The Great Yard Sale

The finance world knows; the jig is up and they need to trade in their worthless derivative backed assets for something real. This should keep the property bubble in New Zealand inflated, at the same time the government here is selling off any State Owned Asset they can. All this so Elites here can stuff their offshore bank accounts and Go Bags. For a backgrounder, check this out.

The Culture of Dissent

The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress A collection of Truthdig Columns by Chris Hedges Keep up with Chris Hedges’ latest columns, interviews, tour dates and more at www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_to_think_20120709/

Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster. Members of this intellectual and artistic class, who are usually not welcome in the stultifying halls of academia where mediocrity is triumphant, serve as prophets. They are dismissed, or labeled by the power elites as subversive, because they do not embrace collective self-worship. They force us to confront unexamined assumptions, ones that, if not challenged, lead to destruction. They expose the ruling elites as hollow and corrupt. They articulate the senselessness of a system built on the ideology of endless growth, ceaseless exploitation and constant expansion. They warn us about the poison of careerism and the futility of the search for happiness in the accumulation of wealth. They make us face ourselves, from the bitter reality of slavery and Jim Crow to the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans to the repression of working-class movements to the atrocities carried out in imperial wars to the assault on the ecosystem. They make us unsure of our virtue. They challenge the easy clichés we use to describe the nation—the land of the free, the greatest country on earth, the beacon of liberty—to expose our darkness, crimes and ignorance. They offer the possibility of a life of meaning and the capacity for transformation. Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_to_think_20120709/

Libor: The Smoking Gun

The Barclays Bank Libor-fixing scandal currently being investigated in the UK is huge. Libor is the cost of inter-bank borrowing between the 18 largest banks in the world. Trillions are traded between banks every day. The rate is set by contacting the 18 largest banks in the world and asking them what they would charge a brother bank; the top and bottom four are thrown out and an average is derived from the middle 10. This forms the basis for all lending: because all profits, at each stage are derived from the Libor rate, published each day. For Barclays to fix the rate, there would have had to have been at least four other co-conspirators for any price they quote to move the rate. It was an increase in the Libor that brought down Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. This was the trigger for the 2007 - 2008 collapse. Stop reading about Tom and Katie, Wimbledon, or Higgs boson particle. This should get us off our asses and in the streets.

TPP - The Selling of New Zealand Sovereignty

The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement cedes sovereignty from national to corporate interests. New Zealand has eagerly presented its hind quarters for a star-spangled buggering.

The State vs. George

Raise Lending rates now!

Friday's unemployment numbers (so far as we can believe anything from the BLS) prove that the economy is spiraling deeper into recession. Remember they don't even count anyone who has stopped looking for work, has been unemployed for 4 weeks, or has never had a job. Near zero interest rates are killing our retirees. Instead of living on the safe sure yield of savings or bonds, they are forced into re-investing into crap like Facebook that saw half of their wealth wiped out in a week. Thanks to Ritholtz's The Big Picture, the world's most popular financial blog we listen in on a discussion between two of the only credible people at CNBS... The solution is to take interest rates back to Volcker levels in the '80s. It will be painful, but it will amputate the rot instead of adding one more maggot to the wound - in the hope it will eat the dead tissue. Those academics who want a deaper study of the Volcker gambit can read this. Yes, yes, and yes, I know Volcker was fighting 'inflation' not the deflation we are experiencing today, but today's deflation will end in a violent hyper-inflation, like that experienced in Weimar Germany. I remember Hemingway writing about his travels through Germany at that time. The people were docile and his francs and american dollars, earned from a month's writing, could see him and his family esconced in an Austrian alpine lodge with food and all the extras for the whole of the ski season. Of course, the great debate is whether we are seeing inflation or deflation. John Mauldin is one fella who explains how both can exist before inflation ultimately dominates. Mauldin's Reports are gold to those who follow him on his world dialogue about investing and finance. His newsletter is free. Austerity is the death of a thousand cuts that will embed the psyche of generations. This baby boom (my) generation is the one that needs to feel the pain. Instead retirees are postponing the end to their work and are crowding out their own children and grandchildren. So the question remains: How much pain? How high should interest rates go? To find the answer we can listen to the The McAlvany Report where they interviewed former Federal Reserve board member John Taylor. Taylor recently wrote an op-ed piece in the WSJ, Mr. Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of "Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged and Worsened the Financial Crisis" (Hoover Press, 2009). Creator of "The Taylor Rule" and "The Taylor Principle", he would see interest rates tied to the rate of inflation... a rate of inflation truly presented. You can listen to the interview here. Or listen below.

"The End Game: 2012 And 2013 Will Usher In The End" - The Scariest Presentation Ever?

Courtesy of Zero Hedge If Raoul Pal was some doomsday spouting windbag, writing in all caps, arbitrarily pasting together disparate charts to create 200 page slideshows, it would be easy to ignore him. He isn't. The founder of Global Macro Investor "previously co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for GLG Partners, one of the largest hedge fund groups in the world. Raoul came to GLG from Goldman Sachs where he co-managed the hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives in Europe... Raoul Pal retired from managing client money in 2004 at the age of 36 and now lives on the Valencian coast of Spain, from where he writes." It is his writing we are concerned about, and specifically his latest presentation, which is, for lack of a better word, the most disturbing and scary forecast of the future of the world we have ever seen.... The End Game

Assange undresses the Occupiers

Can there be any doubt the Occupy movement has been co-opted and infiltrated by cointelpro? Assange is brilliant as an interviewer. His questions make these self-appointed leaders in the social movement squirm as he exposes them for another set of elites positioning themselves for immortality and their own professorships and television shows. Too much. Made me sick to watch this collection of spokes persons: The pinstriped-hoodie, the smudged eye shadow, the newest Bond man, the gay couple. In a movement without leaders, who - and by what method were they chosen? These people were right out of central casting. Incredible.

Fitch on Obama (Roboma)

Fitch on Obama

Banks target vulnerable

BANKS are using predatory tactics to target customers with financial products when they are most vulnerable, leaving customers in greater debt, a new report has found. Banks and other financial institutions have spent up to $200 million each creating customer databases by drilling into personal credit card transactions so they can predict when financially stretched customers might be more susceptible to offers of increased credit limits, insurance, education or superannuation funds and investment products. http://www.theage.com.au/national/banks-target-

vulnerable-customers-20120428-1xruy.html

Lotte - To age 12

This is an amazing video that I saw on Naked Capitalism

The Real Cost of IPhone

Created by MBAonline.com

Modern Money Theory and Private Banks

Guns and Butter "Modern Money Theory and Private Banks" with Stephanie Kelton and Michael Hudson at the economic Summit On Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. Functional finance; business cycle; real costs of unemployment; sovereign currency versus fixed exchange rates and the gold standard; macroeconomic policy; fiscal policy; vulture banks; Latvia as the standard for Europe under neoliberalism. Original Link

Guns and Butter - March 28, 2012 at 1:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

A Priceless Shot Back

KONY2012 Madness

Kony 2012 spokesperson, and co-founder of Invisible Children, Jason Russell was arrested Friday after San Diego Police found him incoherent on the street. Police said he was banging his hands on the pavement and masturbating. No charges were laid because police said it was a "medical" matter. A statement from Invisible Children, said Mr. Russell was exhausted and dehydrated.

The Devolution of Capitalism

David Stockman's days with Ronald Reagan - and his ringside seat since then, gives him the street cred to comment on what went wrong. From the Mexican Peso crisis, to LTCM, to the GFC of 2007, Stockman sits down with Bill Moyers to talk about what's wrong with America. A former Congressman from Illinois, Stockman served as the Director of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget - the President's chief advisor for the White House) for Ronald Reagan in 1981, when the deficit was less than $1T. When he left, four years later, the national debt was just over $2T. Stockman left the Reagan administration after he was criticised for his comments in an Atlantic Monthly article. His book: The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed (ISBN 0060155604)was critical of his time in the White House. His lengthy interview with Bill Moyers is a serious critique of the Obama Administration. He credits Obama's about face after the election with providing him the impetus to work begin a new book: The Triumph of Crony Capitalism.

Moyers & Company Show 102: On Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Economystified: GDP

Economystified: GDP:              How do you measure something that has no physical dimensions?  Can a child tell you he has 3 more units of love per hour for th...