Thursday, March 31, 2011

High Crimes & Misdemeanors: The United States Federal Reserve Enables Murderers While Denying Access To Capital To Tens Of Millions Of Americans

posted by TimingLogic at 9:19 PM

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Cycle Of Volatility And The Deluded Human Mind

Unfortunately, because of corruption, there is very little critical thinking which takes place in the public forum.  Reasoned discourse and exchange of ideas, so necessary to the success of freedom, science and human advancement are not embraced by power. 

There is also very little original thinking for the same reason.  Preachers who espouse an ideology need worshippers to follow their message as opposed to considering ideas and truth spawned by the free mind.  That dynamic also exists in financial analysis and the blogosphere.  Rote views are passed from blogger to blogger and group-think easily develops whether it is conscious or unconscious plagiarism.   As I have said before, part of the reason I don’t pass along any “trade secrets” is because of this dynamic. 

Very few people are willing to do the diligence necessary to understand anything in the detail necessary to make clear and reasoned decisions.  Most people would rather regurgitate what someone else is writing or thinking or saying.   In order to reduce my bias and the useless clutter infesting my mind, I seldom read anything written by another financial analyst or economist.  I really don’t care about opinions.  I care about facts, reason and a free mind’s qualitative interpretation of reality.  When a clear answer is not evident, then I am in a better position to draw conclusions in my best interest more than any other person.  And the same goes for your life.  No one is better suited to make decisions on your behalf, than your mind, void of useless clutter placed their by ideologues and zealots.  The same goes for trading or investing.  I seldom care to receive opinions of others.  I have all of the data I need and I have found there is no one else with a better system.  I’m sure they exist but they aren’t going to be sharing it for free.   If they are, it probably isn’t worth using. 

What’s the point to these opening paragraphs?  As we have discussed on here countless times, trust yourself or learn the art of trusting yourself.  And learn to do your own diligence in life.  Two things to think about as you clear your mind to read this post.  I tried to apply both of those truths while writing it.

Even though most people who read this blog live in relatively free societies, the reality is our freedom, or lack thereof, resides in our minds.  As we age, often our ability to think freely is muted or even destroyed by accumulated beliefs or lies of the mind. Our experiences and the constant bombardment of stimuli and bias has a very profound effect on our creativity and openness to new experiences.  This very fact is the reason why much of humanity's accomplishment and genius is achieved early in life or that early success is never repeated. In other words, during our relative youth we have yet to develop the prison that defines the human state of mind or the ego.

Today we are watching much of society's beliefs implode right before our very eyes. Economists, Wall Street, CEOs, political authority - everything they have told us for decades is now being brought into question.  Timeless maxims of the American dream,  an honest wage for an honest day’s work and supposed guarantees of a better tomorrow no longer apply for many who are innocently experiencing the victimization of systemic fraud. 

The indoctrination process in any society starts at a young age.  Although we don't call it indoctrination. Instead we call it learning or education.

Authority within our society has really learned very little about the economy or finance or timeless human values over the last few decades.  And as a result of this, society has made the necessary adaptations to survive. And will we again adapt to a new reality in our future for this very reason? To survive? In your lifetime, how much have you really learned?  Truly incontrovertible truth?  There is much less undeniable truth in this world than is portrayed. Society is on the verge of achieving major truth on one front - Washington has spent decades meddling with our freedoms, our economic opportunity and our self-sufficiency as a society just as they have meddled with freedoms of others around the globe. And that party is in the process of ending.  They just don’t know it yet.  That is a very good thing for the future of America even though it may not seem so today. Not so good for elites and many other countries who have relied on neoliberal economic policies of wealth transfer to prop up their own corrupt statist policies at the expense of human dignity and development.

Learning is a biological adaptation. The majority of organisms on Earth learn little or nothing during their individual lifetimes. On the other hand, many mammals are born in a highly immature state and so they must individually learn things crucial for their survival. In order to find food reliably, youngsters of foraging species must learn the spatial layouts of their local environments. In order to distinguish friends from enemies, youngsters of social species must learn to recognize the individuals who make up their social groups.
For several decades, behaviorists attempted to find the laws of learning that applied equally to all species, for any and all tasks, and that did not involve to any significant degree processes of cognition. But the modern view that learning assumes diverse forms in different species and behavioral domains, and operates in concert with cognitive processes that may be specific to particular species or domains, has for the most part suspended that search.
For social species such as humans and other mammals, an especially important form of learning is social learning. Observing the activities of others and learning about the world from or through them enables individuals to acquire information with less effort and risk...

Less effort and risk….  We “learn” from our parents or teachers or friends or Bugs Bunny or politicians or Wall Street or the mainstream media or South Park or MTV, and they learned from their parents or teachers or friends or Bugs Bunny or politicians or Wall Street or the mainstream media or South Park or MTV.  Continue this pattern over a whole society. A whole generation. Multiple generations.  Learning or social adaptation? Are they one and the same? Is adaptation the same as truth? Do I even need to ask?  What have you really learned other than what you were told you should learn by social influence?  How much you learned in school is completely undeniable truth?  Your mind should always remain free of the clutter that is adaptation or conditioning. To remain open to new thoughts, new experiences, new ways of thinking.  Open to things you “learned” were impossible, because they are most likely possible or even probable.  Or as a wise man said long ago, to be as a child.   "That can never happen"  or That can’t be done”  is most often a myth perpetuated over and over again throughout history. Each day should be started with the intent of increasing our knowledge.  The intent to learn.  The intent to prove the impossible is in fact probable.

Every so often there is a student who asks why. Or who challenges their teacher as to the voracity of their beliefs or conclusions presented as truth. And, that student does so repeatedly. Many times those students are identified as problematic. Unruly. Unable to take guidance. Disruptive. They don't conform.  They don’t adapt.  Are they unruly or problematic or are they questioning the truth of social adaptation? Are they simply spreading their wings of free thought?  Questioning the questionable?  Are they showing signs of future potential to positively impact or even change the world?  Is nonconformity an even greater predictor of future ability than a student receiving perfect test scores aka conformity? 

Remember, while some type of testing may be  important to determine progress, testing is a conformist measurement tool. Testing of any sort is a discounting mechanism. Most every test administered by the educational system is simply a measurement of one's ability to learn what humanity already knows. Tests are mostly a measurement of the ability to mimic. To reason. To adapt. Not necessarily of truth. There is no method of measure ever devised that can determine the true potential for any human mind or any individual or any student. Period.

Any attempts at measuring the creativity or ability of any person is limited by the creativity of its author(s) or of what humanity has already discounted as knowledge, truth or lies. In other words, there is no way to test anyone on what humanity does not already know or has not already learned.  No one was able to test Albert Einstein for what was to come.  Because no one had ever dreamed what he dreamed.  Created what he created.  The same could be said repeatedly as it pertains to music, literature, art, science or even the plight of humanity and many true leader’s ability to impact great change and to bring great dignity to repressed people.  Did Gandhi or Martin Luther King test as children to be two of the world’s greatest leaders?

To embrace and nurture the unknown abilities of the individual mind is to embrace invention, art, literature, science and human achievement.  Does our educational system generally embrace the individual mind?  Or does it generally embrace rote and repetitive ritualization, mimicry and conformity?   Are your daily actions supporting the search for truth or of supporting existing social adaptation?  Are you moving humanity forward or backward?  Are you even in the game?  

So, how many children with great potential have had their minds destroyed by authority and its weapon of conformity? By an educational system or society that embraces conformity or adaptation over the individual freedom of the human mind?  How many children were told they will never amount to anything by authority or society? As an example, what are students really learning in cultures or educational systems that embrace rote memorization, cramming schools and demanding parental learning methods? (Mind you, this method of learning is becoming highly popularized amongst wealthy Americans as a result of our perceived educational deficiency comparative to many nations practicing this educational suicide or rote and ritualized adaptation.  Typical of this is teaching methodology is Korea, Japan and now China - the perceived new leaders of global economics and the coming Asian centuryA massive lie which will eventually reveal itself.)

Have you ever wondered why Americans, educated in an often dismal system, dominate Nobel Prize awards? Ingenuity? Invention? Science? Music?  Literature?  Americans who were born as Americans. Products of an often abysmal educational system. Why people of all cultures and backgrounds prosper at art, literature, music, science and human achievement in the U.S. when given the freedom to do so?  But most often cultures of their origin country, when repressed, lag in measurements of creativity, the arts, science, human development or economic achievement?  Do you believe a society where people who are free and are encouraged to lead self-determined lives and supported by a democratic banking system and government which promotes human development are capable of greater acts and expression of abilities?  Or do you believe state control, authority or bureaucrats in religion, science, government or other ideological institutions (conformity) are a measuring stick of what is beneficial to society and the search for individual truth and achievement?

It is most important that children are given every encouragement to express their individuality and encourage exploration without any process of retribution.  Because the only thing an education teaches you is what the world already knows or untruths that society has adapted to. Everything you learn in school is discounted by society. And often how to comply and conform within social norms and corporate economic structures.  It's value to the advancement of society or humanity is therefore limited or in some cases, completely worthless or destructive. And, its foundations are often based on lies of the mind. And, so we should accept these as limitations. Not only in school but in society, our economy and at our place of work.

How often have we talked about the culture of business or leadership and how successful leaders recognize their goal is to unlock the potential of their associates or their citizens and not to control them?  To empower them.  CEOs and politicians are not God laying down incontrovertible truths. They are stewards.  Most often poor ones at that.  They are bureaucrats.  They are rigid thinkers who have adapted to fit within the current system regardless of how corrupt or morally-unjust it is.  As we have cited, they should instead encourage and embrace human capital and its creativity. Democratize opportunity for the betterment of society rather than attempting to control it. Or worse, believing they have the answers to what makes society more enriched or will fix our economy.   Fixing our economy involves fixing our democracy.   When our democracy is fixed and our economy reflects those values, we will be absolutely fine.

If we were never to challenge current adaptations, beliefs or comprehension, we would never have advances in human knowledge.   We would still be living in caves.  Bureaucrats are not the source of our greatness nor will they provide the answers to our economic disaster.   Frankly, they are incapable of understanding what those answers are.  How have we as a society outsourced our democracy and freedoms to these incompetent frauds?

To tell a child anything is impossible limits the imagination , creativity and achievement which defines the human spirit and consciousness. In effect, I believe in encouraging constructive disagreement through discourse and even through positive contention. A process not generally embraced by our educational system or, for that matter, much of society. And surely not something embraced by politicians seeking conformity, often at any cost. And definitely not within corporations where kings still rule their serfs. I strongly believe in constructive contention as a business management style, as a requirement of democracy and through the learning process of a child. The uninhibited child-like imagination of questioning most everything is a greatest of human traits. Yet it is a gift that is repeatedly beaten down by bureaucrats. By social adaptation. By society. By business leaders.  By our educational system. By the state.  By the bureaucratic demand of conformity and the marginalization of reasoned dissenting views.

Along those lines, I find the following quote taken from a man who lived long ago to be appropriate as an introduction to the charts in this post. Forget about what he is specifically talking about. The topic is war. Instead apply his thoughts in a more general sense of human behavior. Really think about what he is saying and apply it abstractly to any environment you see developing around you or around society or the economy or the world.

Psychologists recognize the gregarious impulse as one of the strongest primitive pulls which keeps together the herds of the different species of higher animals. Mankind is no exception. Our pugnacious evolutionary history has prevented the impulse from ever dying out. This gregarious impulse is the tendency to imitate, to conform, to coalesce together, and is most powerful when the herd believes itself threatened with attack. Animals crowd together for protection, and men become most conscious of their collectivity at the threat of war. (I would add nationalism and any perceived threat including terrorism.)

Consciousness of collectivity brings confidence and a feeling of massed strength, which in turn arouses pugnacity and the battle is on. In civilized man, the gregarious impulse acts not only to produce concerted action for defense, but also to produce identity of opinion. Since thought is a form of behavior, the gregarious impulse floods up into its realms and demands that sense of uniform thought which wartime produces so successfully. And it is in this flooding of the conscious life of society that gregariousness works its havoc.

For just as in modern societies the sex instinct is enormously oversupplied for the requirements of human propagation, so the gregarious impulse is enormously oversupplied for the work of protection which it is called upon to perform. It would be quite enough if we were gregarious enough to enjoy the companionship of others, to be able to cooperate with them, and to feel a slight malaise at solitude. Unfortunately, however, this impulse is not content with these reasonable and healthful demands, but insists that like-mindedness shall prevail everywhere, in all departments of life. So that all human progress, all novelty, and nonconformity, must be carried against the resistance of this tyrannical herd instinct which drives the individual into obedience and conformity with the majority. Even in the most modern and enlightened societies this impulse shows little sign of abating. As it is driven by inexorable economic demand out of the sphere of utility, it seems to fasten itself ever more fiercely in the realm of feeling and opinion, so that conformity comes to be a thing aggressively desired and demanded.

The gregarious impulse keeps its hold all the more virulently because when the group is in motion or is taking any positive action, this feeling of being with and supported by the collective herd very greatly feeds that will to power, the nourishment of which the individual organism so constantly demands. You feel powerful by conforming, and you feel forlorn and helpless if you are out of the crowd. While even if you do not get any access of power by thinking and feeling just as everybody else in your group does, you get at least the warm feeling of obedience, the soothing irresponsibility of protection.

Joining as it does to these very vigorous tendencies of the individual - the pleasure in power and the pleasure in obedience - this gregarious impulse becomes irresistible in society. War stimulates it to the highest possible degree, sending the influences of its mysterious herd-current with its inflations of power and obedience to the farthest reaches of the society, to every individual and little group that can possibly be affected. And it is these impulses which the State - the organization of the entire herd, the entire collectivity - is founded on and makes use of.

There is, of course, in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one's desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feelings of protection. It is not for nothing that one's State is still thought of as Father or Motherland, that one's relation toward it is conceived in terms of family affection. The war has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again, as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense Father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority, and in the many Mother-posters of the Red Cross, we see how easily in the more tender functions of war service, the ruling organization is conceived in family terms. A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naïve faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and in whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort, and a certain influx of power. On most people the strain of being an independent adult weighs heavily, and upon none more than those members of the significant classes who have had bequeathed to them or have assumed the responsibilities of governing. The State provides the convenientest of symbols under which these classes can retain all the actual pragmatic satisfaction of governing, but can rid themselves of the psychic burden of adulthood. They continue to direct industry and government and all the institutions of society pretty much as before, but in their own conscious eyes and in the eyes of the general public, they are turned from their selfish and predatory ways, and have become loyal servants of society, or something greater than they - the State. The man who moves from the direction of a large business in New York to a post in the war management industrial service in Washington does not apparently alter very much his power or his administrative technique. But psychically, what a transfiguration has occurred! His is now not only the power but the glory! And his sense of satisfaction is directly proportional not to the genuine amount of personal sacrifice that may be involved in the change but to the extent to which he retains his industrial prerogatives and sense of command.

I haven't given any context for this post, so by now you may have quit reading.   That would be what I would expect for most.  At the minimum, you may be wondering what I talking about or what this has to do with the two charts above.  Well, if you like to be spoon fed beliefs, you wouldn't be reading this post.  If you enjoy ideology, you wouldn't be reading this blog. This will never be a place visited by the mob or by ideologues.

You still may not understand how all of this ties together.  And since there is no context, that would probably be the most typical conclusion.  But let's take a look at two charts at the top of this post. Both are obviously unlabeled.  If you look closely, the movements in time and price are strikingly similar. 

Think about the context of this post in relation to these charts and allow your free mind to consider its possibilities. I'll reveal more detail within the next week or two.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:09 AM

Monday, March 28, 2011

American Must Be Consistent And Invade Saudi Arabia

That Nobel Prize for our bomb-loving war-machine hugging President is making the Nobel Prize selection committee look like bigger buffoons than when they gave Algore the Nobel Prize for being a scientific dunce.  Of course, our other option was to give the President to another economic dunce who publicly sang “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” as a parody of the Beach Boy’s song Barbara Ann.  Gotta love them politicians.   They are so smooooooth.

Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are run by some of the most crooked and vile people on this planet.  But they are good American puppets.  So much for a no-fly zone.  Libya is getting the deluxe package off of the menu of American military options.  Since we apparently love bombing more than we do democracy or economic rights in our own country, Scheer makes a valid point.  Let’s take them all out and just bomb the world into submission.  Of course, all in the name of democracy, peace and love.

How long will the U.S. and its allies ignore the elephant in the room posed by an alliance for human rights and anti-terrorism with regimes in the Middle East that stand for neither?

posted by TimingLogic at 10:16 AM

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Common sense may cry out for a radical new response. But the race toward self-immolation only accelerates because of intellectual and moral paralysis.

A common theme on here as well.  Our self-appointed ruling class has lost its moral authority and we will not get true reform until it is foisted upon the corrupt by events beyond their control.

Some people speak to our soul.  Hedges consistently speaks to mine with his unvarnished search for truth.  A truth that would never see the light of day in Washington politics or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or any televised news source.  Well, sans the irascible Howard Beale.  We do need to dethrone the elite.  But I believe that process will ultimately involve them dethroning themselves.  Their own avarice will be their undoing.  Negotiating for better terms with evil is nothing more than appeasement as we have hammered incessantly.  These people who represent none of the values shared by most Americans simply need to go.   

There are scant examples of greater evil in the world today than the three-headed cerberus of Wall Street, lobbyists and politicians who guard the gates to hades. 

Link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 8:41 PM

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Treason 101 - Florida House Vacancy Is 20% While Wall Street Given Federal Reserve Approval To Raise Dividends After Looting Democracy

"There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."  --  Mark Twain

What could be more fun than Congress allowing Wall Street to saddle the Federal Reserve and society with trillions of dollars of housing fraud?  Then said criminal banks having the audacity to raise dividends, which are actually taxes on American citizens, for investors and senior executives that should have been wiped out while Wall Street was nationalized, CEOs indicted and incompetent company bureaucracies broken up.   This dividend raising enriches Wall Street CEOs and executives –the criminal class - who are the most overtly incompetent crooks in our country’s history.  All while Americans are denied access to our own capital in the greatest acts of treason this country has ever witnessed.

While remarking so is anecdotal, this dividend increase reeks of criminal class top-ticking the market again.  But there is a lot of global macro data that isn’t anecdotal supporting this dividend increase as very foolish and very untimely.  Remember early this year we wrote that Wall Street profits had peaked and they were playing more accounting shenanigans in their reported earnings.  And let me reiterate that I am still very concerned about a market crash as we have said numerous times since the fourth quarter of last year.  And oh by the way, in the last handful of months some markets have already experienced mini crashes including Japan and Saudi Arabia.  

And if you don’t believe the world’s most severe natural phenomena, (Japan’s crash)  most severe social upheaval (Egypt’s, Saudi Arabia’s, etc crash) and most severe economic events (United States, Iceland, Spain, Ireland, Russia, China, etc and soon to be more crashes) in the last two hundred to five hundred years are related, well then you live in a fantasy created by a deluded mind and you will eventually be awoken from that dream world.

I talk to way too many people who are linear thinkers.  They try to apply their prior experiences to the future.  As we have said countless times, the world we lived in just a few years ago is never returning.   Now we build a new world.  A better world.  But only after we sweep away the criminal class.  That will come.  It is already happening in many countries.  There is much more to be revealed about the comingling corruption of our banking system, lobbyists and politicians.  So much more than housing fraud.  Before this is said and done,  enough evidence could very well be unveiled that would lead to every CEO on Wall Street being indicted.   Today the political system protects them.  How quickly that can change in a volatile world. 

Florida vacancy rate at near 20%

Criminal Federal Reserves ok’s more Wall Street looting with dividend increases

posted by TimingLogic at 9:57 AM

A Good News Source For Japan Updates

I’m not going to go from posting anonymously on here to having this blog be my personal exposé but there are people in the Japanese prefecture on Saitama and in Tokyo that were as much a part of my life as my blood relatives, having shared my life and having lived with some of them for many years.   The country is in serious shock right now.  It is hard to imagine how anyone who has suffered the severe emotional trauma of just losing everything they know including their homes and many family members & friends then having to immediately overcome that trauma to focus on dealing with the worst crisis of your life time.  But that is what must happen and is happening.   One of the greatest paradoxes of the human condition is that tragedy is often followed by humanity’s finest hour.   Leaders are not born.  They are made.   Japan will recover from this crisis because they must.  And as it pertains to topics often covered on this blog, forget about the ridiculous claims that Japan is going to default on its public debt because of this crisis.  Those people are linear thinkers who do not understand monetary economics.  Contrarily, Japan may very well be the wealthiest nation on earth and they built that success on a tiny land mass with almost no natural resource wealth. 

It sickens me to see this 24 hour “train wreck” corporate ratings game of most mainstream American media sources.  It’s one thing to report the news.  It’s quite another to show and reshow countless times the human suffering and tragedy associated with this crisis and to sensationalize in such a way that it is akin to yelling fire in a movie theatre.  We arrest people for doing that but the mainstream media often thrives on it.   Corporate news’ fascination with the morbid and gruesome is simply a cruel ratings game with seemingly little or no regard for human suffering and no regard to whether they are creating panics. 

The situation in Japan is obviously very grim.  And the nuclear situation seems to be unfolding in slow motion.  Most of this is surely because of the emotional shock associated with such trauma.  The country and its people are still trying to gain their bearings.  It’s easy to point fingers and there was and will be incompetence, but can you imagine losing your spouse, your children, your extended family and friends, and your home and then being asked to go back to work and fix the largest crisis your country has seen in the last seventy years?  If you want to get the best fact-based perspectives on what is going on in Japan, including with the nuclear crisis, I would recommend you consider Japan’s public broadcasting site, NHK.  You know, like NPR that the Republican party wants to defund in the United States so we get all of our news from the corporatocracy.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:29 AM

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

What’s Really Going On In Wisconsin. Fascism Is Making A Grab To Atomize Dissent Using Useful Idiots Just As In Egypt And Libya

"Most of the founders of this country had day jobs for years. They were not career politicians. ... We need leaders with experience in the real world, not experience in the phony world of politics." --- Thomas Sowell

Even though the world’s tragedies are still with us, I want to get back to focusing on one of the posts I said would be up before the Japanese crisis.  This is a long post but the most important points are made near the end.  I think you might really enjoy perspectives not discussed anywhere else.  But you must have an intent to learn and not be deluded by political idiots attempting to brainwash you into their view of reality.

Let me first repeat what I have said on here in one form or another since well before the 2008 collapse.  Collective bargaining was supported by the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  Collective bargaining rights are as democratic as are voting. (By the way so are economic rights which should be written into a constitution.)  And as long as corrupt politicians are going to allow hegemonic corporate power to exist by not enforcing the rule of law of anti-trust legislation, then collective bargaining is necessary to apply democratic principles to economics and provide a bulwark for the people against unchecked economic power.  To disallow it is to perpetuate fraud, corruption, repression and tyranny by the political class, corporations and elites set on dismantling our democratic way of life.   Collective bargaining shouldn’t mean we replace political and corporate thugs with union thugs.  Jimmy Hoffa was no different than Lloyd Blankfein.  In other words, the process needs accountability, appropriate rules and transparency.  Unions should not become political organizations run by power-mad bureaucrats as corporations and politics are.  In fact the entire process of corporate governance, collective bargaining and how we pick our politicians needs fixed.   We need to get the power-mad sociopaths out of positions of authority.

Now that said, public unions don’t make a lot of sense under our current monetary system and tax structure where labor is bargaining with We The People or taxpayers.  In any mathematical representation of bargaining theory, public unions are not currently bargaining with capital.   With the current economic and funding structure, public unions share no strategy of profit and loss where capital eventually finds it more beneficial to close its business rather than paying higher wages and benefits.  But make no mistake, useful idiots want to lump all anger at the government into public sector unions.  That is ridiculous.  Public unions have absolutely nothing to do with any economic crisis that exists in this country.  Nothing.  The massive corruption and highest wages and selling out of our government institutions is not a result of rank and file union members making $40-50,ooo a year.  It is because of politicians, non-unioned public officials, elected officials and their fascist cronies living off the taxpayer dole who are robbing our government and its citizens.  It is the corporatocracy or primarily because of Republican and Democratic politicians selling out our country and destroying our governments. 

We have remarked for a long time that this environment of austerity unfolding in Wisconsin was coming to America.  The status quo is trying to dismantle our society so that rich elites, mega corporations,  banks and their political & lobbyist toadies in both parties can continue to run roughshod over democracy and We The People.  

Since this crisis has started, we have essentially said the same thing on this blog regarding public sector cuts.  Public sector cuts are necessary because of the fraud we see that has devastated our economy and our society.  But in no way do public unions bear the burden for this crisis.   And in no way is it constructive to create a society where we forcing everyone to the bottom of the barrel aka austerity, devaluing currencies, lowering wages, etc. (Neoliberal idiot economics run by political crooks)  Public sector pensions, the biggest dilemma is suffering from being invested in Wall Street shenanigans and have been fleeced like everyone else and as a result are in shambles.  Benefits were granted based on completely unsustainable Wall Street Ponzi schemes enabled by crooked politicians and now we must adjust to reality.  But politicians in Wisconsin and elsewhere are taking this opportunity to lie about the private sector having to fund public sector pensions in this Republican-manufactured public union busting power play.   

One must first understand the basic premise of politics and those that are drawn to politics.  Politics is about power and control.  That’s it.   Politics has nothing to do with serving society.  Every decision by a politician serves some attempt to gain more of power or more of control, be it personal or for his party or for the bureaucracy in general.  Now there are leaders in politics, although very few, who don’t define this dynamic.  But this issue is clearly not one of them.  And the governor or Wisconsin couldn’t find the word leadership if it was placed in his asshat where his head resides.

We highlighted the New Yorker article on the Koch brothers and their propagandized influence in our society and the Republican party some time ago.  Their involvement in Wisconsin should not be a surprise to anyone.  Many people often serve as unknowing useful idiots to the wishes of elite’s propaganda and Wisconsin is a perfect example.   

Examples of useful idiots are of people who believe the propaganda that government regulation is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that government in general is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda of free markets.  Of people who believe the propaganda that we should cut corporate taxes to stimulate growth.  Of people who believe the propaganda that our health care system is just fine.  Of people who believe the propaganda that collective bargaining is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that government workers or teachers making $50,000 a year are the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that gold money is the answer to our crisis.  Of people who believe the propaganda that  our public debt is the cause of this crisis.  Of people who believe the propaganda that our society will collapse unless we cut social services so that we can service our national debt. 

Frankly, these perspectives remind me of the classical pre-Civil War  slave plantation owner’s perspectives on society, government and economics.  (Remember this.  It comes later in this post.)  And given our society, government and economy looks a lot like a slave plantation owner’s view, why should that be a surprise?  By the way, all of the ideologies in the prior paragraph align quite nicely with the neoliberal anti-democratic fascist ideology of  elites shared with slave plantation owners.  In other words, people in the general population who support the aforementioned positions play the role of useful idiots for elites.  

Do you see a pattern with any of these ideologies?  They are all founded in fear, hate, anger or jealousy.  They all prey on the evil of the self or the ego versus the enlightened mind that understands the connectedness and shared community of true reality.  The ego is the greatest hindrance to the search for truth, respect and empathy for our fellow man.  And elitists prey upon this very dynamic in their search to deceive society and create their following of useful idiots.  

Elites can only fight economic populism, democracy and a working government by convincing, through propaganda, idiots from within the general population to fight horizontally rather than vertically.  To fight their fellow man rather than fight the elites.  In other words, to perpetuate propaganda of immigrants taking jobs, (illegal immigration is a real problem caused by elites)  of people on welfare being lazy, etc.  The list is endless.   They must recruit people from within the masses to fight their fellow man rather than focusing on the real problem – corruption driven by elites, power money and the dismantling of democracy.  This fear-based terror of the mind IS THE ONLY WAY a small minority of power-mad elites can enforce tyranny on a society whether it be crooks in the U.S. or crooks in Nazi Germany or crooks in Libya. 

Remember that post some weeks ago about the “shy intellectual”  whose work was the roadmap for democratic revolution used in the Middle East?  One of the first concepts he talked about in his writings to overcome tyranny are that power seeks to disband or atomize dissent.  In order to control society, power seeks to take away any and all facilities that allows community as a bulwark against power’s hegemony, fraud and corruption.   We could cite countless examples of this.  The most obvious is to burn books, imprison intellectuals or dissidents, bust collective bargaining, or marginalize dissenting thought which captures the imagination of a repressed people.   Speech and ideas have the effect of organizing society against elites.  But I could think of ten examples off of the top of my head of how this terrorism is achieved in the U.S.  Often through society’s useful idiots.  Many of which are, as Thoreau told us, people who enforce the rules of the state.  That is, the military, the police or secret police or Homeland Security or whatnot.  As it pertains to Wisconsin and our society at large,  I think you can imagine other examples quite easily. 

Anyone who understands tyranny of the state intuitively understand that atomizing dissent is a necessary process to achieving hegemony and control.  Busting collectively bargaining or rights to organize, a very American tradition supported by countless Presidents and politicians of both parties, and protected by the democratic rule of law,  is simply an attempt to atomize society and to assert control.  The Republican Party is going to find out that most American people don’t have a stomach for beating down their fellow man while elites continue to plunder our society and Republicans refuse laying any blame on the fraud of banksters, lobbyists or fellow politicians ripping our society off for trillions of dollars and buying their version of what the law should be.   Fixing the budget is one thing.  Malicious intent is another.   The governor in Wisconsin and similar efforts elsewhere are purely malicious intent.

So let’s look at how atomizing is often achieved in our society.   That is most often accomplished by dividing people into arguments over relatively ridiculous issues while the thieves walk off with the booty and our democracy.  Examples might be by enforcing stereotypes.  Two prime examples are Congressmen calling for drug testing to receive unemployment benefits.  Or that being gay is a sin.  Or labeling people on welfare as lazy.   Reinforcing any stereotype that Americans don’t want to work is very popular with political idiots.  These are cleaned up versions of often elitist perspectives from times gone past.  Although in times gone past they were more blunt and often overtly racist in their delivery.  The mind of the political idiot, like that of any subhuman slime,  never evolves.

Senator Jim Webb talked about this in an op-ed he did last year, although Webb’s characterization of the problems in America are very misguided.  We don’t have a massive white or black poverty problem because of the Civil Rights Act.  We have a massive poverty problem period because we have an economy choking on its own vomit that is caused by fraud and corruption.  And that, my friends, is only because of government rigging of the economy that is enforced through a fraudulent banking system that serves no purpose to human development.  You can dump all of the civil rights legislation you want and it is not going to deal with poverty one iota.  Webb’s head might be in the right place but his understanding of economics is completely wrong.   As Webb was cited in the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago:

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."

Atomizing We The People one hundred years ago is the exact same tactic used today, pure and simple. 

The elites are able to divide society because for decades they have denied most Americans their economic rights.  A result of that dynamic is that wages have been stagnant for over thirty years and small and medium business in the U.S. has become nearly nonexistent sans the merchant shop owner, restaurateur or other service provider.   So, elites and their bought and paid for political toadies are able to create divisive anger between We The People.  The private sector has seen wages, benefits and pensions bludgeoned by corruption for decades and now the private sector is broke.  This leaves an enormous disparity in wages and benefits between the public sector and private sector we said years ago was going to eventually come to a head.  And now it has.   Elites and Republicans in concert are able to use useful idiots in society to create animosity against fellow citizens for having better wages and benefits.  So, rather than do what is necessary to restore American economic vibrancy by fixing the private sector, elites and Republicans focus useful idiots on destroying the living wages and benefits of public sector workers.  The same living wages and benefits that used to be a hallmark of a vibrant private sector economy.

The efforts in Wisconsin are in fact nothing more than a  power grab by the Republican bureaucracy.  It is meant to destroy funding for the Democratic party.  Power always has a motive of more power.  And politics is nothing more than a game of power.   If the Democratic party can be defunded, the Republicans believe they will run roughshod over the country with their fascist ideology.

And mind you, this is an attempt to deflect away from the true crimes of elites in our country.  And to turn citizens against citizens and to use propaganda and useful idiots to accomplish this.  It’s exactly what Senator Webb wrote about above.  The attempt to break collective bargaining in Wisconsin are the same techniques employed by Gaddafi and Mubarak to atomize dissent.  Both attempted to send paid off thugs (useful idiots) into the streets to loot, terrorize protestors and even murder innocent people.  To turn people against people.  To attempt to atomize community and dissent in a maneuver to deflect from the fraud of both regimes and have people wish for a return for order provided by the state, regardless of how morally bankrupt it is or whatever force it uses to restore order. 

The public and private sector citizens of this country need to join hands and fight the real problem.  Republicans and Democrats.

So, this begs a question.  How did the Republican party go from supporting collective bargaining to forty years of union busting?   Well, I am glad you asked. 

Today’s southern Republican block holds many ideologies of the southern Democratic block during Civil War times.  In other words the slave plantation owner’s view cited above.   Even today, they still support what is termed “right to work”  laws and this neoliberal free market, anti-regulation, anti-government ideology that was prevalent during pre - Civil War times. 

Many decades ago very powerful labor unions used their political power to go after these laws and the mainly southern politicians who hid behind their plantation owner’s views of society, government and economics.  (By the way, a view I personally believe is generally consistent with the Alabama-based Mises Institute that has become so popular with many useful idiots writing on the internet.)

I believe there is ample evidence the Dixiecrats (Racist democrats fighting Lincoln’s Civil War policies that has now found a home in the modern day Republican party.) are the  basis for the anti-union platform of the modern day Republican Party and elites who support much of this nonsensical, intolerant and hate-filled views we see in politics today.  In other words, these people hate democracy and they don’t like you regardless of the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or your religious views.  

In other words, this union-busting originally started as a political war between generally southern Republicans who held Civil War views of economics and government clashing with powerful northern unions attempting to break their political lock on southern states to give workers the right to collective bargaining.    I think we see who has won that battle?  The politician with endless money in his pocket by elites is able to write the rules to the game and marginalize community and collective bargaining.  Or as is the manifesto used to spark democracy in the Middle East remarks, politicians working for rich elites have atomized democratic dissent.

By the way, I believe many of the plantation owner’s views are reflected in an ideology that has become very popular with a group of useful idiots in society today.  These people are very popular with many disenfranchised and have a following on the internet. 

This attempted power grab, like all others by the political and fascist class in the U.S., will fail.   For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.  And that reaction has been building for forty years.  It’s just a matter of timing when this will fail.   How it fails could take many forms.  But let’s use a corollary as an example of one possible failure.  The Pashtun tribesmen flip the bird at a corrupt American-backed centralized government in Kabul, Afghanistan because they see no value in any services rendered.  They simply see bureaucrats seeking to control their lives and take from them with nothing given in return.  So too will the same dynamic develop in the U.S. with the dismantling of democratic and socially-valuable government institutions in favor of maintaining the tyranny of corporate fascism and the war state.  The American people will eventually flip the bird at politicians who deliver little to no value in services rendered for our democratic society.   Whether it is a political idiot in Kabul or Washington or Madison, the behavior is consistent.  The less representative government we have, the less people are going to support it. 

Mind you, the revolts in the Middle East are a threat to the interests of American elites as well.  This whole global dynamic is very interrelated.  The lid is coming off of their schemes and lies.  Power and hegemony is falling left and right.  And as we have said countless times,  it will happen in the U.S. as well.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

The Republicans, more so than the Democrats, see a chance at unprecedented power by destroying our democratic institutions.  They are cutting their own throats in an attempt to gain even greater power.  The Republican party’s survival as we know it is in serious trouble.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:25 AM

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Arab League Throws Stones From The Cheap Seats By Criticizing UN-Backed Involvement In Libya

This was so predictable on some level.  Just days ago we wrote that the nations behind the Arab League should take primary responsibility for this no-fly zone in Libya and that their support for such actions were likely of dubious intention.

All Arab nations of the Middle East are run by tyrants, looters, psychopaths and criminals.  It’s quite telling that there has never been an Arab democracy.  Given that fact we should assume the Arab League’s call for UN involvement in Libya could have less than honorable motives.   Those motives were likely:

One, they most likely saw the butchering of Libyans as drawing undue political attention on failed Arab states by the rest of the world.

Two, they more than likely feared that their own populations would have even greater resentment for their governments not making any public proclamation or support for brothers and sisters being murdered in Libya.

Three, by supporting the UN, they knew that the U.S. and Europe would take a lead and therefore, they had no culpability or blame in any backlash by repressed Arab peoples in their countries or others.  ie, Plenty of ability to point fingers and lay blame on the dirty Americans. 

Four, most Arab leaders realize Muammar needs to go because he’s so insane that he draws too much attention to the failed, corrupt and repressive tyranny of other Arab League states.  ie, Most state thugs and fiefdoms in the Middle East would rather have a softer, kinder murderer ruling Libya.  They surely don’t want democracy, which would threaten their own failed states.

Once again, in their eagerness to assert control, American and European politicians have been out politicked by Arab thugs.  When will the U.S. and European politicians ever learn?

Link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 3:26 PM

Possible 100 Mile Oil Slick Reported In New Gulf Oil Spill? Thank You President Obama And Congress For Your Systemic Incompetence. Again.

Well, right on time.  Our failed President and failed Congress failed to do anything to stop the failure of more deep water drilling failures.   Corruption-dominated Washington is a complete failure.  Fascism is in serious trouble.

By the way, let me remind you on our posts about oil spills and the documentary we cited on here before about fraud and corruption between government and industry that ultimately led to the Exxon Valdez disaster as well.   These crises are the manifestation of corruption.  Period.  Cassandras foretold of the Exxon disaster.  Just as other Cassandras said the Gulf oil spill was going to happen.  Just as other Cassandras have predicted this economic catastrophe around the world.  But the status quo always cites these events as fat tails or once in a generation events that were unpredictable.   The problem is our world is now defined by endless once in a generation events.  Often because of corruption. 

As we wrote before, the MASSIVE Gulf oil disaster that our President and Congress have swept under the rug will have impacts that last decades.   While the horror of a nuclear disaster conjures up images of incredible devastation, the reality is the BP Gulf oil spill will more than likely turn out to be substantially more devastating than the nuclear disaster in Japan.  Substantially.     

All of this while nutty Rand Paul is calling to end the Department of Energy, the agency responsible for regulating our nuclear power plants.  And Ron Paul gave some type of incredibly incoherent interview during the Gulf oil spill about this crisis being caused by regulation.  I like Ron Paul as someone who seeks to uncover the fraud in Washington but as we have said before, I don’t think he knows diddly shit about economics.  He definitely doesn’t understand monetary economics.   He buys into this hocus pocus Mises Institute propaganda that has become popular with government-haters and anarchists.   And his son borders on even nuttier perspectives of anarchy.

We need government of the people, by the people for the people.  We don’t need what we have today which is state-based economics, fascism, miltarism and corruption.  If you dismantle government of the people, by the people and for the people, this is what we get.  A toothless bureaucracy that serves no substantial purpose other than to line the pockets of corporations, lobbyists, foreign dictators and politicians.  That doesn’t mean we continue dismantling social services and democratic institutions and democratic government while leaving the fascist corruption in place. 

posted by TimingLogic at 12:18 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Nuclear Power - America’s Fraud Extends To Every Industry. The Choke Point Is The Three-Headed Cerberus Of Politicians, Corporations And Lobbyists.

And just as the cerberus guarded the gates to hell in mythology, so to does the modern-day cerberus guard the gates of massive fraud, treason and corruption in America and the hell that their actions create.

Link from a reader here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:20 PM

Friday, March 18, 2011

March 19th Supermoon And The Cycle Of Volatility

I gave pause when Dennis Gartman, a hedge fund bureaucrat whom I believe has a very faulty belief system, (soon enough to be unemployed panhandler) said a week or so ago that the March 19th supermoon may cause destruction here on earth,  and then after the Japanese quake a week in advance of that date, he seemingly took credit for his remarks.   This perspective has a little too much correlation equals causation by someone who obviously read the front page supermoon story on Yahoo, made a public comment and is now a great bodhissatva of Vedic astrology.   (Leave it to ABC News to post one of the most ridiculous, unreasoned and unscientific stories I have ever read on any topic as it pertains to the supermoon.)

Now, this may come as a surprise but I am fairly well versed in astrology.  And I am not talking about the ridiculous nonsense in Cosmopolitan magazine or the horoscopes in the back page of your newspaper but about astrology as was used as a pseudo-science and science by pre-industrial man.  But rather than looking at astrology as hocus pocus used to manipulate people, I view it from the perspective of a scientist.  

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the solar system and the universe beyond was actually an enabler for life on earth rather than just a random mix of planets or stuff?   That the solar system served a biological purpose?  And that this could be explained scientifically if we only had the knowledge?  Really, that is what real astrology is  about.  Doesn’t sound so crazy when explained like that, now does it?  Contrarily, it sounds rather crazy not to at least consider that these scientific possibilities exist.  There is enormous scientific evidence that supports  astrology as something more than hocus pocus.

One might find it interesting that many formally-educated scientists are now starting to consider or even embrace astrology’s basic thesis as a rationale for new theories about our existence and the world around us.   

I put a whole lot more weight behind astrology as a proven theory than I do for say, Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is based on complete nonsense and conclusions that have absolutely no scientific merit when the totality of inputs and processes are considered.  As I have told a friend who is a PhD in anthropology, who spent half of her life being indoctrinated by Darwinism, you serve an ideology that is protected and fostered by a self-interested educational system that relies on ridiculous notions because it is economically-beneficial to do so.   In other words, Darwinism exists as a very siloed theory supported by siloed thinking because it has gained political or ideological inertia.  The same reason we hold onto this failed economic ideology, often confused with science, that its self-interested preachers and con artist call free markets and globalization. 

We generally need to see any ideology implode for its preachers to be put back in a bottle.   Mind you, none of this is a rejection of scientific principals in favor of religious faith as are many arguments in this arena.  It is just the opposite.  It is embracing the search for truth and ultimately the science that exists because of it.  True spirituality and science coexist very harmoniously.  Religion, science. and for that matter, economics and politics are often hijacked by self-interested parties seeking control-based benefit.   As these ideologies mature and grandiose institutions of the human ego are created around them, they all succumb to manipulation by the human condition and ultimately the subversion of truth for the sake of control and power.  One day, most likely long after we are all gone, science and spirituality will ultimately reach the same harmonious conclusion - the universe is not random.  But rather than based on ideology and attempts to control people or truth as is the debate today, the conclusions will in fact be based on truth and enlightenment.

Anyway, while our minds should not rule out any possibilities, I am fairly confident the supermoon had no direct impact on what is now measured as a 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan.   Nor did the moon likely have any impact on the massive quakes in Chili, the massive tsunami in Southeast Asia or any of the other major tectonic disturbances over the last decade.   Taking a mildly close correlation and assuming it to be causation is faulty science as we have written.  It is the sole basis for anthropogenic global warming perpetuated by a scientific dunce named Algore.  It’s the same faulty science Wall Street has used to create their Frankenstein finance.  As we have remarked before, the moon plays a major role in the development of complex life on earth, but there are most certainly other factors at play in a cycle of volatility.  Those may include other astrological or astronomical events but that’s beyond the scope of anything we are ever going to discuss on here. 

I will share something for you to consider as it relates to these topics in a continuation of our unique posts  regarding volatility.  I believe it’s quite possible that time is nonlinear and that this dynamic plays a major role in cycles of volatility.   I won’t tell you why I think that because it will cloud your mind, although I am already clouding it.   But consider this.  Time is controlled by a little clock in our heads.  A Seiko I believe.  And because time is a biological process, like all biological processes, it most likely is nonlinear.  And that process of nonlinearity is shared by all of humanity and could possibly be impacted by exogenous factors throughout the universe.  Are you still with me?  Haha.  So, most theoretical physics, including Einstein’s work and Einstein’s personal observations outside of his work, believe time is at best, relative and could even be nonexistent.  ie, An invention of the human mind.  Not an easy concept to grasp because it doesn’t fit into your sensory-driven view of reality.  But the reality is our conscious view of the world around us is completely determined by our physical senses and our mind’s interpretation of those senses.  The same mind that creates our perception of time.    So, if time is nothing more than a biological process that is nonlinear, we can use this concept to help explain the substantial natural extinctions, economic and banking crises, global weather volatility, tectonic activity and other natural disturbances we see in a volatile world around us.   Now, if you wish to consider more, you might contemplate how we can possibly assist in explaining volatility using this nonlinearity of time.   And, curiously, if any of this has any modicum of truth behind it, we already know the future is somewhat predetermined by events well beyond our control.   In other words, all attempts to save the economic system as it exists are pointless.   What will be, will simply be as institutions which are manifestations of the human mind or ego continue to fail.  And rather than trying to control volatility, humanity should embrace chaos and new economic changes which are based on virtue, moral clarity and democracy.

One things is surely certain as we have said countless times.  The world is clearly very different than it is believed.

Well, that’s enough for today.  Be sure to head to your local planetarium or get your telescope out or just step outside to see the March 19th supermoon. 

posted by TimingLogic at 1:09 PM

Libya Declares Cease Fire After UN Vote

George Bush and I share at least one thing in common.  I’m not a big fan of the United Nations as a tool for any type of governance.  But I do believe the UN can serve a useful purpose.  This is one such purpose.  As I saw a Libyan dissident state yesterday, if the UN cannot protect people rising up against tyranny from mass killings, then what purpose does it serve?  

I would like to go a step further.  Rather than the U.S. or Europe playing the lead role in this no-fly zone, I believe the members of the Arab League, who endorsed this decision, should use their own air forces to enforce this no-fly zone.  In other words, the people in the Middle East need to take responsibility for their own future rather than relying on the dysfunctional triangulation or mediation that has become so ingrained in their political deadlock and tyrannical societies.   There has never been a democratic Arab state.  Ever.  If Arab nations  want to speak more than political rhetoric, they need to walk the talk and support democracy even if it means threatening the tyranny in their own countries.  Supporting this no-fly zone and then expecting the U.S. or Europe to take the lead so they can continue to defend the tyranny in their own countries serves no purpose in the process of democratization.  Rather it is simply a self-serving political gesture with dubious and undemocratic intentions.

Link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:34 AM

Just A Few Updated Comments About The Nuclear Situation In Japan

I have to say I consider much of the media’s coverage of this event to be akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater.   In other words, it has often been abhorrently disgusting involving sensationalization and self-serving attempts to profit at other’s expense.  And there hasn’t been a whole lot of restraint of any attempt to avert panic.   Some news sources are actually trying to educate and inform but most of it has been about capturing an opportunity to feed the profit engine of corporate news.    I will say one constructive event will likely come of this coverage – we will now bring focus onto an industry and topic that has been kept out of public debate by politicians making uninformed and undemocratic decisions about our country.  The age of enlightenment continues.  ie, Another hole in the wall holding up Humpty Dumpty.

Sometimes the best course of action is to simply wait to see what is going to unfold.  Although the situation in Japan is very grim, I remain reasonably confident this situation will not turn into a Chernobyl.  The reactors were shut down during the earthquake as opposed to the runaway nature of Chernobyl with its horrendously flawed open  graphite design.   Although the open nature of the spent radioactive material kept on site in an earthquake zone seems ungodly incompetent. 

If Japan can get power restored in coming days, the worm might just turn in this crisis.  They have a hell of a mess either way and we still don’t know the true state of the site or the reactors but let’s hope the heroes sacrificing their lives to get this under control are ultimately successful. 

posted by TimingLogic at 9:06 AM

Thursday, March 17, 2011

President Obama Picks College Basketball Favorites While Americans Rot, Libyans Are Butchered And Japan Is Under Massive Shock

I really just do not like politicians at all.  Authority and leadership seldom crosses paths.   There is something severely dysfunctional with the process of granting generally unstable power mongers dominion over society and then cheering for winners and losers.   The only winners are the politicians and the only losers are you.  Our political system needs massive reform to reflect the concept of self-rule.  With a substantial focus on local self-rule.  ie, All politics are local.   

I see absolutely no difference between Barack Obama and George Bush.  None.  Other than Obama has the gift of gab.  Both are highly incompetent bureaucrats seemingly unable to get out of their own way.   Or as the person who sent me this link said, he has is head up his ass - a uniquely American leadership style while the world is burning.   It’s a pattern perpetuated by a corrupt political process.   The only thing I can imagine worse than Barack Obama right now is if John McCain would have won the Presidency.  Then we would have McCain rambling on about how great free trade is by citing that Apple builds iPhones in the U.S. and telling us gasoline is $1.50 a gallon.   And Phil Gramm would be back running his economic policy.  The same joint Republican-Democratic fascist policy that dismantled our society under Bill Clinton.  God save me from the political idiots. 

The two party political system elects people who have a primary objective of serving the party and a secondary objective of serving America.   And that means we generally get idiots beholden to an ideology or who serve their masters.  We need to bust the two party monopoly.  The only thing worse than a Democrat is a modern day Republican. 

posted by TimingLogic at 12:06 PM

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Bahrain Declares State Of Emergency And China’s Trade Deficit Reaches Seven Year High

It’s easy to lose sight of macro factors around the world given the devastation in Japan.   But the world is literally on fire, whether figuratively or literally, almost everywhere.  And it has been for many months now. 

That includes Bahrain’s declared state of emergency as Shia and Sunni factions clash and China’s just  announced trade deficit – the largest in seven years.    China’s trade surplus peaked back in 2008 and has been in a volatile and often severe decline every since.  Impending doom is dead ahead.  

The high priests of ideology in the gold market might want to consider this “linear thinking” rosy future where China and the Middle East buys massive sums of gold.   We have hammered on these nonsensical positions for many years including our last remark criticizing Le Metropole Café, who made some of the most ridiculous remarks imaginable regarding China back in December.  Contrarily, we have said both the Middle East and China are going bust and have said so longer than anyone else I am aware of.   And we wrote that doing so would mean they are likely going to be major sellers of gold.

If there is one thing I am quite certain of, that is, 99% of people buying gold, including almost all of its self-appointed religious (ideological)  preachers, have no idea what is going on in the global economy.   Ideology and brainwashing needs a preacher.  The truth needs no preacher.  It is self-evident or mystically found within. 

We continue to wait for the world to reveal its true self and for our expected outcomes to come to pass.   We nailed more outcomes into the 2008 collapse than from any other source I am aware of, and I remain confident we will do the same as the future unfolds.   Not because we are smarter than anyone else.  That is preposterous.  But because our minds are free of the lies created by brainwashed zealots, political con men, economic idiots and Wall Street liars.  

"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.”.   The search for truth will reveal its riches soon enough.

posted by TimingLogic at 12:17 PM

Events So Improbable They Had Never Been Included In Anyone’s Models

For any new readers, back in the fall of 2006 I wrote that I was so bearish on Wall Street banks that I pulled all of my family’s money out of said firms.  We incessantly hammered our bearishness of banks and came within a few percentage points of nailing the top in the banking index, although our time component was off by a handful of months.  This was at a time when almost every hedge fund, global investor, banking CEO, S&P 500 CEO, every major consulting firms and every politician around the globe was incredibly bullish on Wall Street and globalization. 

About a year before Wall Street’s collapse we ran the video below and did a follow up on a handful of posts regarding “The Game”.  We outlined exactly what was going to happen to Wall Street banks and indeed in the fall of 2008, that is exactly what came to pass as Wall Street completely collapsed.   Don’t let the egos of incompetent CEOs fool you, every Wall Street firm would have collapsed without a massive multi-trillion bailout of unprecedented fraud and corruption.   

Since this rally started in 2009, we wrote countless posts on the dynamic that would again cause Wall Street to collapse.   All we needed was the spark to ignite the fire.  With volatility returning, has that spark started the ignition? We also wrote in detail of how the supposed regulation created by a corrupt Washington politicians actually had the reserve effect of locking out competition and cementing the fraud that exists today rather than reforming it.  And over the last few months we have written a few mocking statements of how Wall Street’s models will deal with the volatile events unfolding.  And we have written that we were again bearish on Wall Street and that their profits have peaked.  Wall Street firm’s stocks peaked almost a year ago, similar to what happened leading into 2008.

I think it’s time we repost this video as we did before the 2008 crash.  Pay particular attention to the remarks at about 2:05 of the video and the events leading up to it.

Our banks are given preferential treatment by our society because they are supposed to be serving human and social development of all American citizens.  Instead, Wall Street has become a cesspool of corruption and gambling in everything including placing bets against the American people, our teachers, our local governments, our states and our public institutions all while denying Americans access to their own capital as our citizens rot.  

As we have mentioned countless times on here over the years, our downside target for the S&P remains 200-450.   

posted by TimingLogic at 9:33 AM

Monday, March 14, 2011

Rising Above The Histrionics – What Is Really Happening At Fukushima.

Update:  When the press has headlines that the nuclear fuel rods are exposed, they are feeding the histrionics.  The fuel rods were exposed within the enclosed containment facility.  In other words, there was some level of temporary loss of cooling over the fuel rods and without being addressed, this could lead to a melting of the rods through the containment facility.  This does not mean they were exposed to the outside environment, which would mean the containment facility or core was breached.  The media is a source of nonstop lunacy. 

There is a lot of underreporting and misreporting in the media about the Japanese nuclear power plants, none of which serve any purpose.  When people hear the word “blast” and nuclear power plant, there is some level of misinformation and histrionics that is reported in the media.  This is obviously a serious situation but these blasts have nothing to do with the breach of the containment core.     They are vented hydrogen blasts.  And unfortunately, given the state of these reactors, they are to be expected.    A breach of the containment core would lead to a Chernobyl-type meltdown. 

As long as there were no bureaucratic snafu or other unforeseen crisis, we would likely see the Japanese government start a process of permanently sealing the reactor well before a containment breach would occur.  This is a worthwhile and well-written piece if this is an issue of concern to you

posted by TimingLogic at 9:51 AM

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Japan’s Nuclear Dilemma And The Cycle Of Volatility

There seems to be a fair amount of confusion around the state of a couple nuclear power plants in Japan.  This really should be expected given the horrendous crisis Japan now faces.   Although there have been some sensationalized headlines in the press, the reality is none of those people writing those headlines know with complete authority what they are writing.   But sensationalism and not restraint is what pays the bills for our paparazzi press.  Shoot first, aim later.

While we cannot discount any outcomes, Japan’s nuclear industry has substantially more safeguards than Chernobyl.  And it more than likely has better nuclear planning.  From the information I see, there is not a runaway reaction as there was in Chernobyl.  But as we remarked in a prior post, the U.S. people were misled by politicians about the seriousness of Three Mile Island as well so what do we really know?  And what could happen with aftershocks in coming days?

Nuclear plants don’t explode like nuclear bombs.  But as we wrote in our Pripyat and Chernobyl post quite some time ago, the potential nuclear fallout can be magnitudes worse.   The radioactivity from Chernobyl was one hundred times greater than the Hiroshima bombing in World War II, over 500,000 people died and 7,000,000 people needed medical treatment.  Nuclear power plant disasters have the potential to be far, far worse than nuclear bombs.

Nuclear power is not cheap as we highlighted before.  The costs are subsidized publicly (Profits are privatized.  Sound familiar?  Sounds like Wall Street.), the dismantling process is incredibly expensive, the waste is a serious problem and then we have this current situation to remind us that unlike a coal, natural gas, geothermal or solar facility, a disaster has the potential to destroy millions of lives and render entire cities or even larger areas uninhabitable for thousands of years.   There are superior forms of generating energy and I would state that even though it is relatively new, solar is one of them.  Generation IV nuclear technologies and other advances will provide major breakthroughs in nuclear power plant abilities but that’s a forward-looking statement.   

This all highlights a serious crisis in our country that we have written of numerous times.  We do not have public debates on substantive issues such as nuclear power, or for that matter anything else.  Instead we have a lot of people doing a lot of talking who have no idea what they are talking about – politicians, lobbyists, the corporate media and corporate bureaucrats.  And what happens is that politicians, most often idiots, then ram these decisions down our throats because they have lined their pockets with bribes from corporations or special interests.  Do you remember our post on nuclear power lobbyists and their deleterious effects on Washington politics?  Or our post on Goldman Sachs being behind the nuclear energy push in the U.S.?   Need I say more?  Are politicians lining us up for an eventual nuclear crisis of our own?  I think we can assume it’s just a matter of when rather than if. 

With the cycle of volatility we are in, there is obviously a heightened risk for this type of event.  And that is one reason I have written numerous times about this topic.  

There are lessons to be learned in all of this.  We need to restore public debate by experts and not special interests and corrupt politicians.  In order for that to happen, we need to get politicians out of our lives and restore this country and our economy to its rightful owners, We The People.   Politicians are stewards and administrators for the rightful owners of this country.  They are not kings and queen as they have appointed themselves.   And nuclear disasters in one country have the potential to kill millions of people in another country.  There should be consideration for minimum international standards for nuclear plant designs and processes beyond what exists.   And those standards should be managed by bodies of scientists and engineers and not politicians or political organizations as exists today.  And there should be a consideration on a moratorium on building new plants anywhere until Generation IV or other unique designs are developed that substantially address nuclear safety and waste.  

posted by TimingLogic at 9:50 AM

Friday, March 11, 2011

Volatility Update: The Economic Storm Has Likely Returned. Largest Earthquake Ever Recorded In Japan Rocks The Pacific

I haven’t posted a lot regarding volatility since the beginning of the year but for any new readers, one of the major themes we have remarked of on here incessantly since starting this blog is that we are in a cycle of volatility.  And that the volatility which is manifesting itself in our economies and our societies is the same volatility we see in the natural world around us.  In other words, humanity’s self-deceit of becoming masters of the world around us is an illusion created by the human mind.  We are clearly impacted by the same forces that shape the world around us in ways that most people do not even consider, let alone understand. 

Before the 2008 collapse we wrote that Wall Street’s low volatility models would eventually face doom.  That volatility can not be tamed.  And indeed they have.  I think we can assume generally that this process has only just begun and that the entire monster that Wall Street’s self-deceit has created will blow up before our very eyes.  And this is something we have hammered repeatedly. 

We have also remarked that we were in the eye of the volatility storm, similar to the natural occurrence of a Fibonacci spiral seen in hurricanes, during this rally off of the March 2009 low.  ie, That this economic storm would also parallel patterns seen throughout the universe.  And that we will eventually see something much worse as the storm returns and the back end devastates the investor class, economies and global financial markets.   As we wrote, this is exactly what happened with the onset of the Great Depression where a lengthy rally pulled many of the bears and the bulls back into markets for one massive and final blow of complete decimation. 

There is substantial scientific evidence for what I have written although you aren’t going to read it in what are often ideologically-driven half truths we call scientific text books and the decades of dogmatic drivel that have been heaped upon it, in a process we call “education” often better described as indoctrination.  As we have typed countless times, the world is substantially different than we are led to believe.  The human mind’s desire to trick us into a world where we control our destiny is behind much of our deluded thinking.  ie, As we have written, thinking with your eyes is a dangerous game of deceit created by the mind. 

Many may find it hard to visualize (thinking with our eyes again) the magnitude of an 8.9 earthquake given the Richter Scale is logarithmic, so below is a graphic comparing energy released with the Richter Scale located on the left side.  We can see that this earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan has an energy of one million times greater than the average quake we see throughout the normal course of events.

I have written quite a few times over the last six months that I believed the cycle of volatility was returning.  With the massive unrest in the Middle East, Greece and elsewhere taking hold, with this earthquake and that in New Zealand, with major storms and flooding over the last handful of months, with financial markets starting to show signs of increase volatility again and with multiple other instances of volatility, there is substantial reason to believe that indeed the storm has returned. 

It’s no coincidence a few months ago we wrote that were were once again bearish on financial stocks and that their profits had more than likely peaked post this crisis.  This was after we changed our position from bearish when Citigroup hit 99 cents to a statement that we were no longer bearish on banks because exogenous events would determine their future.

The Quickening has returned.

 

Click for larger view of graphic

quake

 

 

posted by TimingLogic at 9:09 AM

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Bill Gross Is Clueless

Now maybe I am being hard on Bill.  I mean, he was smart enough to hire Mohamed El-Erian after he blew up Harvard’s investment company.  And he hired Neel Kashkari after he helped blow up Goldman Sachs.   But I joke.  All of these men are surely brilliant.

Gross is the consummate status quo bureaucrat.  He makes money off of other people.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  This guy deserves the microphone no more than any other American.  He has not created the cure for cancer.  Nor has he postulated quantum physics.  Nor has he worked on the factory floor making automobiles.  Or built a house.  Or taught our children.  Or serviced the sick.   Bill Gross doesn’t live in the real world.  People in the real world allow his fantasy world to exist.  This guy does nothing more than push around taxpayer guaranteed debt instruments.   A fucking monkey could do that.   And as we are finding out as their inventions are blowing up left and right, these people are, in fact, monkeys.

Many people follow people like Gross’s every word as someone who actually knows what he is talking about.  Gross was in the ether before this crisis.  Living large and believing life was good.  So, what makes anyone believe his comments today are anything more than dumb luck or the flip of a coin? 

Now he is saying there is no way out for the U.S. and their debt issue.   This is a completely ridiculous statement.  Living standards must fall according to Gross

Well, if we rely on bureaucrats like Gross to find out way out of this, we are going to see a lot of unnecessary pain.  Just as we saw a lot of unnecessary pain over the last thirty years for listening to these boneheads.   We need to get people like Gross out of our lives and out of our way so productive people can rebuild the mess he helped create.  He doesn’t understand economics and he clearly doesn’t understand what he is talking about here. 

When you get ideologues and clueless bureaucrats controlling the microphone, there is no way to get to the truth.  There are many ways for the U.S. to deal with this crisis without seeing a collapse.  And they aren’t off the wall ridiculous either.  They simply re-embrace what made our country the wealthiest in the world for the past two hundred years.  And part of that was getting people like Gross out of our lives.  Comparing the U.S. to a corporation is ridiculous.  And believing the U.S. ever has to borrow money from a private source is even more ridiculous.  By the way that strangers are gracing us by buying our debt as he remarks is also ridiculous.  That is American capital that China is using to buy our debt.   And it is a crime that the U.S. government should ever borrow money from any private bank or other country.  All we need to get out of this environment is repudiate the economic ideology that Gross and other nonsensical bureaucrats support and the U.S. will be fine.   

I am not here to spoon feed any answers but to implore people to think.  I have met people who don’t have any formal education beyond middle school who know how to fix our problems.  That Gross sees no way out shows how deluded his reality is.  I know how to fix this mess and so do countless others.  We’ll go there some day but it isn’t likely to be any time soon.  We are still waiting on the real world to reveal itself and all of the other things we have discussed since starting this blog to come to pass. 

By the way Mr. Gross, the last time we had this much public debt, it was not because of corruption as it is today.   Corruption that you helped fund by buying U.S. government debt.  But with the mound of debt we had the last time in history it was this percentage of GDP, our economy roared.  And we didn’t cut Social Security or public pay or fire half of the country or see our living standards fall as Gross states is so obvious.  Obviously wrong.   These people are so fucking stupid, I am absolutely sick of listening to them.  I do apologize for  my vitriolic language but it makes me so damned upset what these people are doing to our society, our community and our country.    And, for goodness sake, this is a blog.  It’s not an economics book for second graders. 

I have quoted Joseph Schumpeter on here many times.  He, unlike Gross, was a brilliant mind.  And a brilliant economist.  As we have noted numerous times over the years, Schumpeter said at times of economic crisis, the most important dynamic needed to restart the economy was to get rid of the ideological idiots who created the mess in the first place.   I completely agree.  Let’s let Mr. Gross get a real job, get off of this failed debt-based monetary system, get rid of Wall Street and fire all of the political idiots and lobbyists in Washington.  

posted by TimingLogic at 9:35 AM

Monday, March 07, 2011

Britain’s Head Bankster Warns Of Second Financial Crisis As Imbalances Again Grow

Ya think?

It is very unusual to see someone who is a senior member of the status quo be so forthright.  They are usually steeped in ideology and beliefs that are so ingrained, that their mind is completely controlled by their own self-aggrandizing delusions. 

Every once in a blue moon, someone within the system has an epiphany and repudiates it.  Because of self interest and fear of being blackballed, most never come forward.   One of the very few is one we wrote about a few years ago, Daniel Ellsberg.  Ellsberg was the golden child of the American war machine in the 1960s.  He was completely immersed in the system and was its star.  The U.S. eventually tried to imprison him for his breach of their secrecy steeped in lies and deceit of the American people.  He literally risked his life and freedom because his eyes opened to the corruption and murder his actions were contributing to.    In a world of authority, Daniel Ellsberg was a leader.  And still is today, seeking social justice and an end to an absolutely senseless pre-emptive foreign policy of belligerence and aggression.  We see none of this in the United States.   It is all outsiders who seek an end to economic tyranny, fraud and corruption. 

The response to King’s criticism by the British con artists better known as banksters, was typical - King is a loon and we are doing God’s work.    

Link here.

posted by TimingLogic at 9:50 AM

Friday, March 04, 2011

Equity Market Advance-Decline Data Update

2011-02-27_2050

Above is the advance-decline data that I have shown before. (And the S&P 500 for perspective)  It attempts to back out the manipulation of Frankenstein finance.  I pulled this data a handful of days ago so it has actually deteriorated even further.  We have shown this a few times since the mini-crash last April-May.  (We have also shown another volume algo which imploded on an anticipated turn date last September and has also never recovered.  Btw, rally volume before these last few days of weakness has been the lowest this year confirming our imploding volume cycle count algorithm post some weeks ago.)  The above advance-decline data showed temporary weakness well before the flash-crash last year.  It was flashing a huge warning sign when sliced into three day segments as I do for myself.   As an aside, I thought the government was supposed to investigate the mini-crash.   But seriously.   Are you kidding me? 

Since the flash crash, the above advance-decline data has not recovered.  And except for a temporary short covering rally(manipulation), it is languishing at levels near the market lows of last summer.  In fact, this data would likely be making new lows except for short covering.  The data is already back to the June of 2009 levels.  This while the market is making new highs.  This is the first time ever that has happened using my data set that goes back quite a few decades.  

Something broke last April-May and while no one can remark with complete certainty what that was, I suspect it is what we have said was going to happen countless times since the 2009 bottom.  That is, Wall Street has traded everyone out of the market and remains its sole main liquidity provider.   That means the major source of liquidity is now derivatives and most, if not all, firms are on the same side of the trade.  I believe there is ample evidence that markets would have already collapsed were it not for their ability to manufacture free money to manipulate markets.   But that really shouldn’t be any great epiphany because JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan, Bank of America and other major Wall Street firms wouldn’t exist today were it not for trillions of dollars of Federal Reserve backing for their fraud. 

Since the April-May peak, the U.S. market has gone higher while most global equity markets and debt markets have not.  As we have said before, that is because financial fraudsters are repatriating hot money and the herd of financial fraudsters are now back focusing on America. 

As we have remarked quite a few times, this is a sick market.  It isn’t based on any kind of sustainable reality.  But CNBC sycophants find plenty of Wall Street idiots telling us this is a great time to buy.   The same people who are always telling us it’s a great time to buy.  When you are charging people fees for money under management, it’s never a bad time to start extorting fees better known as dollar cost averaging.

Fundamentals of this market are not confirming any of the pricing action.   Neither is unmanipulated advance-decline data that is based on true supply and demand characteristics of the market rather than leverage and derivatives which clearly are Orwellian manufactured views of reality.

I want to pull forward a remark we made on here some time in 2009 or 2010.  I can’t recall when and I’m too lazy to look it up.   This is an environment where financial markets are in unprecedented territory.   With more and more rigging of markets, the rise of Skynet (Frankenstein computer-based trading) and manipulation of reality by Wall Street’s Federal Reserve-enabled freak show, we have greater and greater instability building into markets. (aka unrealized volatility or as we wrote before the 2008 collapse, rising compression.)

  There is a little of the Butterfly Effect in financial markets with so much  unnecessary/unproductive financial market complexity and manipulation.  (Or as we have remarked in the many genetically-modified food posts, when will Pandora’s Box be opened?)   We know some of the macro outcomes, but we can only make reasonable guesses at what will push the system over the edge or be the trigger.   Especially when nonlinear and unexpected events around the world unfold.   Wall Street idiots live in a linear world created by their own grandiose self-deceit.  A fantasy world void of the volatile reality around us.   And as we have said, as this view starts to again fail, this will likely be the demise of politicians who lied to the American people about reform and instead are pinning their election hopes on money received from fraudulent Wall Street profits.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:37 AM