world stage -
> people aren't going to buy this load of crap.

Actually, I was never really bothered by Tass and Pravda, because I
considered them to have a certain honesty: They were supposed to
report the Soviet propaganda line, and they did that honestly. If
they said that Khruschev never existed, then that's OK because that
represented the official Soviet position. Completely honest.

What really pissed me off, and still pisses me off today, is that the
mainstream media are much more dishonest than Tass or Pravda because
they claim to be impartial when they're obviously biased.

I wrote about this when Walter Cronkite died:

** Boomers celebrate themselves on the death of Walter Cronkite
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 21#e090721

I'll just summarize some of what I wrote there.

Walter Cronkite was too stupid to understand 4th grade percentages,
so it's not surprising that his "impartial" reporting always took
a far left anti-American position. Sheer stupidity usually
goes along with being far left and anti-American.

But then Dan Rather replaced Cronkite, and he was even stupider than
Cronkite. I still remember the day I vowed that I would never watch
Rather again. It was around 1982, and it was a news reports on AIDS,
which just beginning to make itself widely known. Rather apparently
just quoted a story from Tass or Pravda that some Soviet-controlled
medical academy had "found" that AIDS was a plot perpetrated by the
American CIA. Rather didn't report this story as a joke. He reported
it as a serious news story, just as if the American Medical
Association had made the claim. If Tass or Pravda made this claim,
that would be honest reporting, since that was the Soviet line. But
for CBS News to make this claim as if it were a serious news report
was so stupid as to be an insult to the viewer.

And it serves Rather right that he destroyed his own career in 2004
with that ridiculous story about the forged document. Like Cronkite,
this guy was (I mean is) a liar and dumber than mud.

So my view is that Tass and Pravda were doing their jobs honestly,
and Rather can go fuck himself.

John

[Trevor]

What really pissed me off, and still pisses me off today, is that the
mainstream media are much more dishonest than Tass or Pravda because
they claim to be impartial when they're obviously biased.

From what I've seeing, more and more people are figuring that out. According to various surveys that I've looked up, many think that the news is just flat out lying. I wouldn't doubt it in the least, or at a minimum, they tell you half-truths.

The latest part of this is these organizations telling us how wonderful things are getting, that this new 2.8 percent figure for the 4th quarter means that we're roaring back to recovery. I can understand the political hacks putting their spin on this, because that's what they're paid to do, but these are supposed to be serious news organizations.