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