-Dring
dring, there the door bell goes. Reinko opens the door and it is Arty!
Hey come on in Reinko says.
Arty:
Long time yo see man! Hey I need some hot coffee because it is damn cold
in your country and what do we have to do with this surge in USA born
soldiers?
-Reinko:
I don't know, the surge in Afghanistan is very weird because only next
year in 2011 these USA born soldiers are supposed to get back to their trailer
parks.
We
must also take into account that even the throwing of dumb bombs is good
for the US economy because of the replacement demand.
Arty
(looking difficult): So what do we need to do?
-Reinko:
For Afghanistan it is important to keep attacks up, after all
Afghanistan is not for nothing the graveyard of empires.
On
the other hand the Pakistanis should put their act together and avoid
being the next Colombia or Mexico.
Arty
(smiling): Ok ok, I have to go back to Afghanistan so bye bye
With utter amazement the entire week I have
been watching folks on the financial news channels expressing hope
for the job situation to show improvement.
This was utterly weird because a lot of
financial news channel folks have done some 'academic study' like
economy. Why would the idiots from CNN, CNBC, the local RTL7 think
that jobs can improve? I don't have a clue!
All in all, if you throw the economy in a big
blender, it is more or less like this:
GDP
growth minus labor productivity growth = Employment
growth.
This is only a rule of thumb because not all
sectors of the economy are born equal.
Suppose the economy expands only via barber
shops, tattoo shops and whorehouse services, there are a lot of
jobs created because there labor costs are a huge fraction of the
turnover in that part of the economy.
In economies like those in Europe and the USA, expansion of jobs
in the industry always needs a few millions in expansion of the
GDP (because in the industry job costs are small compared to
turnover and added value).
As the idiots from the financial news
channels can see for themselves: my easy to understand rule of
thumb holds on nice:
Picture source (I modified the picture a
little bit):
Since real USA GDP growth over the last
decade has been below 2% a year (that's also unknown for these
financial news weirdo's) it is not that hard to understand why job
numbers don't grow.
Ok ok financial news outlets are also mass
media things and as such they cannot make it 'too difficult', why
not include a five minute item every hour with "What
did Paris Hilton do the last 60 minutes?"
The overpaid bankers and financial news folks
doing their homework? Come on, since when do these easy going
folks read simple to understand stuff like this:
Of course the usual 'Table A' from the USA
Bureau of Labor Statistics is a must see (where dumb financial
news folks always think the Non Farm Payrolls is the hot thing,
table A is always much more funny):
Lets end the update once more with this very
easy to understand macro economical stuff:
GDP
growth minus labor productivity growth = Employment
growth.
Till updates.
(06 Jan 2010) Two items:
Item 1) Pakistan: the number of attacks needs
to go down.
Item 2) Having fun with the Americans part III + a few
links.
Item 1) Pakistan: the
number of attacks needs to go down.
I know I almost write nothing about Pakistan,
but beside other folks I too have been looking with amazement to
all those bombings on weird places like markets or lately at some
volleyball match.
The reason I almost never mention Pakistan is
very simple: I don't understand Pakistan enough. Pakistan is a
horrible difficult country to understand; a huge and very diverse
population.
Pakistan is also an artificial product from the colonial times, I
can only make meaningful contributions if I would understand all
the ins & outs on the colonial detail only... (Something I
lack!)
About a month ago al Qaida International came
out with a video message stating more or less that so much attacks
were completely un-Islamic.
After having giving it a few weeks of
thought, I have decided to side with aQI in this detail for the
full 100%.
After all, that is the old al Qaida I know. May be you have some
other mental construct in your head my dear reader, in that case
the propaganda has worked.
I didn't save the links, but here is a simple
and short description of the video (from 13 Dec 2009, Daily Times
dot pk, source):
CAIRO: Al Qaeda issued a new English-language video on Saturday denying it was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic.
US-born Al Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, who commonly delivers the organisation’s English messages, said the network was being framed for the bloodshed by the US and Pakistani intelligence services.
Real culprits: “The mercenaries of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Intelligence Agency or Blackwater are the real culprits behind these senseless and un-Islamic bombings,” he said. In a transcript of the video released by the SITE Intelligence Group, Gadahn told Pakistanis their real enemies were secular regimes, corrupt police, judges and tribal nationalists.
Comment: Nice to read this back one month
later after the CIA & Blackwater fun from Afghanistan...
But serious: This interpretation of 'real culprits' is correct. To
understand that you only need to skip your usual view from a fight
between 'good and evil' but to the distribution of military power
in the population.
The CIA folks don't actually pay for bombings at Pakistan food
markets, they do the 'avalanche rocket' that multiplies national
internal instability.
Standard example: Colombia (with very high killing rates year in
year out.)
Another example: Russia invading Afghanistan.
Present example: Pakistan?
__________
But free speech has many entries, if you
write the best stuff it will propagate and as such it is
propaganda (propaganda = that what propagates).
Here is a guy that has a different take on al
Qaida:
Have mercy on Chris W, the writer of the
above NICE words.
Item 2) Having fun with the
Americans part III + a few links.
Having fun with the Americans has far larger
impact than I would have thought after only one or two minutes of
work!
Lets not do difficult: Americans are there
for the killing (until they seek dialog) and in the meantime I am
only sunbathing with a fresh 1000+ growth of Americans that hate
me day in day out.
After the war stuff a highly interesting
article that tries to put a bit of blame to the use of math in the
global financial crises. The author argues that economists don't
understand math if indeed their matrices are of the wrong
kind:
When it comes to future US healthcare,
suddenly the USA folks understand what is ahead. If only the
weirdo's from the financial markets would understood the value of
fresh USA AAA rated government debt. (It's trash already, why buy
fresh trash?)
(04 Jan 2010) Sorry, only old stuff like the
good old so called 'trigger hypothesis' to the 11 Sept 2001
attacks. Sorry I am boring you with this.
Only one item:
Item 1) More old stuff: The trigger
hypothesis to the 911 stuff in 2001.
Item 1) More old
stuff: The trigger hypothesis to the 911 stuff in 2001.
Here in Holland we have a saying that goes
like this:
Je moet geen oude koeien uit
de sloot halen.
Translated it says you should not dig up old
cows from the canal. (Otherwise some skeletons will fall from some
closets.)
Let in this fresh new decade only concentrate
upon the killing of US soldiers, but a small deviation is allowed:
The original trigger hypothesis states that
without my accidental trigger thing, it would not have been this
great success.
The trigger hypothesis has many roots, for
example how can you succeed in people reacting without
thinking?
Well lets make a long story short by saying I
only needed one or two minutes of labor to arrive at the next
results of making about 2000 Americans mad at me in just a few
days:
Just a few minutes of labor while on the pre
911 stuff (against the Muslims) I labored a few
hours...
It's only a small deviation now we have a
fresh year number like 2010, why not look again at one of the best
pieces of propaganda from the previous decade?
It clearly says the USA tactics from those
long lost years were indeed sowing war in Afghanistan. Long quote:
The anti-communist rebels garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the US intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.
Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam
War."
Comment: These days former US prez Jimmie
Carter always hangs out the peace dove but this old CIA stuff
happened right under his nose... Did Jimmie understand what was
happening and if so, did the USA not wholeheartly deserve the 09
Sept 2001 attacks?
Is it really true that Americans handcuffed
and shot dead Afghan schoolkids?
At first I did not believe it, but the story keeps on hanging in
the air and does not go away...
That's it, let me in this first update in the
year 2010 wish the Afghanis a lot of creativity this year with
killing Americans.
(If dialog would be possible, that would be better but the
Americans listen only to the argument of filled coffins.)
Till updates.
(31 Dec 2009, updated 01 Jan 2010 with CIA
vows revenge) The last day of this year is about
Afghanistan.
Item 1) Afghanistan update.
According to the Geneva Convention war rules,
when you are captured by the enemy (as a prisoner of war) all
information you have to tell is your name, your number and what
unit you belong to. Interrogation of prisoners is forbidden, in
fact it's a crime.
So the Americans declared both in Iraq and
Afghanistan that the Geneva rules were not valid because the enemy
did not wear a uniform (as if those 7 killed CIA folks wear a
uniform...). All these years all prisoners were interrogated,
tortured & so on & so on.
On Christmas day a video of US infantryman
Bowe Bergdahl popped up, even to me this was a big surprise
because I have asked for his execution after the previous video...
So the Afghanis decided different, I have to smile because the new
vid was a nice surprise...
Anyway, last Summer a lot of US military
slime complained that showing captured soldiers was against
international law... (Talking about a bunch of hypocrites.)
In July, Bergdahl appeared in a video urging the U.S. government to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The Pentagon denounced those images as Taliban propaganda that they said violated international law.
Comment: Sorry USA folks, you did put out
international war laws by yourself. Why constantly this nonsense?
Why should the Taliban follow international law and NATO not?
__________
At present day suddenly that weird
'international law' is withdrawn and we have, quote:
"This is a horrible act which exploits a young soldier, who was clearly compelled to read a prepared statement. It reflects nothing more than the violent, deceitful tactics of the Taliban insurgency," said U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, director of communication, with NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.
"To release this video on Christmas Day is an affront to the deeply-concerned family and friends of Bowe Bergdahl, demonstrating contempt for religious traditions and the teachings of Islam. We will continue our search for Bowe Bergdahl," he said in a written statement.
Comment: Now suddenly the religious experts
from NATO know this video is against religion. Well I was raised a
Christian but I know of no part in the bible that says you cannot
publish videos like this on Christmas day...
But serious: Rather likely Bowe his family is glad he is still
alive.
So we have 7 new stars in the marble at CIA
headquarters, anyway a book says there is a star for every dead
CIA agent:
The Book of Honor
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385495417
Quote:
In the entrance of the CIA headquarters looms a huge marble wall into which seventy-one stars are carved-each representing an agent who has died in the line of duty.
__________
Lets end the year on a funny note:
This year total Western coalition death toll
in Afghanistan reached 1500 for the entire war since end 2001 and
reached 500 for this year number 2009.
As usual, if I act fast enough, I only have
to throw in a picture like:
And you never hear from it again in the
Western media.
It also works the other way around, I skipped
the next one and with high speed the next lovely file was
found:
These CIA assholes have some guts! Decades
ago it were secret weapon deliveries done by the CIA to
Afghanistan that lured Russia into war in Afghanistan. CIA
officers were very pleased because 'now Russia has her own
Vietnam'.
So the CIA plays an important role in decades of killing in
Afghanistan and now these weasels vow revenge for only
seven killed!
This is just unbelievable, just sheer
unbelievable!
Better kill Americans, civilians or military
everywhere on this globe. Why differentiate
between hard and soft targets if that CIA slime reacts in
such a childish way? Why?
Till updates.
(26 Dec 2009, updated 29 Dec 2009) It has been a nice yet strange
Christmas; the Bergdahl prisoner is still alive (in Afghanistan)
while in the USA an airflight to Detroit was attacked with
firecrackers!
It's tempting to comment on fun like that but
does it bring much wisdom at the scene?
No, therefore we take another look at the at (a small part of) the
math behind the fun from the last years.
Suddenly some USA folks blame a guy named
David X. Li for the wreckdown in fun like derivatives on financial
products. With the work of David in their hands, bankers no
longer needed to look at the underlying values in portfolio's but
the correlation with other stuff was enough to estimate the
default risk...
I never heard from David before but I hope
this is more or less the original source:
Since all kinds of idiots blame David X. let
me only attack the first 3 paragraphs with a better math thing
known as the 'Product Integral'.
So this is my Christmas gift to the USA hedge
funds: A Product Integral. (Not one
of those boring additive integrals, now you must multiply it on a
continual basis.)
My dear hedge funds, study the product
integral until you understand portfolio survival and hazard risk.
This can easily be done: understand the logarithm and survive, die
if you don't.
So dear hedge funds, good luck with your
Christmas present, try a few different functions to get a feel for
this (and relate it to hazard functions and survival rates).
Later I considered it a bit unsatisfactory
that I didn't write down the way you need to differentiate
functions in a multiplicative way.
It's utterly simple: Just like you can relate the (additive)
Riemann integral with ordinary differentiation (by writing it as a
telescoping sum) you can write the product integral as a
telescoping product. Hence:
The product integral was more or less the
first serious math that I found, if memory serves it was in 1987.
The oldest definition of a product integral was a so called Peano
series (end 19-th century) that was so difficult to understand
that I had to go into detail to explain it to my professors.
It is always rewarding that if you find
something, a math guy from the past has also thought on that. For
example, in the same time (that's 1987 or so) I constructed the 'e
to the power of the complex plane'. Only to find a few years later
it was known by long as the Riemann surface associated with the logarithm.
If you try to use the product integral in the complex plane you
run into an array of problems because the log is multi valued
there, on 'e to the power complex plane' you don't have these kind
of problems because you cannot go around zero and arrive at the
same point...
Here is how the Riemann surface looks like
(the vertical axis represents the zero, you cannot find a closed
curve around zero there).
(I don't know why all those strange curves are drawn in this
picture; better look at it as straight lines
from the vertical zero going horizontal and spirals
if you move up and keep your distance constant to the vertical
zero):
At last a pdf file that covers all the basics
for product integrals for real valued functions on the real line.
The author is Michael Coco, his proof for the above way of
differentiation is horrible (see page seven of the pdf, the
'Simplifying Formula') but later it was found Michael even found a
'sum rule'.
My compliments Michael, I never found it!
Item 1) Who needs sound banks anyway? Paul
Kedrosky doesn't need them...
Item 2) A few links.
Item 1) Who needs sound
banks anyway? Paul Kedrosky doesn't need them...
What do you do if you are a proud American
and you realize your banks are in fact a few trillions under
water? Well you rationalize it all away, you are trying to make
the best of the situation and suddenly it is logical that having
sound banks is just so costly and needs so much money that it
really isn't worth it.
On the website Seeking Alpha Paul has 620
followers, that means a lot of Americans understand what Paul
writes and they follow his insights.
The next article from Paul's pen is very
interesting from a psychology point of view, for all kinds of
reasons Paul thinks you can do without sound banks.
In other developing nations prone to earthquakes you often observe
a similar kind of reasoning: earth quake proof houses are so
expensive we don't do that because every body needs a house...
Link:
Oh oh Paul, stop hanging out the weenie
weenie man and realize the banking hole only is in the order of 3
to 4 entire Pentagon year budgets... Carry it like a man Paul and
not as some average USA weenie weenie person.
(In the comments in the above article, on
place number 9 you can read what I think of Paul the weenie man.)
Item 2) A few links.
It seems that on average every day 18 USA
veterans commit suicide. That looks like a lot (over six thousand
a year) but it is an all wars combined statistic:
WWII, Korean & Vietnam wars, Ronald Reagan short adventures in
Lebanon & so on & so on.
Although very satisfying, 18 a day pales
compared to so called 'normal murders' that run on average about
50 a day. (From abcnews.)
From the mathematical viewpoint I had a
frustrating day, I only tried to solve a simple 3 dimensional so
called 'Poisson equation' within some algebras. I found the stuff
could only be solved by going complex and thus basically 6
dimensions.
I scratched my head and vaguely remembered I tried the same thing
about 15 years ago.
So on that small detail I made zero progress in 15 years...
In the Greece downgrading it was also
frustrating; I remember clearly a list I once found at the website
of Standard & Poors (one of those commercial ratings companies
in the USA).
In the list were all these rating codes like A or BBB minus.
Associated with the codes was a simple percentage giving the
default likelihood.
In the meantime no one explains how only
present day 1.4 trillion $ in fresh US Federal debt will be paid
back via future profits that can be taxed to pay for the fun.
The USA doesn't get a downgrade, Greece does...
(Again I am against help for Greece, in the
limit we can always swap Greece for Poland and live happily ever
after. [And also have some sledgehammer power against China for
lets say over five decades.])
To make a long story short, here
is the S&P homepage and at present day they use multi
dimensional multi layered models to arrive at their commercial
country rating codes:
If only the 1.4 trillion was thrown into one
of those 'quantitative models' (so not quality models that are
allowed to reason along percentages of GDP and so) but a feed on
the sheer 1.4 trillion size of fresh Federal debt...
Till updates.
(22 Dec 2009) Again only one item:
Item 1) Finally in Afghanistan coffin number
500 clocked in...
Item 1) Finally in
Afghanistan coffin number 500 clocked in...
It was a long wait but finally on 22 Dec of
this year we can clock in number 500 of killed coalition military
slime in Afghanistan.
Where are the good old days? Vietnam war =
about 60 thousand US military slime dead. World War numero Deux?
If memory serves, about 10% of American soldiers
died...
But that was back in 1945, I will never deny
that the Americans cannot be heroic. But in the present year 2009
they are so obese that all heroic stuff will fade into
insignificance.
Here is the 500 fun:
In the meantime I don't know what to think of
Media files like this:
Are the military doctrines cracking a little
bit? If this quote is true they are:
If it can claim more successes on the battlefield, the thinking goes, it can convince more low- and mid-level insurgents to quit under a new NATO program created to win them over. And if it can hollow out this base of fighters and commanders on which Taliban leaders rely, it can improve its bargaining position against them in high-level negotiations.
Comment: I don't know what to think of it, I
think the USA will always get horny if they have the technological
upperhand...
Till updates.
(20 Dec 2009) Sorry, only one item:
Item 1) War diagrams, who makes weird stuff
like this?
Item 1) War diagrams, who makes weird stuff
like this?
Click on the picture to understand how
difficult the Americans always make it for themselves:
Oh oh, the USA think tanks come up with weird
diagrams like the above while in the meantime only recently US
forces in Afghanistan have stopped calling in air power because
that always made sure they were back in time for the evening
meal...
To make sure drawing a lot of arrows between
a lot of things doesn't bring much wisdom at the scene, I made one
of those nonsense things for myself.
Click on the picture for the 1200 pixel wide
version:
Ok end of the update beside the next detail:
I don't know if it's true but in the US Army
Times they are reporting that the US drone encryption problems
will be solved in 2014 (that means five years only before
everything is updated from the hardware point of view).
(18 Dec 2009) Only two links + the usual bla bla
from me.
Link 1) On the US investment bank Goldman
Sucks was lately a little row because Lloyd Blankfield said they
were doing God's work.
I never felt like diving into the story because Dubya also did
God's work eight years on a row, to be honest a lot of Americans
are doing God's work every day.
Yet what to think of this nonsense, quote:
“We’re very important,” Blankfein is quoted as saying in The Times of London. “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
Comment: Wow man! At Goldman Sucks they think
that if debt growth is always a multiple of profit growth, they
have touched a virtuous cycle?
Well mister Lloyd has been downgraded enough by other folks, for
myself I would like to compare him to Rumsfeld (looks and talks
smart and 'in control' while using outdated insights).
Link 2) The hacked drones could point to a
broader problem in the US military. If I only knew most
communications were not encrypted in lets say 2004 or
2005...
I know that on more than one occasion I
stressed out the importance of bringing the remains of shot down
Predator drones to the technicians...
What can I say? How stupid I have been... Not
seeing the obvious under your nose...
Oh oh, USA banks seem to have real estate
valued at about one 1000 billions to high and it's anybodies guess
how far they are behind with family housing yet the economy seems
to be recovering. And the banks are profitable again...
Well keep on dreaming. Nice laugh, John Steward on banks:
With US house prices you have that same weird
stuff; people say month in month out housing is recovering. Why do
they say that?
The annual average speed is still minus 8% a year, simply look at
the second graph in the next link:
Barry has a nice graph about so called M3
money, I don't have a clue about how reliable this graph is but it
is important to remark the blue curve seems to be the yearly change
in the green curve (the M3 monies).
Makes me wonder: how would this have looked without all that so
called liquidity?
Everybody is making a big thing about Greece
because their deficit is so big...
Some European leaders want to come to the help of Greece but I am
not much in favor of that. Greece isn't Poland, this is not the
first time we had jokes like that from Greece (they managed to
climb aboard the Euro but later it was found the statistics
weren't right).
I don't know what all the Greek fuss is
about, I don't know if it's accurate but suppose the Greek
government has about 300 billion € in debt that is only at most
3 months of US Federal borrowing...
So what's the big fuss & why a sharply
stronger dollar?
If the average US citizen or investor would
understand a bit more of the thing called 'math' (but it is not
for nothing they are that obese as a population) they would not do
fuzzy logic with Greece but look at:
More on the Greek item with those weird US
based commercial ratings companies like Standard & Poors in
the spotlight:
Can anyone of those weirdo's at S&P, Fitch or whatever
commercial ratings company there is over there in the USA explain
the next to me:
Why downgrade a small nation like Greece and
not the USA government?
(Again: I am not very much in favor of
'helping' Greece. But why a downgrade while it is known Greece can
be saved but the USA not?)
If only I knew a few years back communication
to drones would not be encrypted...
I remember advices to my beloved Iraqis like
that it was very important to bring the parts of shot down drones
to the proper technical folks. That was years back...
And, if memory serves, I never wrote on the
radio communications drones have because I always worked from the
assumption it was encrypted...
You know, sometimes I am a very very dumb
asshole myself. Link:
End of the links, today after a long wait I
installed some software that can produce math texts. Here is a
part of a screenshot:
May be this is a perfect time to split; till
updates.
(14 Dec 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts; nothing for the
USA...
Item 2) New Federal Reserve Z1 release out, the usual
analysis.
Item 1) Iraqi oil
contracts; nothing for the USA...
The poor USA folks got nothing in return for
their war investments (beside the relatively small contract from
last month). So that's good thing: the war costs won't be paid
back via oil that basically belongs to Iraq...
Remember Paul
Wolfowitz (the deputy of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld)?
Paul was one of the architects of the Iraqi invasion and one of
his advertisements was that after only a few months the Iraqi war
would pay for itself because of all that oil.
Just a few quotes to get into the mood (WP source):
The analysts said it is ironic that U.S. companies do not appear poised to cash in on the aftermath of a war that many in the United States and the Middle East argued was motivated by a desire to tap into Iraq's oil reserves.
After the invasion, the United States paid oil executives to advise Iraq's Oil Ministry and set up large military and civilian task forces to boost the country's ailing energy sector.
"For us in Iraq, it shows the government is fully free from outside influence. Neither Russia nor America could put pressure on anyone in Iraq -- it is a pure commercial, transparent competition," said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
"No one, even the United States, can steal the oil, whatever people think."
Comment: Since in, lets say the last 5000
years, it was always standard practice to loot invaded countries,
this is a turn for the good.
At the end of this item I would like to raise
the spirits from all the US oil execs that worked so hard to
worship war against weak countries, in case you feel a little bit
depressed I have selected a wonderful piece of music to cheer you
up:
In the first column you can find most direct
debt excluded the US financial institutions. Based on the last 19
Quarters you can still say debt growth in the USA is still linear
and has nothing to do with positive or negative economical growth.
On average the non financial parts of the USA
still need over 2.2 trillion more debt a year to produce their
giant profits. At the US Federal tax revenues you can see these
profits have shrunk a little bit while the debt hunger still tries
to follow a linear path.
R square for the linear model comes in at
about 0.994 so according to the rules of statistics only a lousy
0.6% of the variance is explained by dumb things like recessions.
This is how the linear growth model looks:
Just like the previous times we look at the
differences between the actual reported numbers and the simple
linear model. As usual the cubic still wins it (to be honest I did
not expect to survive the cubic model for so long six months
ago).
If you don't understand why this is of
interest anyway:
If the cubic model stays valid, the USA will
get killed by deflation.
If the cubic model breaks down, the USA will get killed by
inflation.
(Anyway that's true for 2009, economical
conditions can change of course.)
Here are the differences, the cubic model for
the residues still has R square above 0.90 and that is
amazing:
Lets end the day on a funny note with two
cartoons (I found them on Slate but I don't know who made them):
And what to think of this, joke or
real?
Till updates.
(10 Dec 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Ok, one more for the road: Iraqi oil
contracts.
Item 2) War through peace or vice versa; why do we need war?
Item 1) Ok, one more
for the road: Iraqi oil contracts.
Ok may be I named the Iraqi oil ministry
folks yesterday the 'most sleazy balls in this entire war'.
Ok, I was a bit over the top and I think my
strong emotional reaction has some roots in the fact I never wrote
that much on the first round of oil contracts.
Well, lets set emotion aside and zoom in that
as far as I can see it, these are perfect contracts for a country
like Iraq. The best thing is they are more or less 'servicing
contracts' where oil companies get a 'fixed' amount of money for
every barrel pumped up.
I have to say: Not bad!
So lets hope these 20 year contracts are kept
in the next two decades, regardless of what happens else in Iraq
the next 20 years...
Quote:
Interest is high despite terms that the majors would balk at in other circumstances. Iraq is offering 20-year technical-service contracts, under which companies are effectively employed by the government and propose a fee they will be awarded for every barrel of oil they extract. The Oil Ministry also pays the companies' production costs. Oil companies tend to prefer production-sharing agreements, which give them a share of the oil produced.
Item 2) War through
peace or vice versa; why do we need war?
Is it true that beside boring business cycles
of economical growth and recession, there are also war cycles? Who
knows?
Today US prez Obama got his Nobel peace prize
and therefore I only post a peace full photo of one of those peace
bringers:
Nice photo, or not? Might it be altered?
(By the way, the clouds have light from above
while the sun is just below the heli.)
Till updates.
(09 Dec 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts out this week.
Item 2) Update: Iraqi biological sniper bullet results.
Item 3) Rapper Appa raps Geert Wilders and now Appa is
prosecuted...
Item 4) A 50% tax on UK bank bonuses; will the bonuses double?
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Iraqi oil
contracts out this week.
Yesterday there was a hefty bombing in
Baghdad, five so called coordinated bombs went off. Do I have to
condemn this kind of bombing just like the school bombing from the
last update?
No, on 25 Oct I
wrote that I hoped that both the Iraqi Shia and Sunnis understood
the importance of keeping the USA oil companies out...
So why did Exxon Mobile got an oil contract
last month?
(One of the sources, Motley Fool: Will Big Oil Take Over Iraq?)
My dear reader, in this 8+ year long war I
have seen a lot of sleaze balls, but at the Iraqi oil ministry
they wear a giant crown in being king of the sleaze balls...
You know I shake my head in disbelief: What
does the Iraqi government want?
Do they want lower violence or high levels of
violence?
If you want lower levels of violence you
should implement policies working in that direction, this can
never ever include US oil companies getting long term
contracts...
It's as simple as it is my dear Iraqis, I can
only come to the conclusion you deserved the attacks from
yesterday because you worked so hard to deserve attacks like that!
End of this item, new oil contracts out later
this week, Reuters reports:
Ok back in time about 2.5 years, during one
of the last Military Bloody Days I pushed or brought forward the
concept of the biological sniper bullet.
That is a hollow tip (or hollowed out) bullet filled with nasty
bacteria (or viruses or whatever what) so that even a shot in the
leg would be lethal...
(Of course there were more goals like more
amputations, longer and more severe sickness in other patients in
the particular medical unit, bringing morale down and so
on.)
As far as I know the laws of war, this is not
forbidden in any kind of way.
That might sound strange but the military powers that be don't
like detailed stuff on what is allowed or not... So with all legal
rights in my hand I can advice to develop and use this kind of
ammo...
Anyway to make a long story short:
It took about one year before a reliable
report popped up, conclusion was that this biological detail has
been a great success. Medical problems spiked and the problems
were severe.
So, although a bit late, may I thank all the
Iraqis who participated in this legal biological sniper thingeling?
And, oh yeah now I scratch my head, didn't I very often ask for
the help of the doctors that were left in Iraq?
As some side wind we also observed the next
in the UK (Sky news):
Item 3) Rapper Appa raps
Geert Wilders and now Appa is prosecuted...
This item is in Dutch because rapper Appa is
a Dutch Muslim rapper.
Ok watjes & mietjes, waarom kan ik
simpelweg zaken als de biologische scherschutter kogel
introduceren (en na een jaartje rijpen het succes oogsten) terwijl
Appa iets nietigs doet?
Dit is toch belachelijk? Waar gaat het om?
Kwootje van nu.nl (Bron):
"Als ik Wilders ooit tegenkom, is 'ie van mij. Ik zweer je, ik pak hem aan. En er zijn meer mensen bij wie die behoefte groeit. Men moet niet raar opkijken als Mohammed C. binnenkort opstaat. Als iemand een kogel door zijn fokking kop schiet, vind ik dat niet erg."
Wilders voelt zich bedreigd door de uitlatingen van de rapper.
Commentaar: Ach mietje watje Wilders voelt
zich bedreigd...
En met al die lijfwachten 24/7 hoe vaak is onze dappere Geert echt
aangevallen?
Maar weet je wat het belachelijke aan deze vervolging is: de
officier van justitie zegt dat er eventueel sprake is van het 'aanzetten
tot geweld'.
Nou ja mijn geliefde lezer: Ieder zijn of
haar eigen denkwereld toch?
Item 4) A 50% tax on UK
bank bonuses; will the bonuses double?
Bloomberg reports a healthy 50% taxes on
banker bonuses above some threshold, quote:
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling imposed a 50 percent levy on banker bonuses and said he will increase income taxes after elections next year as the worst recession on record drives up U.K. government borrowing.
Comment: So now bankers have to double their bonuses
to 'break even', not the worst idea observed to attack government
deficits...
Item 1) School bombed in Sadr City, Baghdad.
Item 2) Cherry picking in the Ben Bernanke grilling.
Item 3) US jobs report: another second derivate at zero? Or...
Item 4) Mr. Taleb technical notes.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) School bombed
in Sadr City, Baghdad.
Today it was reported a school in Sadr City
was bombed, link:
Needless to say that kind of news never falls
on good grounds over here, may I ask my dear Sunnis to try and
find the folks who did this?
If found guilty, after my humble opinion execution is
advised.
Ok one thing was positive: The Western media
did not crawl over each other to tell the populace that evil al
Qaida was at work again... (For example in Afghanistan a lot of
CNN females but also US Senators think that throwing acid in faces
of kids that go to school is official stated Taliban policy. And
when in the USA a kid is kidnapped and used as a sex slave you
never hear those weirdo's state that this is official US
government policy...)
Next item:
Item 2) Cherry picking in
the Ben Bernanke grilling.
Finally a central banker is getting a bit of
what they deserve; Ben got a little grilling and if you haven't
seen the video by now: shame on you!
The news is already four days old so lot of
other writers have commented on it, I too would like to do a bit
of cherry picking. After 12 minutes Bernanke can respond, that is
where it becomes highly interesting because at about 14.05 minutes
he says:
The counter parties
would have declared us bankrupt. (This is important to
understand because at that point in time AIG was owned by about
80% by the US government, so basically the US government was
bankrupt at that point in time but they still could print money
and since then they keep on printing the stuff like crazy in order
to avoid bankruptcy...)
One of the video feeds is at business insider
dot com:
That was my cherry picking, a whole different
kind of cherry picking is found at Calculated Risk where the
writer seems to think the US Federal Reserve should be
independent.
Hello USA folks; wasn't Lehman Brothers
chairman Dick Fuld a proud member of the NY Fed? For some strange
reason the Americans think that guys like Fuld being a member of
the NY Fed is 'independence' while in most other nations this is
regarded as institutional corruption.
No, it was not the best post from Calculated
Risk:
Fed Chairmen Never Learn
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/12/fed-chairman-never-learn.html?
utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Calculated
Risk+(Calculated+Risk)
Come on my dear USA debt huggers: In the USA
debt growth is always a multiple of GDP growth and profit growth.
It is not much of a miracle how Americans became that
obese...
The biggest exponent always wins it and the
days of the American dream might be over for some
time.
Item 3) US jobs report:
another second derivate at zero? Or...
I still don't know what to say after I was
utterly bombed out by the latest US jobs report:
Non farm payrolls only down 11 thousand! To
make my life miserable as hell the household survey said:
Civilian labor force down only 98 thousand,
Employment up a staggering 227 thousand,
Number of unemployed down a staggering 325 thousand!
While those Not in the labor force only climbed 291
thousand.
Can anyone explain to me how I can destroy
America's military might with labor reports like
this???
That's unfair! How can I win if reports like
this are in fact correct???
So I had to think a little bit, Barry already
reported that job reports could be positively wrong because of the
seasonal adjustment.
That might be true because dinosaur institutions like the US Bureau
of Labor Statistics often use the last five or ten years to
measure and estimate the seasonal correction, so it's logical
every now and than the time basis is adjusted and that could
perfectly explain a lot of what we were seeing in the BLS report.
I don't have a clue about how they work over
there at the BLS, the technical notes are only full of the usual
garbage and doesn't even tell if some additive or a multiplicative
model was used. Only garbage:
I really don't want to make it more difficult
on the technical front, lets only look at a very nice graph. If
the BLS report is more than a statistical blip related to the
adjustment of the time basis, it could be the red curve is
flattening out and not only the first derivate but also the second
will go to zero...
And last but not least, the USA also has a
Department of Labor. They publish those weekly jobless insurance
numbers that come out every Thursday.
Weirdly enough they publish seasonal adjusted stuff but also the
weekly not adjusted number. Here is one of those:
It was a pleasant read because it has been so
many years since I thought upon the
N times convoluted same distribution.
But why all this fuss on fourth
momentum?
Ok ok even the beloved Variance (= average
squared distance from the mean) has some Variance in itself. But
we math folks like it to live the easy life so we come up with
stuff like:
If X and Y are independent we
have:
Var (X + Y) = Var(X) + Var(Y).
My dear Taleb, beside lazy math loving folks
there is a species much more lazy. These are the bankers because
once they understood the money hidden in the 'independent thing'
they sold risk like crazy to counter parties that were far more
able with dealing with it...
Of course I have nothing to do with it, but a
few days back Barry had a nice so called 'ping speed link'.
To be honest, many years ago I stopped
looking at stuff like 'ping speed' or analyzing website traffic.
Most of the time statistics like that bring no wisdom at the
scene. And beside that it is not polite to sneak on
visitors...
So it's past midnight but it is nice to
compare ping speed between Barry and me (the numbers are in milliseconds
so a reading of 117 means 0.117 second:
Not bad, the minimum ping for me, moi, myself
& I was 0.5 milliseconds!
Lets call it a day, till updates.
(02 Dec 2009) Five items:
Item 1) New USA strategy for Afghanistan.
Item 2) Some videos from YouTube + Generation Kill.
Item 3) Bizarre DOW graphs from Yahoo finance.
Item 4) Links.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) New USA
strategy for Afghanistan.
My dear Afghanis, the new strategy for your
country is in.
In short it goes like this:
Thirty thousand more US military slime,
building up from this month to Summer next year, and about five
thousand NATO slime from other countries.
The amazing thing is: Already from half 2011 a draw down of
troops!
At this point in time it is hard to say if
indeed there will be withdrawal from half 2011 on; much of it will
depend on the level of fighting in the first six months of
2011...
And even if there will be large scale
military withdrawal 18 months from now, very likely there still
will be plenty of Western soldiers to 'protect' Kabul and the
Karzai puppet regime.
Only 18 months, how to react?
Since this month of December is the first
month of the surge, the old advice as trying to kill at least 54
Western military slime simply stays valid.
After the Winter and as soon as weather
conditions (and preparations) allow; three months on a row triple
digit losses. Thus 3 months on a row above one hundred dead
military slime (that will activate the desire to draw down in the
NATO forces and into their home countries).
And after that attacks on a low level so that
just like in Iraq the USA folks think they have
won...
It's all pretty simple, but never forget
there is a war going on and as such anything
can happen! For the time being this looks like a cakewalk
(I never trust cakewalks but that's another story.)
Item 2) Some videos from
YouTube & CNN + Generation Kill.
A 33 minute video from YouTube with Obama
explaining the stuff:
In the video Obama explains that right
makes might! That made me smile because what else have I
been doing the last 8 years? Ha, I still don't need bodyguards
& as long as there keeps on dripping enough of the thing
known as 'military power' I won't need bodyguards in the
future...;)
__________________________
The CNN video link does not work but US
Senator McCain thinks they should break the enemy... (NYTimes source),
quote:
“The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving.”
Comment: That is not only dumb but also
dangerous to say my dear McCain.
But indeed a 'broken will' can lead to a loss of the war, why
don't you fly over to Afghanistan so that under the umbrella of
your security footprint you can try and break some Afghan mountain
rocks with your plastic teeth?
And is 'breaking the will' the way you
explain away all the stuff that happened in Iraq?
Stupid policies leads to stupid war and that always gives plenty
of overkill; so McCain didn't you vote in favor of killing 1+
million Iraqis? Now McCain?
Wanna bet you still wash your hands in innocence?
__________________________
Have you ever seen one of those Generation
Kill vids?
If not, they are a must see.
If for every grandiose speech you hear from whatever USA president
ever, it is always funny to look at the actual military implementation
of those freedom loving words...
Click on the above picture to get Generation kill - the music
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UpK_uAPwI
With my browser I can choose 'refresh image'
and the Wall Street based Dow Jones index did wild things.
Within a few minutes I got the next four
different DOW pictures:
And are on a wider scale the different DOW
index feeds falling apart?
Just yesterday the CNBC channel was removed from my television
cable feed and for weeks they had a completely faulty DOW index
feed in the left upper corner...
What the vuk is going on?
Item 4) Links.
Now we are approaching this years end it is
nice to observe the S&P 500 is still down on the decade. Ten
years back it was about 1400 and now with a full decade of that
lovely stuff known as inflation it is about 1100...
Might be the link does not work, in that case
start at the Yahoo finance home page and find your
own way. Link:
This Jonathan guy is a smart guy but don't
forget he works for a bank...
Yet I have to admit the article is a perfect
advertisement, it is so good it borders on propaganda... And once
you know that he works for a bank, often it is easy to blow a few
holes in a perfect sounding story.
And yes, it is easily found: The second graph
(with the decile income distribution stuff) is from before the
recession. Now two years further down the road, how is the present
stuff?
A bit more fundamental (please remark I never
ever wrote simplistic stuff like 'over leveraged consumers', when
was the last time credit card debt was mentioned by me?).
Dear Jonathan, comparing US consumer debt to disposable
income is interesting but far from convincing. Problem is that on
all levels of US society there is only debt and nowhere any
realistic reserves seen.
It is not only the US consumer Jonathan, on
all levels of US society this nice process takes place. You never
see Credit Suisse advertisements telling that to the European
people... No no, never will bank people take up stuff like
that.
To understand the 'autistic nature' (pardon:
the advertisement), lets quote a bit of nonsense from Jonathan:
The debt story is really about the cyclical vulnerability of consumer spending, not a structural obstacle to future spending that matters even when income grows. The distinction is critical. Full recovery of consumer spending can occur with house price stabilisation and a return of income growth. It has little to do with getting the savings rate or debt-income ratio to certain levels.
Comment: Oh the debt story really is about
cyclical vulnerability?
Once more: this is so stupid I cannot comment on it but we have to
repeat:
A perfect advertisement!
Till updates.
(30 Nov 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Afghanistan update.
Item 2) Bizarre links, Krugman versus the Nightmare, etc.
Item 1) Afghanistan
update.
Tomorrow US prez Barack Obama will announce
the Afghanistan strategy, rumors say about 30 thousand extra US
military troops but for the time being these are only rumors.
In the table below you observe I splitted the
killed slime in two rows: the 21 Nov was the date 24 was clocked
in. (Scroll down to 21 Nov or go the lazy click 21
Nov 2009).
NATO
troops killed in Afghanistan, Nov 2009. Source
Observed
US
Rest of
NATO
Total
01-21 Nov
12
12
24
22-30 Nov
5
2
7
Total
17
14
31
So for the psyops thing from lately
everything goes perfect, let me thank the Afghanis from the bottom
of my heart! Thanks!
Yet the next month of December will be
hard, so my tough Afghanis I wish you luck...
__________________________
Regardless of what we will hear tomorrow from
Obama, my sober estimation is that the war in Afghanistan will
last at least 7 more years (that is the US Obama presidency + 4
more years).
The local commanders & the Afghanis have
to make up their own mind, but the zero-one project in Iraq was in
the spring of 2007.
Now two and a half year later, the US is leaving Iraq...
We'll see what tomorrow brings and what next
Summer in Afghanistan will bring.
Item 2) Bizarre links,
Krugman versus the Nightmare, etc.
The Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman seems to
have a severe case of 'debt huggers disease'. In a strange piece
known as:
Broadly speaking, there are two ways you can get into severe deficits: fundamental irresponsibility, or temporary emergencies. There’s a world of difference between the two.
Comment: Poor Paul seems to think this is a
sudden temporary emergency?
I don't know what to say, there is so much evidence that total
debt growth in the USA has nothing to do with economical growth...
Lets stop commenting on this weird stuff.
__________________________
As an antidote to the weird Krugman stuff I
would like to advertise my latest update in the Nightmare On Wall
Street series:
Isn't it nice to know that if the USA GDP
grows z% Year on Year than the total profits of the real US
economy climb only z billion Quarter on Quarter?
__________________________
With amazement I am looking at the Dubai debt
problems from the last days, it is only a double digit billion
problem like 69 billion US$ or so. That is only the debt intake of
the US government of just 2 or 3 weeks.
Since it is obvious the USA won't pay back
why do difficult on Dubai?
"When you think about it in today's environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous," he says.
"You wouldn't think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me.
Comment: Indeed it is ludicrous, in todays
kind of warfare school books can only be delivered in Afghanistan
if you have air or artillery cover...
__________________________
Also funny from the FT Alphaville:
What next for
Nakheel? or:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/11/30/86006/what-next-for-nakheel/
That's it, till updates.
(25 Nov 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Joke of the day: Israel halts
settlement growth for 10 months!
Item 2) Fort Hood updater.
Item 3) US weekly jobless claims only 466 thousand, good or bad
news?
Item 4) Psyops update... (It's nasty, it's psyops & not for
the faint hearted.)
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Joke of the
day: Israel halts settlement growth for 10 months!
Oh oh, Israeli pm Netanyahu held a speech
today and he offered peace and declared that the peace loving
Israelis will unilateral stop settlement growth.
Of course in East Jerusalem there was no
settlement activity so there was 'no problemo' observed. And so
called 'natural growth' would also not be halted.
What exactly was halted was 100% unclear, mr. Netanyahu did not elaborate...
In case you don't know what 'natural growth'
is:
That is getting kids and invite family members to live there and
they need more schools, shops, roads and houses.
Since these settlement folks are mostly
religious zealots, they breed like rabbits so every 2 or 3 decades
they will expand about 4-fold. So the landgrab continues year in
year out...
I expect the European leaders accept a full
100% of the Netanyahu speech from today, it is obvious that most
European politicians still think Israel wants a viable Palestinian
state...
For myself speaking I don't believe this
Netanyahu guy, he is far to calculated and knows very well how to
play the international diplomacy game. Words like that are not
relevant to me Netanyahu, lets quote a bit of your nonsense (LA
Times source):
"It enables us to present the world with a simple truth: The Israeli government wants to enter into negotiations and it is very serious about its intentions to advance peace," Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office.
Comment: Just looking at the Israeli behavior
from lets say only the last five years, this is so stupid I cannot
comment on it.
Come on, Israel is an apartheid state so for
Arabs living inside Israel it is 'Kick an Arab day' every day from
every year. So why is this USA news so funny? Link:
USA Republican party folks try to turn the
Fort Hood shootout into a so called 'terrorist attack' (so family
members of the killed can get extra benefits).
The Christian Science Monitor reports:
Item 3) US weekly jobless
claims only 466 thousand, good or bad news?
Without links, today US weekly jobless claims
nosedived to 466 thousand.
I was not expecting it this week but a sudden
decline in weekly reported jobless claims could point at a higher
NFP later in the month.
For the time being it is still a wild
hypothesis but as far as I know reality the ratio between job
openings and job seekers is still climbing, that means the total
pool of new jobs is still shrinking...
May be not this month but one way or the
other weekly jobless claims will bite the non-farm-payroll (NFP)
numbers.
Item 4) Psyops update...
(It's nasty, it's psyops & not for the faint hearted.)
If you haven't read the 02 Nov update, scroll
down or take this shortcut.
Here you see a screenshot from US killed
military slime only from 21 Nov (the previous update). I 'forgot'
to include this nice screenshot:
So now NATO officers can (just like me)
ponder the question if the number 12 has anything to do with it?
But this item is supposed to be used as a
nice psyops in itself so lets look again at this guy:
Scroll down to 10 August or take this shortcut
to find out what likely happened to Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl...
Lets end this update with wishing the
Afghanis luck in this month and the next month (and of course the
next millennium).
Item 5) The empty
item.
The empty item is almost empty beside a very
old looking Mandelbrot fractal application. Well it might look
old, you can still zoom in over 30 times.
If you haven't read the 02 Nov update, scroll
down or take this shortcut.
For Afghanistan it was advised at least 24
killed military slime for the month of November and at least 54
for the month of December (that means at least double compared to
last year, this is some form of 'psyops' or psychological
operations).
Today total death toll for the entire war in
Afghanistan arrived at 1524 so that's 24 for this month because
the 1500 threshold was taken on the last day of the previous
month. So that's about 50% down this month compared to the four
months July through Oct.
Both the 50% decline as the 1500 threshold is
completely not in the news to be found, in the past when stuff
like that happened in Iraq the US Media always sung their praise
to the US military commanders. This time they don't...
Ha, what a difference one Fort Hood shooting
makes.
Most close comes the LA Times (they say
'nearly' 1500 deaths for Afghanistan):
The casualties are sobering -- nearly 1,500 deaths to date among U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Comment: When years back total US death toll
in Iraq climbed over the total from 9 Sept 2001 there was a
similar ignoring of reality, both in the US Media and at the
Pentagon.
The Pentagon assholes even thought that the 911 threshold still
was not taken, but weeks before during one of the Military Bloody
Days episodes in Iraq the desired threshold was taken...
War and psychology, it is important
to understand!
Item 2) Fort Hood updater.
The investigations into the Fort Hood
shootout by major Nasan go smooth, I still don't have a clue if
the major was a regular visitor of this website (although that
looks reasonable, I don't have any kind of proof).
It was interesting to observe the White House
trying to block all kinds of investigations by the US Congress and
Senate, but later the kids from Congress and Senate were allowed
to 'investigate' on their own.
Item 3) USA Federal debt:
Only 4.8 trillion US$ for interest obligations.
CNN Money is reporting that in the next
decade roughly 50% of all Federal borrowed money is for paying
interest only.
A few quotes abundantly demonstrating the USA
is just another Ponzi financial unit (interest can only be paid by
borrowing more):
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Here's a new way to think about the U.S. government's epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.
More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.
And:
In other words, when a Treasury bond or note matures, the government must pay the investor the face value on that debt. In order to do that, the Treasury borrows money to pay back the investor, which means the debt would be refinanced at whatever the going interest rates are at the time.
Item 1) Spiritual guidance found at the
National Rifle Association.
Item 2) Why is the USA always soft on crime?
Item 3) Goldman Sucks adopts kittens.
Item 4) The Lehmanization of global debt issuances.
Item 5) Links & The empty item.
Item 1) Spiritual
guidance found at the National Rifle Association.
You know, the shootout at Fort Hood by major
Nadal has made me thinking:
Am I really enjoying it when my fellow human
beings die?
Suddenly I understood how much of a monster I
have become and I started crying and crying and crying. I felt
just so miserable...
So I went out and tried to find a bit of spiritual guidance and
guess what?
The US based National Rifle Association members often remark:
Guns don't
kill people!
You understand I felt a giant relief! USA
made guns don't kill people, so if the 13 killed military slime
are not humans, if they are not people, what kind of animals are
they?
Are they slimy worms that live in the slimy
mud?
Are they dogs? Are they pigs?
Are they bacteria or lethal viruses?
Or what about kangaroos?
Yes that would be nice: 13 kangaroos killed
at Fort Hood, Texas USA...
In that case major Hasan could go on trial in
Australia because that's where the kangaroo courts are. (Remark no
other animal species has courts, have you ever heard of worm
courts or yeast courts or tiger courts?)
Man oh man what lucky I was in receiving this
perfect spiritual guidance:
Guns don't kill people...
Item 2) Why is the USA
always soft on crime?
Five days ago we looked at murder rates in
the USA compared to a few European nations and remarked that for a
lot of years in the USA murder rates are about five times as high
as in normal democracies.
But violence in a society mostly comes in
clusters, not only the murder rates are elevated. It's a whole
package that is elevated:
Toddler anal rape,
Toddler pussy rape,
Beating toddler with a broomstick,
Child anal rape,
Child pussy rape,
Beating child with a baseball bat.
Elderly robbed at their home,
Elderly robbed on the street,
And so on & so on.
Since this is going on for a long long time
we must ponder the question:
Why is the USA
always that soft on
crime?
It is always weak and soft on crime over
there. Lets give a simple example:
A white female police officer observes a 5$
marihuana transaction in some parking lot, does she call in air
support and ask for one or two 2000 pounders?
Does she call in the assistance of the AC
130 gunship?
Nope, that all does not happen. All there is
is being soft and weak on crime...
Before we get to the multibillion-dollar stuff, we’d first like to apologize that the firm has not yet paid a few thousand dollars of vet bills for the five kittens born in its headquarters building nearing completion in Battery Park City.
Comment: How can five kittens ramp up a few
thousand of veterinarian bills?
Did all five kittens had open heart surgery?
Well these five kittens made a large
contribution to the US gross domestic product!
Item 4) The Lehmanization
of global debt issuances.
Lehmanization (or maturity mismatch) is the
process of constantly shorter times you can borrow money. Just
before the Lehman Brother fell about 25% of their entire balance
sheet was financed with one-day-long borrowed money, so every day
the Lehman employees had to fix 25% of the entire balance sheet...
With US Federal debt the same thing is going
on: most long maturity debt went to the Federal Reserve, China
stopped buying long term stuff and changed her long term holdings
for short term bonds.
Ratings company Moody's reported, quote:
The average maturities of new debt issuance by Moody’s-rated banks around the world fell from 7.2 years to 4.7 years over the last five years — the shortest average maturity on record.
And if that is not enough:
That means banks will face maturing debt of $10,000bn between now and the end of 2015, or $7,000bn by the end of 2012, according to
Moody’s.
Comment: This abundantly demonstrates that
banks never planned to pay their bondholders for real from ongoing
banking activities but only pay it back via newly issued debt.
This culture of refinancing is important to understand because it
makes the entire system fragile to the bone, beside this the US
government guarantees a few trillions of these maturing debt
issues...
Obama asks Congress & Senate to withhold
investigation to the Fort Hood operation, that's good because
Senator Joe Lieberman is just some Jackass adding no value at all
to such investigations:
Oh oh, American scientists and their students
when it comes to math...
You keep on laughing, the students can't convert fractions like
1/7 to a decimal number:
Willem Buiter has a nice mind provoking
article around gold, his arguments are 'almost valid' because gold
has an important industrial use in electronics:
(12 Nov 2009) It was a beautiful day today and
if I had the time I could write one hundred items but I am not
going to do that.
Sorry, only two items:
Item 1) Fort Hood lapdance thing & are
the Action Girls coming to Afghanistan?
Item 2) Some links.
Item 1) Fort Hood
lapdance thing & are the Action Girls coming to Afghanistan?
A few days back there were already some files
out stating major Hasan has visited some US based lapdance
club.
My dear reader, is the offered information
true or is it carefully crafted propaganda?
In the Telegraph article they try to relate
the lapdance thing to the behavior of the magnificent 19 that did
the original 911 attacks from the year 2001.
Hasan was a regular customer at a club close to the Texas military base and on one occasion spent six hours there watching women poledancing.
His behaviour in the run-up to the shooting spree is similar to that of some of the September 11 hijackers who also sampled Western decadence before committing their atrocity.
Comment: In the years back in 2001 in Oct
& Nov it was a wild hypothesis of mine that the magnificent 19
in all kinds of way mimicked or copied my life as it was back
then.
In the year 2001 that was a wild hypothesis and since there is
utter lack of corporation from the USA side it is still a wild
hypothesis today.
In these years I no longer operate upon wild hypothesis, why
should I now I have a fully rigid mathematical & statistical
so called 'zero-one project' to tell?
After all it were the most deadly 3 months on a row for the US
military (in Iraq) and all the time they did not have a clue...
Lets keep it simple: The timescale does not fit, lets quote:
Jennie Jenner, 31, performed a lap dance for Hasan on Oct 30, six days before he killed 13 people and wounded 29 at America's largest military installation.
As far as memory serves, I only mentioned psyops in relation to Afghanistan four days before the Fort Hood
shootout. The timescale just does not fit!
So for the time being this Jennie Jenner is
only propaganda as far as I am concerned.
Item 1) Fort Hood shootings, remarks &
simple statistics.
Item 2) Simple flaws in US economical statistics (GDP, labor prod
etc).
Item 1) Fort Hood
shootings, remarks &, simple statistics.
A few minutes back the number of media files
linked to on Google news related to the Fort Hood shooting passed
27 thousand, I cannot recall it ever was so high in any other
subject (but I also say I don't track quantities that much because
content of the news is far more important).
Like said before: Even if the honorable major
Hasan was a (regular) visitor of this website, this will never
make it to the news.
Lets see a bit in how far the US authorities
have come:
In the meantime US prez Obama observes
twisted logic... (Lets go back to the economical sanctions against
Iraq, the Iraqis could not even buy water pumps because in theory
you could also pump chemical poison with these pumps. That was not
twisted logic?) Give me a break!
Many folks say it was a mass murder, do you
agree?
Lets do some simple statistics; compared to
European countries like Germany or France or the Netherlands a
good rule of thumb is that murder rates in the USA are five times
as high. (Source).
USA murder rates run at about 6 murders per 100 thousand per year,
given a population of 300 million this is about 18 thousand
murders a year or just under 50 murders a day.
So Fort Hood might look spectacular but it is only about 6 hours
of 'normal murders' in the entire population.
For myself speaking, since it's only six
hours of regular killings, I wouldn't say it a mass murder. On the
other hand a size batch of 13 killings in one incident is still
very seldom over there in the USA so from that point of view you
can call it a mass murder.
__________________________
Item 2) Simple flaws in US
economical statistics (GDP, labor prod etc).
Ok ok these flaws are not horrible but I have
to say I was unaware of them.
Better read the simple source file first:
The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.
Comment: The problem is very easy to
understand:
The 50$ Chinese carburetor arrives in the USA and as usual imports
are withdrawn from the GDP. Later the 50$ carburetor pops up in a
US made car and gives a nice 100$ on the GDP reading as if the
carburetor was a US made one..
For me this is new so I don't know what to think of it in
quantitive numbers.
But if you only multiply the imports by 10% to correct for this
phenomenon and subtract that from all the GDP growth from the last
years, it doesn't look good for the USA economy...
That's it, till updates.
(08 Nov 2009) Ok one item:
Item 1) Are the investigations upon the Fort
Hood shooting going ok?
Item 1) Are the
investigations upon the Fort Hood shooting going ok?
For the time being everything goes as smooth
as can be expected. The USA version of Google news reached over 20
thousand news articles (remark they spot about 4500 USA media
sources) yet it was all plain sailing.
So how are the investigations going?
Not bad, on the one hand you have (from the
Washington Post):
And at the other end of the spectrum we have
idiots from stuff like Jihad Watch that says, (source)
quote:
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch reported that the online magazine “Sada al-Malahim” Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi released an article calling jihadists to initiate simple attacks on random targets. In the article, he described these targets as "any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc…"
Spencer’s article was quick to ask the obvious question – was Hasan’s attack a response to this invitation. Was it “freelance jihad?”
Comment: This is so stupid, I cannot
comment...
Lets leave it with that, till updates.
(06 Nov 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Psyops here, psyops there, are the
psyops everywhere?
Item 2) And Screaming Faggot takes the lead...
Item 3) USA monthly jobs report.
Item 4) Does high debt growth automatically lead to inflation?
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Psyops here,
psyops there, are the psyops everywhere?
Psyops or psychological operations were
mentioned only four days ago in item number 1. In the meantime two
attacks have been observed that can be classified as psyops.
Attack 1: Theatre of operations =
Afghanistan;
Five British military slime were killed
during their afternoon tea by an Afghan police agent. It seems the
police agents has escaped...;)
Needless to say that from the viewpoint of psychological
operations this was a thundering success, see for example this
media file (from the Ass Press):
Several newspapers used the same photo, of the bloodied flak jacket of one of the victims. "Gunned down as they had tea" said the Daily Mail. "A bloody betrayal," said The Times, while the Daily Mail asked: "What kind of war is this?"
Comment: Wow, an attack during the British
tea ritual is an attack straight against the British soul... In
the entire UK during the afternoon tea British ladies and
gentlemen will shake their head in disbelief.
Attack 2: Theatre of operations = USA;
This morning it came out that major Nidal Hasan
(a psychiatrist by the way) started attacking resulting until now
in 13 deaths and up to 30 wounded! Location: Fort Hood, Texas.
I cannot validate it but this seems to be the
worst death toll of an attack like this in the entire history of
the USA.
In the past I have tried before to move parts
of the US military against herself, that has never been a great
success. Even if major Hasan was a regular visitor of this
website, believe me it will never make the news...
Or, my dear reader, do you believe that military and police
officers will state in public with the camera rolling that
recently a website under the name of kinkytshirts was visited? (US
authorities even have his
computer, it won't make a difference.)
So within four days two attacks that can be
classified as psyops were observed, not bad... Not bad at
all!
After a bit of thinking I decided to grant
the highest military award that this website has to offer to the
two attackers, this award is the so called Blue Footed Crane:
Item 2) And Screaming
Faggot takes the lead...
This week there were some horse races on the
television (from Australia or so).
The end race was between two horses named Shocking and Crime
Scene...
It was funny to observe the text 'crime
scene' at the bottom while looking at some horse racing. So I
thought of a few more funny horse names:
Corrupt Cop
Citizens Arrest
Lost Elections
Thundering Monk
Screaming Faggot
Shooting Psycho
Multi Culti
Speedy Coke
The so called non-farm-payrolls declined 190
thousand but that is only a fraction of the stuff. Far better is
always the so called Household data (on top of the first table in
the above link).
This time it says:
Civilian labor force minus 31 thousand
Employed minus 589 thousand
Unemployed plus 558 thousand while those
Not in the labor force climbed 259 thousand.
Once more you see the fixation of the
financial markets on NFP numbers and unemployment rate leaves a
lot of information out.
So the green shoot smokers don't have a nice
day today.
Item 4) Does high debt
growth automatically lead to inflation?
Often I have stated that since in the USA
debt growth is always a large multiple of gross domestic product
growth (and thus a large multiple of total profit growth for the
entire economy), sooner or later this will collapse.
A guy named David Ross argues you can also
fixate the debt to GDP ratio if you inflate the economy fast
enough. Mr. Ross only looks at Federal debt but it is better to
look at the entire 50+ trillion of direct debt, in that case
inflation of over 10% is needed year in year out. (Remark I am not
talking about consumer inflation like meat and potatoes but for
the deflator that is used to measure inflation for the GDP).
Quote:
It is worth noting that in order to keep the debt at 100% of GDP while still increasing it at the 2010 rate of 9% per year, it is necessary to grow the GDP at 9% per year in current dollar terms. This means that if the GDP grows at 3% per year in real terms, prices have to inflate at 6% or else the debt will grow as a fraction of GDP. Even taking 2012’s estimated $950bn increase in total debt and $16.5 trillion as standard, the CBO estimates assume a combined growth and inflation rate of nearly 6% per year.
Empty empty empty, only a simple question for
your own brain to ponder:
Suppose major Hasan was indeed a regular
visitor of this website, will US authorities investigate further
yes or no?
(Answer: Stuff like that is a big NO for over
8 years already, from anthrax to psyops the USA folks prefer to be
dumb, blind, deaf & most of all:
being stupid to the bone!)
Item 1) Afghanistan: Over 1500 dead coalition
slime in the entire war.
Item 2) WSJ: The cruel math of big losses? Some high school math
for idiots...
Item 3) FT: The DOW/commodities/currencies correlations.
Item 4) Power slut Hillary Clinton visits Israel, of course
nothing happens.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Afghanistan: Over
1500 dead coalition slime in the entire war.
As you can see below, very satisfactory the
1500 threshold was taken (on 31 Oct to be precise). Winter is
coming so as far as I am concerned the Afghanis can wind down for
the Winter times.
From the standpoint of psyops it would be great if both November
and December will have double dead coalition slime compared to
last year.
That means over 24 dead coalition slime in November and over 54 in
December, needless to say the 54 number will be difficult to
reach...
Let the local commanders decide; after all they know the weather
and the terrain and I don't like it when my dear Afghanis freeze
to death because I have some 'psyop wish'.
Anyway: CONGRATULATIONS with taking the 1500
threshold before the end of last month! Thanks!
In the meantime the US slime that still is
stationed in Iraq can't wait to come over to Afghanistan and kill
help the Afghanis. I don't know how big the bonuses for
Afghanistan are, don't forget US soldiers are mostly trailer trash
people and for trailer trash people 10 or 20 thousand extra bucks
is a lot of money. Link:
Didn't I say it before? Other NATO countries
don't need to send more troops because there are plenty of freedom
bonus loving US soldiers eagerly waiting to kill
help Afghanis.
Item 2) WSJ: The cruel math
of big losses? Some high school math for idiots...
It is well known that in international
comparison between countries the USA always ranks very low when it
comes to math.
That's logical: most think that with wasting your time on math you
can't get rich quick.
Via Barry's hangout (main
page, article)
I found the next quote:
“If an investment declines 10%, it takes about an 11% gain to break even (assuming you don’t pump in additional dollars). If the drop is 20%, you need a 25% gain to recover. A fall of one-third requires a rebound of 50%. And if your investment falls by half, “you need a double,” or a 100% return, says Mr. Wiener, the New York-based editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors. The recovery percentages grow exponentially because you have so few dollars working for you after a big loss.
Comment: Oh oh these poor mentally
handicapped people think there is some 'exponential stuff' going
on when you had big losses.
As a matter of fact it has nothing to do with exponential growth
or decline, in other countries it is high school stuff and it says
it is hyperbolic.
To be precise: If you have lost p% in that
case you must recover
r(p) := 100p/(100 - p)
Examples:
You lost 10%, you need to recover r(10) =
1000/90 = 11.11111...%.
You lost 50%, you need to recover r(50) = 5000/50 = 100%.
You lost 75%, you need to recover r(75) = 7500/25 =
300%.
The same thing also works with gains, suppose
you gained 100%.
That is the same as a loss of minus 100% and
r(-100) = -10000/200 = -50%
Want to bet with me that if you show this
simple math to some USA 'scientists' from the study of economics,
they will act as if they see water burning?
My God, why is it always so utterly stupid
over there in the USA?????
Item 3) FT: The
DOW/commodities/currencies correlations.
With head and shoulders far above all that
simple minded crap that comes from the USA, at the FT Alphaville
they had the best article of last week:
A very simple study between DOW futures and
oil prices on a thing known as WTI, prices were sampled every 10
minutes during two trading days.
The result was staggering: R square above
0.90!
Lately I already complained that DOW up = US
dollar down (and vice versa) and this is another indication that
the policies of the Federal Reserve only destroy the fundamentals
of a lot of markets. The idiots at the FED turn the entire
international world into a casino ripped loose from fundamentals.
It simply would be better if the other
nations impose economical and financial sanctions against the USA
because this practice will prove to be very harmful in the future
(but I know I am standing alone with that point of view, so don't
come here at my door to complain when you have no pension 20 years
from now).
Item 4) Power slut Hillary
Clinton visits Israel, of course nothing happens.
A few times before I have already stated that
at the end of the first Obama presidency there will not be a start
of a beginning of a start of a beginning of a serious kind of
Palestine state.
Since that is as obvious as 1 + 1 = 2 we
wonder why the US Secretary of foreign affairs Hillary Clinton
visits Israel? Why does she do stuff like that?
Why does the power slut visit Israel
pretending the USA wants a viable Palestine state?
Why does the USA fully support this Israeli
apartheid regime?
I don't know and I don't understand, it is
obvious the Israelis don't want to live in peace and play the
arrogant thinking they are 'God's chosen people'.
I don't buy it Israel, look me in the eyes
and give me just one reason as why not repeat another holocaust.
Please give me just one reason because year in year out I am
better in understanding holocaust stuff and century old pogroms
against the Jews.
Look me in the eye you Jewish whiners with
your stupid Whining Wall and the stupid ways you perform your
prayers like you are whining children:
This item is mostly empty, we
only have a bit more math around the 'cruel math' from item number
2.
If you skip the stupid percents and use
fractions life is a bit more easy and simple.
If you have a loss of 10% you have lost 0.1 of your stuff if your
stuff was classified as 1 on that point in time. If you loose the
fraction p you have left 1 - p.
When you want to get back from 1 - p to your
original 1 you only need to multiply
by 1/(1 - p) and that fraction is also known as the geometric
series:
For the rest this item is empty so do the
math and understand we need another holocaust against the Jewish
whiners to get normal life back on track...
Till updates.
(29 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) USA GDP a staggering +3.5%!!! But
what does it mean?
Item 2) Israeli drones to be used by Germany in Afghanistan.
Item 1) USA GDP a
staggering +3.5%!!! But what does it mean?
Today the long awaited US gross domestic
product numbers came out, every body is dancing on the table
because the USA is now out of a recession!
A lot of other writers already commented on
the details so lets skip that and repeat a similar easy
calculation as was made yesterday with the housing start
statistics.
Select table 1.1.5 from the next collection
of tables:
(Remark I now use the GDP numbers included
inflation, you can repeat a similar calculation with the use of
table 1.1.6.)
We observe:
2009 Q2 = 14,151.2
2009 Q3 = 14,301.5 (in billions of present dollars).
How much % did it grow?
Simple: 14301.5/14151.2 = 1.0106 or 1.06%
Quarter on Quarter.
That would give an annual growth of 4.3% (again this is included
GDP inflation, the deflator came out at 0.8% giving the 3.5%
growth number in the news).
Now we simply divide the GDP numbers by four
to get the 'non annualized' numbers:
2009 Q2 = 14,151.2/4 = 3537.8
2009 Q3 = 14,301.5/4 = 3575.4 (in billions of present
dollars).
Of course you get exactly the same percentual
growth, only it now looks a less bit spectacular because in
absolute growth this is only:
3575.4 - 3537.8 = 37.6 billion...
On average the profits from the USA economy
are about 9 to 10%, this leads to the conclusion that total
profits of the USA economy only grew 4
billion from the second to the third Quarter...
To make this 4 billion profit growth miracle
happen, there was a lot of so called monetary and fiscal stimulus
done.
Lets only look at the wider statistic of US
Federal deficits, the last time I checked it it was 1.42 trillion.
Of course the deficits are not spread equal over time because
taxation has large seasonal, monthly and weekly fluctuations.
Yet on average a nice 1420/4 = 355 billion a Quarter...
You observe a little problem here:
Debt growth of the US Federal government only
is about 9 to 10 times the absolute GDP
growth. Furthermore: all that extra debt has to be repaid
via the extra profits that were only a tiny 4 billion.
Funny detail:
Now we have those ultra low rates that
naturally comes along with an ending fiat money system; the 4
billion in extra profits are (just) not enough to pay the interest
obligations on the USA debt. But that is theory.
In practice you cannot tax all profits away so it is sheer
impossible this US government debt will ever be paid
off.
For some strange reason the Americans still
refuse to accept their money system (and thus the economy and
their military might) is dying. You still observe weird
rationalizations like:
Item 1) Short Afghanistan update.
Item 2) New US housing starts seem to disappoint 3.6%, what are we
talking about?
Item 1) Short
Afghanistan update.
Yesterday 8 more US military slime died and 3
more slime bodies were recovered from an airplane that was lost a
few weeks ago.
That brings the total for Oct until now at 54
Americans and in a broader statistic that includes the entire
coalition it stands at 66 death. For the Afghan theatre the 54
number is an all time monthly high.
Luckily this month has a few more days to
run, lets just wait and see if there are more surprises to come
this month (and of course until the repeat of the election on 07
Nov).
And for what it's worth; here is a YouTube
file claiming a brother of Afghan prez Karzai is on the CIA
payroll for a lot of years now...:
And, for what it's worth, it could be that
the new White House strategy will focus more or less on the
protection of 10 populous Afghan areas. To be honest I don't have
a clue about how much extra US troops will be send and for what
reason.
As long as there are 'embedded reasons' like also sneakily trying
to fight War on Drugs it is logical other wars like War on Terror
cannot be won. If the one war is stupid, the other wars will
follow suit...
Although one thing is clear: Other coalition nations don't need to
send more troops because of the vast
quantities of US troops that are withdrawn from Iraq...
And last but not least, only 8 more to go
before we reach the 1500 number for Afghanistan for the entire
war:
Only 8 more, will it happen this month? I
don't have a clue.
Item 2) New US housing
starts seem to disappoint 3.6%, what are we talking about?
Today we had one more of that 'unexpected
news' coming out, (source)
quote:
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales fell 3.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 402,000 from a downwardly revised 417,000 in August. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a pace of 440,000.
Comment: This 402 thousand is seasonally
adjusted and as such it represents a trend number. So on a monthly
basis this is 402/12 = 33.5 thousand new homes a month (again: as
a trend number).
And 3.6% of 33.5 thousand = 1200 houses.
So in this stock market rally where 'positive housing news' was
often used to 'explain' the rally, all they were talking of was
give or take one or two thousand houses...
That's all we are talking about when it comes
to new houses; a couple of hundred less or more houses has a large
effect on the news.
And it has nothing to do with housing but
Bill Gross has spoken nice words:
Till updates, have a nice crisis or try to
get one!
(26 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Afghanistan & Iraq update.
Item 2) Why do Wall Street stock analysts hate America?
Item 1) Afghanistan
& Iraq update.
Afghanistan:
This was a strange day because with so much
helicopters suddenly down and a nice double digit death toll for
the US slime, it had all the looks and feels of a good old
Military Bloody Day!
But I had never declared an MBD (simply
because there is not enough internet in Afghanistan and it is
better that both the Afghanis and I don't get frustrated by a long
series of failures in this detail).
Yet today two helicopters collided resulting
in four dead US military slime and in another incident a heli went
down resulting in seven dead US slime and 3 so called 'US
civilians'.
The day could not have been more beautiful
when it came out the so called 'US civilians' were officers from
the US DEA (the drug enforcement agency). So 4 + 7 = 11 US slime
killed where we can easily classify the War on Drugs officers as
utter slime...
Death toll estimates from yesterday's
bombings in Baghdad climbed to about 160. Although it is a spectacular
attack against government institutions like the Justice
department, please remark it is only 3 days of only death squad
activity in Baghdad only (when stuff like that reached it's high).
Furthermore it is estimated there will be no
attacks against the funerals related to these attacks.
And and oh yes, now we are talking about
attacks against funerals anyway:
I thought I have found a great question to research for by
American journalists!
They should ask the Pentagon the next question:
How did the
great Donald Rumsfeld succeed in bringing down these
attacks on funerals so fast?
May be it is better to go to the next
item;
Item 2) Why do Wall Street
stock analysts hate America?
In the previous so called Quarterly figures
from lets say S&P500 companies, a staggering two third of
companies did beat expectations of so called analysts.
In the end of the present Quarterly round I
observe that 3 out of 4 companies beat the expectations of the
same analysts...
I don't understand it; statistically speaking
this should be 50% of beaters against the non performers, so how
can a sample of so called 'analysts' get it wrong so much?
Why do they hate America with all those
negative expectations?
Nice but long video about why everything
changes but still says the same (how to avoid a depression) is
found (via Jesse):
Item 1) Baghdad blasting: Justice to the
ministry of Justice?
Item 2) Totally absurd FDIC advertisement observed.
Item 1) Baghdad blasting:
Justice to the ministry of Justice?
Wow man what a big blast at the Baghdad
ministry of Justice today!
At first I was only thinking "Why can't we have that over
here in Leeuwarden at the Central Justice Incasso Bureau?"
Before we proceed I would like to make two
remarks:
Remark 1) Why do I write so little upon Iraq
the last two years?
That is rather easy: Since it is one of the
goals of my life to change the rules of modern warfare in the
sense a less few civilians get killed, I have stated a lot of
times that when over 1% of the population had died, every one has
to rethink about what they are doing.
That goes from local commanders to foot
soldiers and also foreign guys like me.
As far as I know reality about one million
Iraqis died in this weird USA operation under the name of 'Iraqi
Freedom' and it is well known how the US policies contributed to
that huge one million number. And one million is about 4% of the
Iraqi population...
My dear Iraqis, remember the days when
routinely day in day out about 60 dead people were found killed by
Shia death squads? And that was Baghdad only!
My dear Iraqis you have brought high pleasure
in my life; the zero-one project killed more Americans over a 120
days span than everything else since the Vietnam war.
The long ago 'self extracting' project of
minimizing death squad activity was a miracle done by the God we
all worship. Ok ok I know I wrote down the words of the self
extracting project, but in those days I prayed because 60 corpses
a day was beyond the control of this little writer...
Ok, lets go to the oil thing:
Remark 2) From puppet regimes and the oil
they have.
At this point in time the Iraqi Shia
dominated puppet regime is still classified as a puppet regime
because they still have not proved to be able to survive without
the US military power.
But they have made great progress in the
sense the oil contracts still don't go to the Americans...
My compliments by the way; last Summer when
oil contacts came out a bit I knew the Shia folks were on the
right path.
I hope both Iraqi Shia & Sunni understand
the importance of oil and not getting the oil profits to the USA.
__________________________
The fun of the day (don't forget we have only
132 deaths reported and about 520 wounded so that makes only up
for 2 days or at most one week in the past when routinely 60 dead
corpses were found due to the death squad activity. By the way do
you believe the Pentagon bla bla or do you by now think they are a
neglectable quantity?)
The ministry of Justice:
This is how it looks after a few hours:
And I will not call it warart, but I still
have a death wish for some Justice folks like we have for example
located in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden:
We leave this highly interesting item behind
to concentrate upon the absurd stuff:
Totally absurd, this 3 minutes and 42 seconds
video has all it needs to understand the USA financial system: It
is utterly full of lies while telling a bit of truth.
It is so stupid that I don't know what to
say... For example chick Sheila Bair is telling us that bank
failures are paid by other banks while in fact the entire FDIC is
only another accountancy outlet from the US Treasury.
So TARP is paid for by the banks?
Please Sheila, shove it in one of your power
slut holes...
Item 1) After so many years a new warart
file?
Item 2) Ha ha ha, UK GDP growth still negative 18 months on a row.
Item 3) Unleashing entrepreneur powers the American way.
Item 4) First black hole for light created on Earth?
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) After so many years
a new warart file?
Yes why not? I mean this is not wash, rinse, shine
& repeat the 911 stuff.
No, just a small size picture:
Item 2) Ha ha ha, UK GDP
growth still negative 18 months on a row.
Today the United Kingdom latest gross
domestic product numbers came out. They are of interest because
the UK has done a lot of fiscal and monetary stimulus stuff.
Stimulating the economy with borrowed &
printed money can only work if there is something to stimulate;
yet in the UK there are also a lot of debt huggers so will it
work?
Well Y on Y the UK economy shrank 5.20% and Q
on Q the reading was minus 0.40%. (Source)
It seems to be the longest strike in a shrinking UK economy ever
reported.
Lets wait until the USA fun comes out; if
things pan out the way they are expected to pan out, all that
stimulus stuff will lead to nowhere but crazy stock market
valuations and ridicules commodity prices...
Item 3) Unleashing entrepreneur
powers the American way.
I still miss the former US prez Dubya, I miss
that clown.
Often Dubya had visions of unleashing the US entrepreneurial
powers...
Yesterday I found a perfect new entrepreneur,
if you hire them your (advertisement) video will get at least one
hundred thousand views on YouTube (or you don't get charged).
Source link (2 years old already):
We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
Comment: Here you are looking in the heart of
USA entrepreneurs, they never waste any time with questions like
if some kind of behavior is morally or legally ok. They only
ponder 'can I get away with it'.
And that is all you have to understand about the Americans when
you need to deal with them: don't think they are like other
nations, only keep in mind they will try to fuck you up if they
can get away with it.
Item 4) First black hole for light created on Earth?
Hm, I have to admit that at first I thought
'this is a fantastic development' when I read those first lines of
the next link:
But what is the use of light getting round in
circles inside one of those 'black holes for light'? You might
just as well make a circle of optical fiber cable to let light go
round, in that you cannot 'store' light in any way but a small and
dying amount.
So my dear reader, what do you think? Will
the new black hole for light suck up all light in the universe and
explode dramatically when it becomes too large?
Item 5) The empty item.
Sorry, it's empty.
Till updates.
(21 Oct 2009) The financial news was more or
less like expected, therefore only a nice video that made me a bit
jealous. May be jealous is not the right word...;)
Item 1) Boring: US government debt growth =
all US companies profits.
Item 2) Even more boring links.
Item 1) Boring: US
government debt growth = all US companies profits.
All the time it is so boring: You see all
these high paid so called 'scientists' from the economical
profession on the television and the internet stating stuff like
'When the economy picks up again, US government deficits will
decline'.
The last time I checked US Federal deficit
for this fiscal year it stands at 1.42 trillion (that's about 10 to
11% of the gross domestic product) while the combined
profits of all US companies is in the range of 9 to 10% of the US
GDP.
I, Reinko Venema, have stated so often that
simply the interest obligation on the 50+ trillion of debt the US
economy has, as a whole simply outstrips all profits of the entire
economy. And as such the only answer
is the money printing press from the Federal Reserve and
not all that crap coming from 'highly respected' US based
economists.
So why do US economists keep feeding us their
crap?
I don't know, all I know is I am getting
bored...
Further reading (from Financial Times
alphaville):
From the above link you surely must read the
nonsense as coming from the Deutsche Bank’s fixed income team,
quote:
One concern is that these same accounting maneuvers, when applied today, will not be able to stave off a government shutdown (or possible suspension of bond payments) for long. Today, the financing needs of the government are so much higher, that diversion of these funds would not last more than a couple of months, and probably far less.
Comment: Hey you Deutsche Bank eggheads:
There will be no government shutdowns or not paying foreign debt
holders. We live inside a fiat money system so the Federal Reserve
will always live up to her responsibilities.
Do the idiots at Deutsche Bank think Ben Bernanke will be the guy
that 'shuts down the government'?
At the French based Société Générale they
have similar lack in basic math, as Barry reports a few of their
weirdo 'streaming diagrams':
Comment: I know most readers will disagree
with me, but the amazing strength of the US dollar is what blurs
the 'analysis' of banks like DB and SG.
Any fool can see this strength is
manipulated, as a matter of fact you can use printed money to
bring that strength... (Or, to put it differently: why should free
markets with all their access to information prop up the US buck
for free?)
Item 2) Even more boring
links.
A lot of people still live in the age of the
Golden Standard where money was backed by real assets like gold in
fort Knox. These days & years with that fiat money it is
utterly different: Have a problem? Simply ask the FED to stand up
to her obligations.
As far as I know reality (don't forget I only
understand about 0.000000001% of reality) all US Federal Funds are
only accountancy vehicles that measure on a yearly basis the
inlets and the outlets. Mama whore the US Treasury takes care of
any problem if it arises.
Stuff like that stands for about 3 decades
right now, so the FDIC was one of those fake funds from the
beginning.
A detail where I have waited a long long time
upon is damage from these multi trillion interest rate swaps in
financial derivatives. First victim observed (Bloomberg link,
please remark it only makes the news because the Harvard
university is not part of the financial sector):
The most important link
is about implementation of the so called Basel II accords. For a
long time I was thinking I would never hear from that again but
with all that so called 'credit crisis' around lately it is good
news the Basel II accords still ain't dead!
That's it for today, see yah in some future
update!
Till updates.
(14 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) The DOW above 10 thousand, so what's
next?
Item 2) If you stop paying your debt, what's next according to
accountants?
Item 1) The DOW above
10 thousand, so what's next?
My congratulations go to the computer trading
programs that by now have proved their value in the run up from
below 7000 to 10016 for the DOW.
Here is a screenshot from Yahoo finance (I
don't use the Nasdaq website for over a year because that
constantly gives advanced viruses not detectable by standard anti
virus software...):
So what's the next target? As long as
consumer inflation stays as low as it is, I think it cannot breach
11500 in the next 12 months.
And there is so much new stuff around, it is
hard to make sensible predictions. When the DOW topped 14 thousand
in 2007 any fool could see she would be cut in half, this time it
is much more difficult to grasp all the statistics and get some
rigid outlook for stock markets.
Lets zoom in on one of these weird details we
have lately: The strong negative correlation between US stock
markets and the value of the US dollar.
Today the DOW had a one year high but the US dollar had a similar
low:
This negative correlation between US stock
values and US dollar value almost looks like some kind of rule:
Stocks up = Dollar down.
There really is no way of explaining this via normal or standard
economical theory, only a 'dead cat bounce' theory explains this
kind of behavior.
Ok ok 99 of 100 commentators on the
television explain that the US$ is a 'safe heaven' to explain the
negative correlation, you often observe reasoning like 'when
things go better people step out of the dollar' and vice versa.
I don't understand that line of reasoning because 0 out of 100
commentators explain exactly why the US dollar is a 'safe heaven'.
This is surely a weird detail: What explains this negative
correlation?
Commodities? Same stuff: Oil up = dollar down
and so on.
When it comes to commodities and raw materials it is easy to
understand: The value of the commodities does not change but only
the fact it is priced in US dollars makes up for the negative
correlation.
So weirdly enough it looks like the DOW Jones index is nothing
but some commodity...
Lets also look at a few earnings from US
companies:
Chip maker Intel reported higher profits, but
ha ha ha a lot came from abroad and not from the USA home market.
That validates the simple fact that an economical stimulus package
can only work if there is something to stimulate, in the USA there
is trillions of bucks sitting on the sidelines but almost no
consumer savings to activate.
So the Intel earnings are not very impressive, year on year total
turnover is still down over 10% and that is nicely in line for a
company like that.
What about JPMorganChase? Multi billion
profits and about 7 times as much profit compared to a year ago?
Hello folks, JPMC is just like Goldman Sucks in the sense they are
very good in sucking out other parts of the economy.
Companies like that are needed because every economy needs it predators
in order to stay alert, but companies like that are of no use for
the real economy. They don't add value, they only suck value out
of weaker things.
Item 2) If you stop paying
your debt, what's next according to accountants?
This is a long story having it's roots back
to the year 1994 when I was unemployed for about one month or four
weeks.
So I filed for unemployment benefits and after one month I
informed the particular burocracy I had work again...
Although I only had a small job I could
survive on it, strangely enough the unemployment benefits kept on
streaming in month in month out.
They were unstoppable.
Anyway to make a long story short; after my
humble opinion I still have to pay some well known accountancy
company about 6000 €. (Of course I cannot name this accountancy
company).
About 11 months ago I simply stopped payments
towards them...
This day I received one of my bank account
updates and it says:
A nice 104.26 € back because I overpaid my
debt obligations.
Lets leave it with that, till updates.
(13 Oct 2009) Five items:
Item 1) For over 5 years I waited for this
Central Bank detail...
Item 2) Just 800 bucks a piece: corpses piling up in Illinois mortuaries.
Item 3) Econopicdata: 10.9 openings for every job.
Item 4) The four color problem solved? (Watch out: it's boring
math.)
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) For over 5 years I
waited for this Central Bank detail...
Lots of others have also linked to this file
of course:
For myself speaking I don't believe there is
much of a 'breaking point' and only a very gradual growing
awareness of the US dollar future.
Beside that the Bloomberg file contains nice news like new US$
Central Bank reserves are only 37% of total new purchases.
But I want to zoom in on a detail I have waited for for a long
long time, quote:
Developing countries have likely sold about $30 billion for euros, yen and other currencies each month since March, according to strategists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.
Comment: That is by far not enough! Lets hope
Central Banks from developing nations get a bit more wise a bit
faster!
Item 2) Just 800 bucks a
piece: corpses piling up in Illinois mortuaries.
It was on the television so I cannot link but
it was beautiful news:
If memory serves it was Illinois, so if I am
wrong I apologize.
The story line of the observed documentary
was as next:
For 800 dollar you can get a funeral here,
that's the minimum prize.
Corpses are piling up in mortuaries because folks can't pay the
800 bucks.
City and state government have the same problem: 800 bucks a
corpse is too much, thank you but thanks...
And the freezers get overloaded with piles of
dead bodies...
It was beautiful to see and even more
beautiful to understand that Americans are always out there
'building bridges' and 'helping people'.
Lets hope al Qaida International considers
this detail as good news: Corpses of the
poor are piling up in Illinois freezers due to the
crisis.
Item 3) Econopicdata: 10.9
openings for every job.
Some time ago we looked at the US weekly
jobless claims seriously hurting the monthly so called 'non farm
payrolls'. As a matter of fact it was a 'future thing' to happen.
For this to happen it was important that the
ratio of job openings kept on climbing...
Although it was just a few weeks ago we
looked at that problem it is important to look at the nice graph
from Econopicdata:
So in this economical environment where cause
and effect still can interchange:
Will unemployment become a 'leading
indicator' instead of a lagging one?
Item 4) The four color
problem solved? (Watch out: it's boring math.)
Hey I just wonder who gets the Nobel prize
for mathematics this year...;)
Is that true; is it solved?
In case you don't know what the age old four
color problem is, quote:
In 1852, botanist Francis Guthrie noticed something peculiar as he was coloring a map of counties in England. Despite the counties’ meandering shapes and varied configurations, four colors were all he needed to shade the map so that any two bordering counties were different colors. Perhaps, he speculated, four colors were enough for any map.
Little did Guthrie know the load of trouble he unleashed with his innocent conjecture. It took mathematicians nearly a century and a quarter to prove him right, and even that wasn’t enough to close the Pandora’s box Guthrie had opened. Mathematicians pulled out their markers and tried to color everything in sight.
Comment: Try it for yourself, get a paper and
a pencil and draw a few maps of countries. Color them with only
four colors.
After that try to find a map of countries where you need five or
more colors...
Item 5) The empty
item.
Just emptiness.
Till updates.
(11 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Paul Krugman on the Taylor rule.
Item 2) Things Larry Summers doesn't know.
Item 1) Paul Krugman
Taylor rule.
Paul Krugman had a few refreshing posts on
the Taylor rule for setting interest rates for Central Banks. Two
weeks back I came across that rule for the first time and all I
knew was this:
For myself speaking, I think simple models
like the above can work only in easy times. Now we are outside the
range these models are supposed to work one can ask questions
about the validity that is derived from them.
Just like my crazy cubic model for total US
debt contraction:
It only works for as long as it
works...
Item 2) Things Larry
Summers doesn't know.
Lets end the day with some humor (Bloomberg
source):
-- White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers rejected the notion that the U.S. faces an extended period of below-average growth and high unemployment in the wake of the worst recession since the 1930s.
“I would be very reluctant to accept the idea that the American economy no longer has the potential to grow rapidly,” Summers told a forum in New York yesterday organized by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News. “The American people have not become less capable of entrepreneurship. They have not become less dedicated to hard work, and the productive potential of this economy has not declined.”
Comment: So in the USA elephants still can
fly? That is weird so I have made some very basic calculations
around the USA GDP growth (BEA source):
Period 1989 - 2009: 2.5% a year.
Period 1989 - 1999: 3.1% a year.
Period 1999 - 2009: 1.9% a year.
Some say the more everything changes, the
more it stays the same...
If you look it that way, the above quote could also have come from
the previous regime under Dubya.
Lets leave it with that, till updates.
(09 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Absurd: Nobel peace prize goes to
Barack Obama...
Item 2) Links.
Item 1) Absurd: Nobel
peace prize goes to Barack Obama...
If US prez Obama gets the Noble prize for
peace, it is not more than logical the Nobel prize for economics
should go to Alan Greenspan.
This is completely absurd, the only thing Mr. B. Obama is good at
is delivering speeches about peace love and understanding, a bit
of speeches around 'building bridges' and that's it.
Yet Obama say nice speech is not the same as
Obama do nice speech.
Let me repeat what I said before:
At the end of the Obama presidency we will
not have a start of a beginning of a start of a beginning of peace
in the Middle East in general and a serious Palestine state in
particular.
The words from Robert Fisk keep on hanging in
the air; a whole week of rumors of a sudden attack against the
virgin US dollar. For the time being I consider it a bag of
nonsense. While on the other hand you can argue that if only some
orchestrated rumors can hurt the dollar, is that evidence of utter
weakness?
Here is one of those files around gold traders staging raids (businessinsider):
Perfect anti opium propaganda observed! It is
so good it does not deserve a Joseph Goebbles prize for propaganda
but the very first JG prize for Advanced Propaganda!
The last words of the file as found on John Pike's globalsecurity.org
need to be quoted:
However, it should be noted that the main opium producing region is the comparatively wealthier south which is endowed with superior soil conditions than the rest of the country and thus allows for a range of other crops to be cultivated in place of opium poppy.
Comment: This is a lie in so many ways I can
only classify this as Advanced Propaganda. Shame on you John Pike,
where is your 'independence'?
Item 1) Barry on the combined results of 29
secular bear markets.
Item 2) Paul Krugman watch & the death of shadow banking.
Item 1) Barry on the
combined results of 29 secular bear markets.
For a lot of reasons I did not like Barry's
update from today; in the short term it validates what I fear and
that is DOW above 10000 in a short notice.
May be you should read the source of my fear
first:
Now we are into this weird situation with
plenty of liquidity around (only for banks and not for consumers
of course) market psychology is important as Barry notes in his
remark number 2, quote:
2) Hated Rally: I have noted previously that this is the most hated rally in Wall Street history. Many people — both pros and individuals — all have reasons as to why it must end badly: PPT, hyper-inflation, bad economy, etc.
Most bull moves do not end when they are hated, they come to a halt and reverse when they become over-owned and over-loved.
We are not there yet.
Comment: Ok ok, I accept a DOW above the
10000 mark. I don't like it but smart traders can lock in large
profits now all this loose monetary policy is around.
Yet at remark number 3 I honestly disagree
with Barry, Quoting remark number 3:
3) Dollar Selloff: Yet another factor is the weak dollar, mentioned earlier in our Gold discussion. The relationship has been pretty explicit lately. See the FT’s Dollar-adjusted S&P 500.
Comment: I was not aware of any serious
'dollar selloff' lately, ok ok the Jap Yen might be stronger than
Jap debt huggers like but the so called 'dollar weakness' of
lately is not very serious. Of course I had seen the FT
chart today, again it is only peanuts and not reflecting
economic fundamentals.
Dear Barry, lets zoom in on a very easy so
called economical fundamental:
When the US economy
goes up they have a trade deficit, when the US economy goes down
they have a trade deficit.
To put it simple: Nobody wants to buy that US
made shit because it is too expensive...
Item 2) Paul Krugman watch
& the death of shadow banking.
To understand this item you must understand
the role of debt and debt growth into an economy. New debt is only
future consumption activated today, new debt only works on a long
term scale if your future profits outstrip your interest payments
+ your payments on the original loan you made.
If your debt growth always is a large
multiple of your profit growth, one way or the other your company
or economy will hit the wall.
Inside a fiat money system backed by nothing
you will run into trouble if your debt load climbs at lets say 10%
a year while your real economy only climbs 2% a year.
Any idiot can understand that.
So lets zoom in on what Nobel prize Paul
Krugman has to say on the subject of delivering loans to 'those
who need it'. Link:
Comment: Now Paul is only referring to the
old and dead shadow banking system. The reason there are no fresh
loans could also be explained by the fact there are no savings
observed: banks observe no savings to be lended out to responsible
companies.
And if an economy has no savings to finance future expansion, what
will they do?
To make it more worse, although I do not hold
Paul Krugman in some kind of high esteem, a critique of him named John Carney
is the true recycled toilet paper.
You really don't believe what toilet paper
John Carney is up to! Link to source:
Comment: This toilet paper guy named John
Carney seriously explains why the shadow banking system should be
restored again, quote:
The reason why we need securitization to get banks lending is that the international Basel capital requirements reward securitization and punish bank lending.
Under Basel, a well-capitalized bank was required to hold $4 for every $100 in individual mortgages—a 4% reserve requirement. But if it held the securitized the AAA and AA tranches, the bank only had to hold $1.60 in capital. Similar formulas apply to corporate loans and consumer debt. To put it differently, asking banks to hold on to loans because there is no securitization is asking them to set aside an extra $2.40 for every $100 they put into the markets.
Comment: Inside a fiat money system, could
you read more nonsense like only 1.6% in reserves for AAA and AA
tranches?
I don't know if it's true, lets not forget it comes from a toilet
paper guy named John Carney...
Till updates.
(07 Oct 2009, temporary update)
During the last stock markets boom from the
low's of March this year sometimes folks are critical because the
price to earnings ratio's are so high.
Now markets were so low this year suddenly
all kinds of people think it is important you should not only look
at the earnings for one year but for a range of years...
(You never heard those guys at DOW 14 thousand top, but
anyway.)
From the statistical point of view you can
create lots of ways to include more years in your P/E ratio. For
example you simply look at the past five years and all earnings in
this five year period are combined.
You can use 'linear fade out' so earnings from five years ago only
account for a 20% weight. You can use exponential decay and so on
and so on.
Lets keep it simple:
Alcoa the aluminum producer came out with the
numbers a few minutes ago:
It might be of no surprise there is so much
surprise on the fantastic numbers that came out a few minutes
ago.
Alcoa smashed, destroyed and demolished all
that negative stuff from bearish forecasters:
Fasten your seatbelts: Alcoa
posted earnings of 8 cents per share!!!!!
Buttt there is more good news: Not
8 cents a year buttt only in the last 3 months!!
So investors: Invest in
Alcoa because for the entire year they show a full 32 or 33
cent earnings per share at only 14.20 dollar!
Therefore Alcoa is given a 'buy' advice
because during these hefty times they report a very low P/E ratio
of 14.20/0.33 = 43.
The best investment advice I can give to wise
investors: Buy Alcoa at these bargain levels of P/E = 43.
Oh yes, before I forget, if you include those
stupid 'one time items' profits are not 8 but 4 cents per share.
Even cheaper! So I repeat my advice to investors: buy it while
it's cheap!
End of the temporary update, lets wait for
the next 'surprise' en the earnings front...
Till updates.
(05 Oct 2009) Only a few links & a bit of my
usual bla bla:
In Iraq US military withdrawals are speeded
up a bit. General Ray Odierno noted about 110 to 120 thousand less
military slime in Iraq at the end of the year:
A bit more intellectual (or better quasi
intellectual) is a piece by John Mauldin. It's a bit of easy
reading about fundamentally instable systems like growing piles of
sand or debt. The size of the avalanches observed is pretty unpredictable
from just one grain of sand to the entire pile flattening down.
Here's the stuff as published at Paul Kedrosy's hangout:
The US Treasury is delehmanizing... What do I
mean by that?
An important detail in the sudden death of Lehman Brothers was the
fact that up to 25% of their entire balance stuff, it was financed
with one day long borrowed money.
So every day the Lehman folks had to refi 25% of the entire
balance sheet...
And thus if you try to 'delehmanize' you cut a bit on your own
short term funding stuff:
In case you need a long laugh, Federal Reserve’s Fisher says tightening will be aggressive...
Just try a healthy 5% of Federal rates (that naturally comes along
with healthy economies) in your vuking economical models my dear
Fisher!
I think you need a so called 'finger of instability' in some place
where the sun never shines...
Remember Rumsfeld from team Dubya? It was so
easy to get mad on that incompetent guy. At some point in time
this incompetent Rumsfeld made clear he had no clue about vehicle
armor in Iraq... (He said that unarmored vehicles were only used
inside military bases... That was sure one of the 'unknown
unknowns' as Rumsfeld would have said it himself.)
Today we still have Robert Gates as the USA SecDef. So without
doubt Robert is for sure in the top ten of enemies to be
attacked...
Why can't I get mad as hell at this guy?
Is it for example this? Quote:
"We must always recognize the limits of technology - and be modest about what military force alone can accomplish. Advances in precision, sensor information, and satellite technologies have led to extraordinary gains that will continue to give the U.S. military an edge over its adversaries. But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of war or succumb to the techno-optimism that has muddled strategic thinking in the past," Gates said.
Comment: So Robert what are you? Are you in
the long run my most dangerous enemy because I can't get mad at
you? Or can we be some kind of 'don't call it friends'?
Item 1) Afghanistan 24h update (no graphical
artwork).
Item 2) Iran and the USA based cockroaches.
Item 1) Afghanistan
24h update (no graphical artwork).
Ten US military slime killed over the
weekend! And this while the US military is only over there 'to
help the Afghani people'...
In fact the artificial construct known as
'helping the Afghani people' only lives in the US political
circles while in practice in Afghanistan air power rules and of
course now the war on terror is entering year number nine of
course there is no help for the Afghan people.
Air power, heavy artillery and the likes is
what the US population wants to see, fighting evil is what the USA
does, there is no help for Afghan folks. The circus continues
& the Americans still don't understand why they are hated so
much...
Here you see what the USA population wants to
see: Fighting evil = helping the Afghanis...
The scumbags known as the US military don't
give a shit about helping Afghanis, just like the US bankers they
only care about their bonuses. But where bankers have a yearly
bonus, the US military does it with enlistment bonuses that
ensures a steady flow of trailer thrash folks.
More of these hero's fighting evil (a nice
picture for the US home base population):
Yesterday some small outposts were attacked,
quote from the last link:
These small outposts are built as satellites to larger forward operating bases which provide artillery support.
Comment: So the heroes from the US army can
only 'help the Afghanis' if they have artillery support from
larger bases and of course the constant air force pounding.
Lets not forget there is no help for ordinary Afghanis, there are
only zero hospitals and lots of propaganda.
At the end of this item a very surprising
statistical detail:
For many years the Helmand province in
Afghanistan was where most slime died. Neighboring provinces like
Kandahar and Uruzgan were also ok.
But all these years we only had one killed
slime in the Afghan province of Nimruz.
Recently death toll in that province climbed
by a full 100% to 2.
I don't have a clue why in Nimruz stuff is so low.
Here is a province map of killed slime in Afghanistan:
The more everything changes the more it stays
the same. That's true, the 'q' is replaced by the 'n' and it is no
longer Iraq that is the master of weapons of mass destructions but
Iran desperately seeking nuclear weapons.
A million dead Iraqis from the economical
sanctions against Iraq was not enough for the USA based
cockroaches. A fresh million more dead Iraqis was needed in
operation 'Freedom Iraq' (the US military use of killing Iraqis
with the help of Iraqis has always been the major factor into
steering into a full blown civil war), did the USA based
cockroaches change only one millimeter?
This weekend it emerged that Iran was willing
to ship all enriched uranium oversees to get medical grade stuff
in return.
Is it enough for those USA cockroaches?
Of course not, once a cockroach always a
cockroach. Link:
Yeah yeah, now suddenly there is fear that
Iran has mastered the art of miniaturizing nuclear warheads...
Like I said: Once a
cockroach always a cockroach!
Lets leave it with that. Till
updates.
(02 Oct 2009) Five items:
Item 1) US Non Farm Payrolls minus 263
thousand.
Item 2) A good tip for saving money on teenage daughters.
Item 3) And the Olympic Games for 2016 go to...
Item 5) Afghanistan 24h update.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) US Non Farm
Payrolls minus 263 thousand.
Not bad, the NFP came in at a negative 263
thousand versus expectation of minus 187 thousand. Here is the bls
source:
Although the financial markets think the NFP
numbers are very important, I prefer table A from the above link.
It says:
The US civilian labor force shrank 571
thousand,
Number of employed workers shrank 785 thousand,
The number of unemployed rose 214 thousand while those
Not in the labor force climbed 807 thousand.
I am very satisfied but it is a pity we don't
have the former US prez Dubya stating that 'the fundamentals of
the economy are very strong'. That would surely make my day...
Item 2) A good tip for
saving money on teenage daughters.
As a lot of parents know, when their
daughters get beyond a certain threshold of age shopping is no
longer going to a shop, get what you need and go back.
No, suddenly shopping is a way of life and every shop in town has
the fundamental right of at least one visit every month...
To get an idea what I am confronted with,
below you can see Teenage Daughter:
I have found out a magical way in avoiding
unreasonable payments while at the same time keeping the peace in
the house. It works as next:
TD: Oh dad I saw these wonderful trousers and
I only need 10 € extra and can I have please...
Dad: No way, you have your monthly budget and that's it!
TD: But I need that tiny amount of money and I'll keep on asking
until you give it to me!
Dad: Ok ok, you can have your 10 € but first you have to repair
your bicycle...
TD: Ok I will repair my bike first.
After that you hear nothing for a long long
time because she doesn't repair her bike, it also works with the
monthly allowance:
For a raise of 5 € a month TD was supposed
to do the dishes only one week long or seven times.
That was four months ago, I never heard from
it again...
Item 3) And the Olympic
Games for 2016 go to...
Poor Chicago went out in the first round...
Lovely!
Is it true Chicago got only 4 votes? Even better!
I hope Rio de Janeiro will get the 2016
games, so lets wait...
Rather likely only 71 military deaths in
Afghanistan for the month of September, may be there is a bit of
afterdrip but reaching 78 dead slime looks impossible.
End of the item.
Item 5) The empty
item.
Till updates.
(01 Oct 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Dry Baltic Index says: Ha ha ha, no
economical recovery (2nd time item).
Item 2) Is doom and gloom coming for the US labor markets?
Item 1) Dry Baltic
Index says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery (2nd time item).
A few days back (on 28 Sept to be precise) I
remarked that I don't believe in the world wide economical
recovery because for example the Dry Baltic Index has halved from
June until now.
And that contradicts the 50%+ climbs on the
stock markets.
To my surprise the exact same question was
made on CNBC, the talking head on the television noted that the
fall in the DBI was related to the new ships coming from the ship
yards.
And as such it was no problemo...
Although I know almost nothing about the DBI
I would like to disagree.
Again I know almost nothing of the DBI:
--Marginal price pressure on the DBI from fresh tonnage?
--Actual transported tonnage? I don't have a clue...
--And so on, and so on.
I know I know almost nothing, but at least I
know the so called 'ghost fleet' of ships taken out of competition
is claimed to be bigger than the combined
Navy's of the UK and the USA.
It is a pity I cannot validy this claim in
any way, the ghost fleet is an ad hoc phenomenon anyway so there
are zero statistics on it.
Yet in my opinion you should balance the
fresh tonnage against the ghost fleet, adding new ships puts only
pressure on more ships taken out of competition.
Below is supposed to be a photo from a small
part of the ghost fleet, if you click on it you get a news article
from the St. Louis Investing Examiner (written by Jim Mosquera):
So lets rephrase the question for CNBC:
Why did the Dry Baltic Index got cut in half
so fast and is there a relation to actually transported tonnage of
dry bulk and the likes?
Item 2) Is doom and gloom
coming for the US labor markets?
This is a complicated item because I would
like to bring forward some stuff that is derived from a whole lot
of different statistics.
I would like to make it plausible and explain
why the so called 'weekly jobless numbers' will bite the monthly
so called 'non farm payrolls'.
Statistics observed and needed in the
plausible stuff:
1) Jobs standing open, about 2.5 million
right now.
2) Unemployment volume, lets use some U3 stuff or about 14.5
million.
3) The ratio between the above 1) and 2), it is about 1 to 6 and
still climbing.
4) Weekly jobless number, lets say it's about 2.2 million a month
right now.
5) The Non Farm Payrolls, a measure for the total amount of
jobs.
From the above five statistics it is plain
sailing to observe that the average time a job stands open is
about one month.
This time frame is of importance because if
the ratio 3) climbs higher the average time a job stands open will
get less and less.
And one way or the other this will bite the
Non Farm Payrolls.
End of the plausible stuff.
__________________________
Lets just wait and see how the stats unfold,
tomorrow we have fresh NFP numbers...
See yah!
Till updates, have a nice crisis or try to
get one...
(30 Sept 2009) Just a few links:
Today it was published that the US gross
domestic product shrank only 0.7% on an annualized basis in the
second Quarter of this year.
Looking at table
1.1.6 in this
list we observe (in billions of 2005 Chained dollars):
2009 Q1 GDP = 12,925.4
2009 Q2 GDP = 12,901.5
The difference between these annualized
numbers is about 24 billion Q on Q, if you annualize that indeed
you arrive at a 0.7% contraction...
But hey! Aren't these 12.9 trillion figures
annualized? Yes they are, insiders know it's SAAR stuff (SAAR =
seasonally adjusted annualized rates).
And doesn't that mean you can roughly divide the numbers by four
to get the Quarterly numbers?
If you think so, do you need only 6 billion
more Quarterly GDP in Q2 to get a flat reading on the USA gross
domestic product? Or am I fooling you with fake logic? (This
beside the fact we skipped the way 'seasonal adjustments' work at
the FED & BEA, you never hear about how they adjust it.)
At UPI (where they celebrate 100 years of
journalistic excellence) I found weird analysis (the author LAWRENCE SELLIN
expresses weird and outlandish views on military stuff, he is a
colonel in the US Army Reserve):
At Goldman Sucks they are good at their job:
Monetary policy is already very tight because using estimated Taylor rule parameters
they arrive at the conclusion that the `appropriate’ funds rate
is -5% or below...
That minus 5% not only validates old jokes from me dating back to
the end of 2007, it also gives rise to the idea that at Goldman
Sucks there is at least one person that understands the Taylor
rule.
At John Pikes globalsecurity dot org I found
a guy named George Smith that likes to poke fun at Muslim bomb
makers. My insights into the chemical science are only limited so
I cannot comment very much.
George Smith also writes on a blog named Dick
Destiny, that is a strange name to write under. But here at
kinkytshirts the entire staff likes strange names...
Anyway, here are the insights of Destinies Dick (from 16 Jan
2007):
Another old link very much worth repeating is
observing the FDIC is only a fake fund. It is a pity that former
FDIC chairman Bill Isaac writings are no longer there, but this
old file from 12 Sept 2008 is still valid:
Item 1) Baltic Dry Index says: Ha ha ha, no
economical recovery!
Item 2) Things thundering from the past & what's the shape of
things to come?
Item 3) Will Germany come under attack? If so, is it deserved?
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Baltic Dry Index
says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery!
Lately we already observed that the rising
storage of oil both on land and on sea was contradicting the 'path
to recovery' we are supposedly on.
It takes only a few minutes to find similar
stuff in the Baltic Dry Index, in June it was above 4000 and on 23
Sept it was 2175. Quote (source):
The Baltic Dry Index, which measures dry bulk ocean freight rates in a collection of lanes, has dropped steadily from a recent peak in June above 4,000 to its close yesterday of 2,175. Reuters reports that average Capesize earnings, for example, have fallen to $23,762 this week, down 74% since their June peak this year.
Comment: No comment needed I think.
On FT's Alphaville there is even a graph that
is also linked in the next item (look for the blue graph with it's
values on the left):
Item 3) Will Germany come
under attack? If so, is it deserved?
Ok, the last time we discussed stuff like
this Germany was not on the list of so called 'countries of
interest'. (Those were my home country because lack of NATO
leadership, Belgium because it is home base of NATO headquarters
and France because they aroused my irritation levels in those
times.)
Now with a surprisingly high speed, Germany
has selected herself.
Local mujahedin posted a first video and
German authorities dismissed it as propaganda, a short time later
Taliban and al Qaida joined in.
Of course the sudden hatred against Germany
has it's roots in the bombed fuel tankers that were stuck in the
mud in Afghanistan, a whole lot of civilians died slowly and
painfully from their burning wounds...
To make things worse, German Angela Merkel at
first flatly denied there were any civilian casualties at all. And
later telling us crap like 'No civilian should die without a
reason' (or words of similar political crap).
And on top of that I observed General Stanley McChrystal
stating that until recently he did not understand the role of air
power.
So will the propaganda materialize into
reality and if so, does Germany deserve it?
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan
update.
Is it wise to ask for 78 dead coalition
soldiers in Afghanistan this month?
Or is it not wise but funny
anyway?
Ah, the zero-one project in
Iraq...
Like a light switch the amount of killed US
soldiers was higher or lower and in the end it maximized a 3
months killing spree against Americans...
Like a light switch...
Item 5) The empty
item.
Empty empty empty, use your own brain
please!
Till updates my dear reader.
(24 Sept 2009) Only one item with boring links.
Item 1) Boring links.
Item 1) Boring
links.
Lets start to unload a few tabs from my
browser:
At Financial Times alphaville Tracy Alloway
has remarks around:
There is constantly that talk that the US
housing market is improving, I still don't buy it. So I still use
my simple logistic model that says US house prices will bottom out
at the end of 2011. Calculated Risk observes (on the shadow
inventory):
Once more confirmation that in mainstream US
economical thinking, there is nothing about some kind of debt
ceiling. That's weird but it's true. (Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns):
Why has the next file 1173 comments on it?
(Answer: That proofs that by adding only one gram of math you
scare away 99.92% of potential readers.) Link:
And a true 'must see' is the graphic in the
next link from Trader's Narrative (it gives some statistical hands
and feet to the weird stock market rally we have the latest
months):
Item 1) A new tshirt made.
Item 2) Fun with Paul Krugman & links.
Item 1) A new tshirt made.
After making no tshirts for a couple of
years, last Saturday suddenly creativity striked and within about
five minutes the whole 'composition' was finished.
Problem with tshirts is you always have to
keep it simple so I did not put in pictures from the 'cash for
clunkers' or those other car destroying stimulus programs from
around the world.
If there is any truth in destroying otherwise
good cars, being good for the economy, in that case al Qaida
International should get a Nobel Prize for (applied) economical
theory...
If you want a shirt for yourself, click on
the picture to get the A3 size and go to your local tshirt
printing shop. Here is the thing:
Of course I had to put the 'I love NY' sign
in...;)
Item 2) Fun with Paul
Krugman & links.
In the previous updates we compared USA total
debt growth from the trend line to reality. In the fourth picture
from 17 Sept (see below) you observe total USA debt (according to
the FED Z1 release!) is 1500 billion below trend growth.
To my surprise Paul Krugman posted a similar
picture with trend GDP versus where reality stands today. Here's
the thing (PK blog source):
In the first place the red trend line climbs
to steep: check for yourself at bea dot gov that in the last 10
years average real GDP growth was just below 2%:
Paul Krugman argues that because there is an
8% discrepancy from trend to actual he urges for more government
stimulus money.
This cannot and will not work, I am not a
professional economist but that Keynes stuff can only work if
there are enough savings in the 'non government system' to pick up
demand and thus economical growth. But on all levels of US society
there are no savings to be activated.
So the US economy can only be activated from
debt growth, how is that one doing?
Well, for every dollar of GDP the Americans
have, they have 3.75 dollars of debt.
Based on the last five years, the US economy needs 5.77 dollar for
every extra dollar of GDP. (Of course government programs like
infra structure don't have such a lousy 5.77 number written on
them.)
My dear reader, it is just as simple as 1 + 1
= 2; economical stimuli packages can only work from positive
savings bases in other parts of the economy.
Suppose Paul Krugman is right and the US GDP
is over on trillion behind in size compared to his trend model, in
that case the USA would have over 5.77 trillion more debt on her
own economy... (That is only eight times the US military budget by
the way.)
To Paul his defense (and knowing he lives in
the USA) lets only quote:
So we’re something like 8 percent below where we should be. That translates into lost output at a rate of well over a trillion dollars per year (as well as mass unemployment). And we’ll keep suffering those losses, even if GDP is now growing, until we have enough growth to close that gap. Since there’s nothing in the data or anecdotal evidence suggesting any gap-closing in progress, this is a continuing tragedy.
Comment: Ok PK, that is your vision. It's not
mine, I believe in hard math and simple logic. Not in fairy
tales...
And more to Paul's defense: I don't have a
clue what 'Freshwater macro economists' are (when it is economical
theory coming from the USA it is useless anyway) but Freshwater
stuff seems to attack Keynes stuff:
There is not much Media follow up on the
bombed fuel tankers in Afghanistan where so much civilians died
for only two trucks that were stuck in the mud.
If you are an Afghani and if your kid was roasted in the latest
Air Force barbecue, do you wonder how your kid makes it to the
daily air power summary from the Pentagon?
Rather likely you don't, but I do.
This is how killing a lot of civilians goes,
(CENTAF source),
quote:
Also at Konduz, Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft responded to a request to destroy two trucks under anti-Afghan forces control. The precision guided munitions were released and accurately struck intended targets destroying them.
Comment: No comment.
In the meantime Tyler from zero hedge is
observing:
And in Afghanistan the 1400+ record was
broken: Only 1400 dead Western soldiers in the last eight years
but more is to come I just guess. (Look in the upper table.) Link:
In the USA they have a lot of weird stuff,
one of those is the 'Leading Indicators Index'. I never ever
mention this weird thing because it is very complicated and there
is not much 'leading' observed. Do you really want to see
statistical nonsense?
Please go to the Bloomberg file:
Item 1) A bit more on the Federal Reserve Z1
release.
Item 1) A bit more on
the Federal Reserve Z1 release.
Yesterday we looked at the evolution of total
debt levels with a linear and a cubic model, before we did that it
was noted that every 3 months the US based Federal Reserve changes
the data a little bit.
You see the changes are not that big on
totals like 34353.8 billion of debt. So it does not look like much
of a deal.
Indeed, a test if there is a bias in the
changes (too far from zero would be a systematic bias) finds you
cannot reject that the average change is zero. (For statistical
fine tasters: t score is minus 1.4 and a Kolmogorov test says the
data could come from a normal distribution.)
All in all it still is strange that these
figures change every time but from a statistical point of view
there is no fraud or spilling over from all those rescue
programs.
At last a few links about what others wrote
on the Z1 release:
Item 1) New Z1 release so more total debt
analysis.
Item 1) New Z1
release so more total debt analysis.
Today the latest so called Z1 release came
out (here
is the 100+ page whole thing if you want). From the long thing we
use this small html file around total debt levels:
The graphs below start on 2005 Q1 and end in
2009 Q2 so the last 18 Quarters are included and this time frame
has both positive and negative economical growth.
It is important to remark the Federal Reserve
adjust the given data every 3 months, in the graphs below I used
the 17 old data and the new one. Later we will analyze if this is
allowed.
The data are the dots and the line fits the
points as best as possible (least squares method of course). R
square for the linear model is still extreme high: R^2 = 0.996 so
only about half a percent of the variation is not explained by the
linear model.
This validates the insight that until now in
the USA only small bubbles have collided into larger ones (only to
burst later).
Based on the last four and a half year the
total debt number (excluded financial institutions) grew 565
billion / Quarter and Y on Y about 2.2 trillion. This regardless
positive or negative GDP growth.
Just like the previous times we look at the
differences between the 18 data points and the linear model.
And again a cubic approximation is plotted
for out 18 dots.
Remark that the last data point fits in sharply with the cubic
model...
The cubic model has R square of 0.845
Just like the last time I also plotted a
linear model for the differences, since linearity was filtered out
it is 100% logical you get a flat line at zero.
And we add the first column with the one
before last financial sector debt. The sum is one of the estimates
for total debt in the USA, there are many more of course...
Again a linear model is plotted in the total
debt, R square in this case is 0.988 so although deleveraging of
the financial sector did set in (about 500 billion less direct
debt now standing at 16501.9 billion) it still ain't
much.
This is how it looks:
And the difference with the linear model now
looks like this (with R square of 0.904):
Again I have to remark the cubic model looks
like a fit, in itself it is of little importance. For the time
being it is a fit, but I am still skeptical about the longlivety
of charming graphs like that. Lets wait another 3 months...
Lets end the day with a funny file from
Willem Buiter, I mildly disagree with Willem that in economics or
social sciences you only have 'one data point'. Link:
There was also funny military news today; the
anti missile shield in Poland is cancelled and the whole thing
goes mobile. So rather likely a NAVY job... (Sorry no
links.)
Till updates.
(16 Sept 2009) We are waiting for the US Federal
Reserve so called Z1 'flow of funds' release tomorrow. It will be
very interesting to observe if total debt levels still climb with
speeds above 20% of the USA gross domestic product.
Of course I will do the same analysis as on
07 & 12 August (see below) where total debt levels are found
to grow linear over time (still above 20% of GDP).
Also we will look at the fairy tale known as
'deleveraging financial institutions', remark that when many
months ago we had all these talking eggheads on the television
stating that 'the deleverage problem is worked on' I already
placed some very simple calculations saying it will never
happen.
So lets wait for tomorrow & for today
only two items:
Item 1) The credit crisis for kids (or for
dummies).
Item 2) Links.
Item 1) The credit
crisis for kids (or for dummies).
Lately a kid in the street asked me what this
credit crisis actually was.
So I had to keep it as simple as possible
since kids in general have no mental representation of for example
marginal GDP growth against debt growth.
I knew this kid lives with his mother and
mommy has a job.
So I told him: Suppose your mommy has a
salary of 1000 € every month, but since that is not enough she
must borrow every month 20% of her salary so there is enough food
and clothing for the family.
The kid was flabbergasted because he
understood 20% amounts to 200 € every month.
After telling the kid the problems were
mostly in the USA I asked him for a possible solution to this
credit crisis. The response was as next:
In that case it would be better if all those
American people simply go back to the countries they come from and
the Indians (the native Americans) will have their country
back...
I had to smile upon so much creativity; but
hundreds of millions of Americans going to the rest of the world
is not an option without fresh concentration camps (although I did
not say that to the kid of course...).
Item 2) Links.
If there is a person on this earth that
should understand you can't go on picking up debt with speeds like
this 20%+ of GDP it should be the honorable chairman of the US
Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke.
Make up your own mind: does Bernanke understand his own stuff?
(Bloomberg source), link:
In the USA the Meredith Whitney chick is hold
in high esteem because she was correct on a few details related to
banking. Ok ok the Whitney chick might be good on a detail here or
a detail there, facts are this chick has no idea of what the
future will bring and only looses herself in details that are not
that relevant.
Business insider link:
From the same source the standard autistic
view on debt is once more observed (autistic in the sense it looks
at government debt only and neglecting the rest of the economy):
In the category 'where is our promised global
recovery?' the lady Yves has some nice pictures about the ghost
fleet that is sitting idle now the poor poor US consumer cannot
pick up more debt:
Ok ok lets not burn down Joseph Stiglitz but
you must never forget this guy also won a Nobel prize for
economics and if you are part of that incest clique wise people
often ignore what you say.
But Stiglitz is funny when stating the next, quote:
The Federal Reserve faces a “quandary” in ending its monetary stimulus programs because doing so may drive up the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government, he said.
“The question then is who is going to finance the U.S. government,” Stiglitz said.
Comment: No comment because a long time ago I
stated the money printing press will be the only future theme.
Link:
By now you must be utterly bored with all
that financial stuff, so you can take your time and look at a
YouTube video on Quantum Mechanics. It serves as an antidote to
all that idiot stuff that is coming from so called 'scientists'
from economics. The video is from Standford university:
Till updates & never forget that whatever
these Nobel economy prize winners tell you, in reality it will
always be 10 times as worse. These fuckheads don't understand the
most basic math so why waste your time on the Paul Krugman's of
this world?
(14 Sept 2009) Five items:
Item 1) CNN committing war crimes?
Item 2) Anger control for Western air forces.
Item 3) 'Correlation' between monetization and S&P 500 levels.
Item 4) Latest Osama bin Laden tape.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) CNN committing war
crimes?
To my utter surprise CNN broke important
Geneva convention war rules today, some of these rules are about
prisoner treatment and as such it is forbidden to parade prisoners
in public (or on the television as in this case) and ask them
weird questions.
In a prison in Pakistan about 80 Taliban were
lined up in a few rows and the CNN reporter started asking weird
questions like 'Are you allowed to behead someone if only that is
an infidel?'
The question was translated and the prisoner
only said 'infidel?'.
Immediately the CNN reporter jumped to the
conclusion that his question got a positive answer, that is weird
because the guy only mumbled 'infidel'.
At the end of this weird news item the 80 men
were asked if they regretted joining the Taliban, most of them
raised their hands.
I don't know much about legal stuff, but this
is forbidden by the Geneva war rules; of course CNN and the Pak
army will reply that the Geneva rules don't apply because 'these
men don't wear a uniform'.
Even if that would make sense, by all
standards for journalism you should never do such a
thing.
CNN as the creator of propaganda, where are
your standards CNN?
Item 2) Anger control for
Western air forces.
There is a wide range of reasons for the
present air forces to apply air power, for example panic in the
chain of command likely caused the mistakes made lately in the
bombed fuel tankers.
Revenge has always been a large pillar, especially
in the beginning the Americans wrote interesting texts like 'This
is for you goat fucker!' on their bombs.
Another important understream when it comes
to air power is of course anger and frustration. I only have to
show you the next picture and you likely understand
it:
So for these frustrated air force impotent
dickies we have a nice link:
In fact no correlation is given (ok a real
correlation number would be more work compared to making two
graphs).
If you don't know what QE is, that is central banks buying stuff
from the financial market place.
Even the graph is lousy; the right axis
should read 'millions' and not thousands (another US citizen that
doesn't understand large numbers, or a typo?). Graph:
Always funny how people react on that. The
Christian Science Monitor had a nice (source)
quote:
As has become his wont, bin Laden also name-checked a number of American officials, good and bad. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and US Central Command Chief General David Petraeus are the “bad” carryovers from the Bush years responsible for leading Obama astray.
Obama would have been better off, bin Laden says, by retaining the services of former Central Command Chief Admiral William Fallon and retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
Comment: Ha, that would be funny! Sanchez
back...
But serious, most of the tape is about new US
prez Obama not being capable to stop the wars and the support for
apartheid state Israel.
I would like to add it would be very very
strange that there will be a (beginning of a) Palestinian state at
the end of his presidency.
Item 5) The empty
item.
Just empty, use your own brain please.
In case that is too boring, on YouTube I
found 18 lecture course in ordinary differential equations. All of
the basic material is in the MIT lectures. (Ok they are Americans
at MIT, but most of them are not evil). Link:
(11 Sept 2009) On a beautiful day with a lot of
emotion in the air I would like to keep this update as simple as
possible:
If NATO forces fuck it up for
eight years, the best estimate is they will fuck it up for another
eight years.
So on the eight year threshold of the date
known as 911, from the Afghan Theatre of Operations we proudly
present a work known as 'Half way to hell'.
Lets leave this nice 333 'halfway number'
with that on this beautiful day thick with emotion...
Till updates.
(10 Sept 2009) Since the news is boring only one
link from FT Alphaville today.
The FT file is from oil storing in tankers
but there is much more info out there that says worldwide storage
of oil and oil related stuff only goes up.
Some time ago Dutch based Vopak (Rotterdam
harbor of course) stated they could not build fast enough more
storage capacity.
What oxygen and food are to the human body,
oil and it's derivates are that for the economical activity. So
where is our promised global recovery?
In the strange economy we have lately it
makes much more sense to follow a statistic on actually stored oil
and completely discard the prices.
Or do you disagree and on oil future markets
more wisdom is found when it comes to prices?
At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion. That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people. It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income. Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it. To use a journalistic measure that dates back to the late 18th century—when the British national debt had become a major political issue in that country—if you laid 9.6 trillion silver dollars end to end, they would reach to the sun and back, with enough left over to wrap around the Earth more than 1,700 times.
Comment: The above quote is the opening
paragraph and it is intriguing... But the rest of the article was
rather shitty, it is a very autistic view on US debt neglecting
for example the US financial sector has over 17 trillion of debt
on herself.
It has dozens of more faults but lets zoom in on the math:
Is it true that with
9.6 trillion silver dollars on a row you can reach the sun and
back?
And leave enough to wrap around the earth more than 1700 times?
As wikipedia says,
a silver dollar has a diameter of 26.5 mm.
Lets say for simplicity it is 25 mm so we have 40 silver dollars
every meter.
(If you want you can repeat the calculation with 26.5 mm or 37.7
silver dollars in one meter.)
The average distance from the earth to the
sun is also known as an Astronomical Unit and is 149.6 billion
meter. Lets say again for simplicity it is 150 billion meter.
How much silver dollars do you need to get to
the sun? Simple:
150 billion
times 40 silver dollars = 6 trillion dollars.
So to the sun and back to earth is 12
trillion silver US dollars.
You don't need to be an Einstein to know that
9.6 trillion won't make it to the sun and back because 9.6 is
smaller than 12.
Now for the second claim:
How much silver dollars do
you need to wrap the earth 1700 times?
The earth radius is 6357 km or 6357000 meter,
multiply the radius by 2 pi and by 40 coins a meter to get about
750 billion.
So if in the future you hear talk about 750
billion, Americans can act smart by stating that it is about 1700
times around the earth in silver dollars.
The 750 billion number is around a lot
lately, for example American house owners took out 750 billion in
HELOC loans in the year 2005 only.
It was also the estimated costs of the very first bailout package.
And this year the Federal Reserve is buying about 3 times the 750
billion amount in mortgage backed securities and US government
debt...
My dear reader, the math (like all math on
total US debt levels) is very easy: The US financial system
(private and government combined) is dying. I don't have a clue
about how long it will take for them to die.
After all the 50+ trillion of direct debt has
to be worth something...
Before we close this update:
Why are Americans stupid?
In the first place they don't know how far it
is to the sun (cognitive failure observed when it comes to large
numbers) and the emotional aspect of dying while refusing to
rationalize the process of dying.
This is their problem and not mine, time will
tell &
Till updates.
(08 Sept 2009) Oops, yesterday I forgot to
publish the second item (the boring links).
Most likely explanation is that I was rather
emotional, the kind of emotion was not sobbing tears on a dead pet
but raw hatred of the kind that pumps up your body for a
fight...
So from yesterday's update I deleted the end
where I explain that fresh war is needed against a Dutch
government agency known as the Central Justice Incasso Bureau.
So no fresh war against the CJIB and no
guidance for, lets say, 10 fresh coffins over there. Of course you
won't here complaints from me when in a short notice death toll at
CJIB rises suddenly, just like I never complained when 3 fucking
Americans died five days before one of my other trials back in
2003 when energy company Essent found wisdom in trying to
courthouse me...
I only post the above because in today's
letter I wrote to the most might Incasso Bureau in the Dutch
landscape I mentioned this small detail of only five coffins.
To make it much more funny: At the end some
stupid Dutch authority took an air plane with the brains of one of
the Turkish attackers to Turkey because Muslim law requires bodies
to be buried as a whole...
So the idiot was sitting in a plane with a
coffer filled with brain and I stood before the judge explaining I
missed one or more payments because I had a lack of liquidity.
Back to the most mighty Incasso Bureau in the
Dutch landscape:
If my memory functions properly, I had no
lawyer at my Groninger courthouse trial.
This classifies the entire trial as a fake trial.
As far as I know I have never seen a similar
case here in Holland: Zero lawyer....
As such the trial was a
fake and my dear CJIB I think I will stop my payments
towards you. No fresh coffins needed, you did it all to yourself!
__________________________
Free speech as above is a wonderful thing, in
China you cannot write stuff like the above because over there
things work differently.
So a bit more on how stupid the Chinese are
with the accumulation of fake US government bonds is found at
Jesse:
In the world of fake stuff, Financial Times
Alphaville is telling us that US consumer deleveraging is in full
swing. It's a fake insight because all in all the US economy still
needs above 3 trillion in fresh debt year in year out.
Link:
More stupidity and fake stuff, the UN
searching for a new world currency reserve system is right on
track. Stuff like that takes decades or a hefty smash.
I applaud the UN thing for a world wide better reserve anchor, but
I have to kill stupid locals like we have in the CJIB and as such
I cannot help you... Sorry, my hands are tied! Link:
The last days there is all that talk about
why everything rises, stocks go up, bonds go up, gold and silver
are up. Everything goes up, even more and more countries not
attached to the USA report positive GDP growth.
Is it that finally the so called 'decoupling
theory' arises?
Today on the television I heard somebody
state that it was 'nonsense' to upgrade the total number of death
to 125 from 90. I was only listening with half an ear because I
was doing boring stuff like painting the house.
Anyway the numbers of reported death during
war are always interesting, for example when NATO is
'investigating' one of their plenty mishaps they always use
accountancy methods to count the number of dead civilians. Grave
by grave it has to be photographed and grave by grave their has to
be overwhelming proof it is indeed a civilian.
That is why they always arrive at such low numbers, when it comes
to killed Taliban they never do this because 'the enemy is hiding
the corpses' and voila those numbers are always
higher...
A bit more on that can you find in a Q&A
from Reuters:
I never heard of the group named Afghan
Rights Watch but they say up to 70 civilians could be killed in
the air strike. The local puppet governor of Kunduz Mohammad Omar
says total death toll is only 72 very likely only militants while
NATO still hangs on a total of 125 and at least 24 civilians.
The Taliban is stating 150 villagers died
(remark they don't differentiate between the artificial construct
of Taliban versus civilian). Ass Press link:
Not related to the air strike, but we wonder
if the next is information, disinformation, just utter nonsense or
propaganda. Make up your own mind (UK Telegraph):
And also not related to the fuel tanker air
strike, but a directive to the Dutch military forces. Lately we
had a fresh coffin filled with a Dutch commando named Kevin van de Rijdt
and just in another fresh coffin with sergeant-majoor Mark Leijsen.
(Nu.nl source)
Therefore I would like to proceed in the
Dutch language, after all that is my native tongue...
Hee commando lulletjes uit Roosendaal, wat
zit je nu stomzinnig to doen met je vlaggetje op halfstok en dat
gemekker dat Kevin zo'n goede gast was...
Man man zelfs een hond wil not niet tegen de
vlaggestok pissen omdat het veel te steriel ruikt! Jullie denken
dat je in Afghanistan bent om de mensen te helpen, maar als dat
echt waar zou zijn waarom schieten ze dan op jullie?
Maar even serieus mijn geachte dames en heren
van de Nederlandsche Strijdkrachten:
Lang lang geleden had ik de eer en het
genoegen om HEAO statistiek te doceren aan een zootje militairen
in Seedorf. Dat was in het kader van één of ander programma
waarin militairen een HEAO diploma konden halen.
Twee tentamens statistiek in totaal, dus
tweemaal een hele week werken voor het tarief van 150 Hollandsche
florijnen per uur. Niet slecht...
We praten over okt 2001 en een paar maand
later de rest.
Voor één van de tentamens konden mijn
Seedorf studs een hele punt extra verdienen voor hun tentamen mits
zij een werkstuk inleverden over the 911 attacks.
Ik was zeer benieuwd omtrent hun schrijfsels; wat zou de
gemiddelde militaire professioneel schrijven over the WTC stuff
enzo.
Het resultaat was dramatisch!
Er was alleen één type vliegtuig dat meer
tonnage cargo kon vervoeren vergeleken met het tonnage dat in mijn
geheugen zat.
Daarom (en dat is de 'directive') moeten ze
op de KMA meer aandacht besteden aan het verwerken van media
informatie. In het bijzonder moeten officieren veel meer in staat
zijn het 'propaganda element' uit de informatie te filteren.
Laat ik een simpel voorbeeld geven:
Pas geleden waren er verkiezingen in
Afghanistan, alle Media outlets doen dingen als 'Je vinger zal
afgehakt worden als je gaat stemmen'. Of 'Als je gaat stemmen dan
verdien je het om aangevallen te worden'.
Media drumbeat was widespread on that detail.
Nu, een paar weekjes later heb ik twee
afgehakte vingers en één man waarbij de oren en neus waren
afgesneden... Dat was alles dat er te vinden was.
Waarom altijd dat hysterische gedoe?
Bij de KMA moeten ze meer aandacht geven aan
de onzin die de Media steeds uitspuiten, als dat je militaire
leidraad is dan kan je nooit een oorlog winnen.
En daarom moet er veel meer aandacht komen
bij de KMA voor het onderscheiden van grootschalige nonsense
vergeleken met zoals het in werkelijkheid gaat.
Item 2) Boring links.
The next link is a crown on 'war on drugs'
thinking as we observe in the USA, the author thinks that less
opium poppies in Afghanistan will somehow lead to less drug abuse
in Western countries...
The idiot author thinks that paying Afghan
farmers for growing no opium will have a big benefit for Western
drug use. The idiot thinks that paying a few millions to Afghani
farmers will bring a multi multi million benefit to the Western
world.
The most important economical nonsense is
found in the fact this idiot author thinks heroin is like
chocolate: If the price climbs consumers will buy
less...
In reality heroin users will use more
methadon, sleeping pills or whatever what to serve the need that
they have. If the anti drug policies when it comes to Afghanistan
succeeds it is only logical criminal behavior in Western countries
only climbs.
War on drugs is only a war on genes; This
idiot author is only one of those who pump up the problems. Why a
furthermore respectable guy like John Pike places stuff like that
on his frontpage I don't know, did he miss the Mexico
fun with all the coffins lately?
After all that negative stuff, why not end
the update with a big big laugh upon those stupid Chinese that
labored so hard to bring cheap stuff to the USA?
Lets take a good laugh at China, it is not
'Angry China' but Stupid China...
After all only a bunch of idiots could save so much dumb stuff in
USA government debt. Ok ok it is logical you get angry if you
understand your own faults.
And what to think of the next, true or not
true when you know how much Goldman Sucks pays to the political
leaders?
It is a blessing that the air attack was
ordered by a German officer, only because it was a non-USA officer
details like a breaching of the air power rules would surface. Now
almost 8 years into the war I know of zero reports like this when
it comes to 'mistakes' or 'accidents' when it comes to the USAF.
It never was a breaching of air power rules although the numbers
of filled coffins was impressing.
Wow wow wow, after 8 years the first breach of rules for air power
application...
Welcome in the fairy tale world of the USAF.
Next link also says US war planes threw 500lb
bombs although the number is not specified just as the actual kind
of explosives used:
As usual with stuff like this, total
casualties keep on rising for a few days but miracle miracle the
number of killed civilians always declines.
Instead of 90 dead included 40 civilians it is now, quote (remark
the careful phrasing of these words):
According to The Post, a NATO fact-finding team estimated that about 125 people were killed in the bombing, and that at least 24 of them were not insurgents. Local officials have said many civilians died in the strike.
Comment: Very interesting, over one 100 evil
Taliban killed and only 24 pure innocents! These are highly
successful ratio's that the USAF would have killed for in the
Vietnam war...
Sorry it is not realistic, most of the time when you ask a killer
about the implications of his actions the answer is often very
interesting but not a realistic estimate of the damage done.
Without thinking and without using the
cognitive parts of the brain, the Washington Post sings in harmony
when air power rules are breached.
And the fantastic journo's from the WP don't wonder why this is
the first joke that makes it to the main stream Media in eight
years time? Link:
Lets leave this item with that, why I take
the trouble and time to write and post it, I don't know.
There is also a rule of thumb that says:
If armies fuck it up for
eight years, the best estimate is they will fuck it up for another
eight years.
Item 2) Boring links.
Before we start some boring links it is
important to notice total debt levels in the USA still climb over
3 trillion US$ a year or just over 20% of their beloved gross
domestic product.
Those kind of numbers are pretty normal when
it comes to the USA:
Fresh debt needed is about ten times as much
as actual GDP growth, my latest calculations say 5.77 $ more debt
for every extra $ in GDP and that was based on the period 2002 -
2009.
A very simple and elementary view is found
that over 50 trillion in direct debt needs to be paid by a small
GDP of only 14 trillion.
The Americans think that economical recovery
is just around the corner, they also think they are the world
leader and that they are a military powerhouse.
Congratulations with being so disillusional
and only repost the next picture on total direct debt:
After the boring debt levels (only 50+
trillion and everyone expects this will be paid) there are some
boring links to post:
More boring stuff from the lady Yves: The
G-20 folks think that cutting bank bonuses or higher capital
ratio's for banks will save the system...
So the G-20 idiots don't understand the stuff, this is the problem
of the G-20 idiots and not mine. Link:
And what about the use of food stamps inside
the USA, it is boring Yves!
It is fucking boring when you realize the need for fresh debt
inside the USA my dear lady. Link:
In case you need a good sarcastic laugh; the
Financial Times is reporting that team Obama is attacking Israel
because of expansion of the settlements on stolen land.
Lets leave it with that, the Chinese don't
know what a black swan is so why post more nonsense of a dreamt up
world?
Till updates.
(05 Sept 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Reality from war as a mathematical
theorem.
Item 2) Fun question: Is the USA funding the Taliban?
Item 1) Reality from
war as a mathematical theorem.
In mathematics every theorem comes with a
proof, only with a good proof you can use the theorem as a kind of
'truth'.
Almost never you can find a valid proof for
things like "because a
general rule of thumb says the USA fights war always in such a way
that things get out of control".
As you can see on inspection below; two days
ago I wrote those very words down.
So I would like to state the next 'theorem':
Theorem:
A general rule of thumb says the USA fights war
always in such a way that things get out of control.
Proof: About 45 minutes before I published the
'theorem' two days ago, NATO slime bombed two stolen fuel
tankers that were stuck in the mud in some river bed.
Result (until now): 90 dead, locals say this included 40
civilians. Qed.
Yes you read this right: two fuel tankers
stuck in the mud, not two big trucks with gold but with fuel... I
don't know what kind of air ammo was used.
Bizarre as it sounds, it was a German
commander that called in the air strike. German diplomats say that
it was thought the fuel trucks could be used as suicide trucks...
(WP source).
I don't know what to think of that...
From the viewpoint of the military doctrines
it is weird the NATO are not capable of estimating the damage air
power does to the goals they have. In European nations like Greece
and France you can have weeklong riots just because police killed
only one or two.
In Afghanistan (but also Iraq of course) air power always is used
as the major asset, that is very logical if you understand how
this all started on 09 Sept 2001.
It is bizarre, weird and strange at the same time to observe so
called 'professional armies' not understanding their own wars.
Hey guys: It is not October 2001!
All they can is ramming stuff into stalemate at the expense of
about everyone but themselves. Seldom the ratio of killed
civilians to killed military has been so high; the cowards fight
cheap.
Lets post no pictures from the attack scene
or kids in hospital beds, I would like to give the middle finger
to NATO!
Item 2) Fun question: Is
the USA funding the Taliban?
John Pike from globalsecurity.org
has a funny file about who is funding the Taliban.
"I was building a bridge," he said, one evening over drinks. "The local Taliban commander called and said 'don't build a bridge there, we'll have to blow it up.' I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money -- then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project."
Comment: The words 'we agreed' are so nice,
how much money to the Taliban for that bridge?
Till updates.
(03 Sept 2009) Two items:
Item 1) More on the six million killed Jews
in WWII.
Item 2) A few boring links.
Item 1) More on the
six million killed Jews in WWII.
Since I never had seen a country by country
oversight of Jewish victims in WWII I tried to find one. On
wikipedia you can find the next file:
There are about 20 countries with Jewish
casualties reported, I will not write all those nations down but
only a few in the next table:
Oversight WWII Jewish
victims.
Albania
200
Austria
65000
Belgium
24400
etc etc
Netherlands
104000
Poland
3000000
Soviet Union
1000000
Yugoslavia
67000
Total
5752400
Please my dear reader, I know this is a
touchy subject so please let all emotion out!
In the first place it has to be remarked that
the numbers from Poland and the Soviet Union are rounded off on
millions while the 5.7 million total is rounded off in hundreds of
casualties. Statistically speaking this is nonsense, the total can
vary wildly depending on how the country numbers are rounded
off.
Without more information about Poland and the
Soviet Union it is hard to say if the 5.7 million total is bubbled
up...
Via the CIDI
website (a pro Israel website) and some emailing I found the next
country by country oversight:
You see in this table Poland and the Soviet
Union are 321000 higher while the totals again say it is 5.7
million.
So lets look a bit further, in the next link
suddenly the numbers for Hungary are 300000 higher and those for
Romania lower (very likely at the data entry level a basic mistake
was made, that is dumb for such a touchy subject):
Of course it is important to emphasize that
the country numbers are only estimates based on population
statistics.
And now you see the kernel of the
controversy:
Those who don't believe the six million
number find validation for their insight because the country
numbers vary widely. And those who believe the six million figure
find proof in the 5.7 million number that constantly pops
up.
So my dear reader, what do you believe?
Item 2) A few boring
links.
Now that's the stuff as I like it to read!
Why constantly talking positive as if you could talk yourself out
of a recession? Strangely enough it is not from some obscure hobby
economist like myself but from Central Station for Central
Bankers:
The Bank for International Settlements.
Quote:
"The current financial crisis is unlike any others," says the Bank for International Settlements. Lasting damage has been done. The "cumulative output loss" is likely to reach 20pc of GDP in the major economies.
Dutch banking giant ING got a well deserved
downgrading today from commercial rating company Standard &
Poors. Remember Dutch finance minister Wouter Boss telling on the
television that ING has handed them 40 thousand post codes in the
USA and that there were zero defaults
in those 40 thousand postcodes?
Since that day I don't trust the mental capabilities of Wouter and
his team very much...
Lately ING reported up to 20% of defaults / payments behind on her
mortgage backed security stuff, of course no journalist asks how
to rhyme this with zero defaults inside a bag of 40 thousand
postcodes.
At econompicdata they made a beautiful
graphic on the USA so called ADP payroll numbers. In the world of
payroll statistics ADP is less important compared to tomorrow's
NFP.
But the graphic is so beautiful, I think it
is a must see:
Because the server from icasualties.org is
down I cannot make a new graphic of the so called 24h Afghanistan
update. So why the previous graphic not repeated?
Till updates.
(02 Sept 2009) Only two items, I tried to make
them as boring as possible...
Item 1) Dutch prosecutors making a fool of
themselves.
Item 2) Paul Krugman making a fool of himself.
Item 1) Dutch
prosecutors making a fool of themselves.
Local prosecutors from the city of Utrecht
are making a fool of themselves, some cartoon from the Arab
European League will be prosecuted because it is insulting to a
group of society known as 'the Jews'.
As a comparison; a cartoon depicting Hitler
in bed with Anne Frank is, judicially speaking, not insulting to
Jews just as the Danish cartoons who are not insulting to
Muslims...
The cartoon depicts the wide spread belief
among Arabs that the 6 million killed Jews from world war II are
only a 'made up number'.
I have spend six years of my life at a local
university to study math, in math it is common that with every
stated theorem (a 'truth') comes with a proof. Without the proof
the theorem might be true but you can never use it.
For myself speaking I am 46 years of age, I
have nothing to proof that it is not six million killed Jews but
in my entire life I have never ever seen any kind of proof it is
indeed six million killed Jews in WWII.
For example, even a simple breakdown in
country numbers still isn't there now over 70 years as WWII broke
out. From my own country combined with Germany, Poland and Austria
you can easily estimate almost all Jews were
killed.
But a simple list of countries adding up to
six million? To be honest, I have never seen such a thing...
Here is the cartoon:
Why don't the fucking Zionists give the
people what they want:
A simple breakdown in nations adding up to
six million?
And for the Utrecht prosecutors: Good luck in
'proving' the above cartoon is an insult to the
Jews...
Item 2) Paul Krugman making
a fool of himself.
Paul Krugman still does not understand basic
math, lets say it is a theorem:
Total debt
growth in the USA still above 20% of GDP.
Of course I will not give a 'proof' of my
theorem right now, only place a few links from Paul Krugman's
NYTimes blog:
So like some Jew living in Poland in the year
1938 I wish Paul Krugman good luck in talking us out of the credit
crisis...
Lets leave it with that, till updates my
beloved reader.
(01 Sept 2009) Only two items.
Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update: A new
monthly record!
Item 2) Links.
Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan
update: A new monthly record!
Two days ago total killed coalition slime
stood at 70 for the month of August and it was remarked that it
would be strange if total death toll would stay below 76 (the July
number).
Yesterday and today seven more dead were
reported, so indeed life is not strange and for the time being
August stands at a new monthly record of 77!
My congratulations go to the
Afghanis!
Item 2) Links.
For what it's worth; the Washington Post is
reporting that the US military is developing some 50 variable
measurement for 'progress' in Afghanistan:
The so called 'savings rate' of USA citizens
is still in shambles; lately I already calculated that all these
'savings' are not enough to even service the interest rates on the
debt.
Via the lady Yves it is also found that the savings of just the
top 1 or 2% of income of the population already explains the
entire savings stuff:
Comstock Partners is informing us that in the
last decade debt grew by 5.40 dollar for every extra dollar in
gross domestic product.
Although the Comstock Partners don't say it, it is important to
remark that (banks) speculating with borrowed money don't count
for the GDP.
Anyway it is one of those staggering numbers that only show we are
at the very beginning of this so called 'credit crisis'.
Link:
Lately I joked that in order to keep
international demand for US government debt high, the Federal
Reserve should open a Cayman Islands outlay named 'Maiden Lane
CI'.
But folks that buy bonds are supposed to be 'rational investors'
compared to stock traders that are better classified as
'hysterical investors' if you believe that latest DOW rally from
7000 to 9500.
A rational investor would never buy US government debt because the
only difference with securities backed by sub prime mortgages is
the time scale: it will get destroyed but the timescale is longer.
Anyway, the next file has some nice information like possible
'Agency to Treasuries' swaps supposedly done by Central Bank
related stuff, for me it also contains completely new elements:
And again for what it's worth, at econbrowser
dot com a guy named James Hamilton is telling Nobel prize laureate
Paul Krugman again that it is not 1945 but 2009.
Sometimes I wonder if Paul is some kind of hidden Alan
Greenspan... Link:
In just over two weeks a new Federal Reserve
Z1 release will be out, it will be very interesting to see how
total debt on the US financial sector behaves. It now stands at
17.0210 trillion down from 17.0869 trillion, in a normal world
this should have lead to large losses but the scrapping of the
mark to market rule hides the view of the real development of the
financial sector. Link (one before last column):
Nobel prize laureate Paul Krugman is 'getting
it is not 1945'. Paul Krugman wants already a second stimulus
program because unemployment is expected to stay high. Total
direct debt levels (that is debt without vague future promises
like baby boom stuff related costs) are already above 50 trillion
and this statistic still climbs over 3 trillion a year. Link:
Also via Barry I found some fun math from the
university of Ottawa; they made a mathematical model about zombie
attacks...
It is funny to read and as such it is a pity the model is utterly
useless, if zombies would attack rather likely humans will react
in a military fashion.
And you cannot make a math model of military thinking, there are
far too much variables and you cannot create a predictive
mathematical model.
(In technical terms, the factor SZ they use for measuring the
number of encounters with zombies is not realistic.) Link:
No (graphic) Afghanistan 24h report, only
mentioning that July = 76 reported dead coalition slime while
August only stands at 70.
We have to wait a few days until the last coffins are reported, it
would be strange if it would stay below 76 but you never know.
Again: You cannot model military stuff; all years in Afghanistan
until now August was worse compared to July. Will it be different
this time?
Till updates.
(29 August 2009) Only the 24h Afghanistan
update, ok ok it isn't published every 24 hours. Lets skip all
kinds of difficult texts and simply observe:
Lets leave it with that,
Till updates.
(25 Aug 2009) Oops, internet was suddenly disconnected
last week! That was a little bit strange but my internet company
was telling the truth: I did not pay the bill for March, so I paid
and only one day after processing the bill internet was restored
again.
Item 1) Afghanistan elections, Taliban and
Western Media reporting.
Item 2) New Afghanistan year record: 295 coalition death and
counting...
Item 3) A short guide for more economical stimuli.
Item 4) USA Case Shiller housing index came out today.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Afghanistan
elections, Taliban and Western Media reporting.
At first I would like to give my compliments
to the Taliban for showing enough restrain, thanks! Reported were
only 9 dead civilians (see for example CNN)
last Thursday.
Since the Monday before the elections I was
without internet and as such was able to enjoy the nonsense of our
Western Media folks via television. Day in day out hour in hour
out it was constantly reported that 'People who go voting deserve
to die'.
Why are the Western Media folks so
hysterical?
Why is it every time the same? Some Western
journalist in Afghanistan seeks some extremist, asks for his view
and instantly that is reported as 'Taliban
policy'?
Let me simply repeat what I quoted on 16 Aug
(source):
"We have already announced that the people should not participate in the election," he said. "We have announced that the people should not participate in this American process. We are going to block the highways and roads leading to polling centers and attack those polling centers where we see Americans and other foreigners."
Comment: Well my dear but relatively stupid
Media folks: doesn't the above quote pretty much sum up what
happened in Afghanistan last Thursday on election day?
How come you did not see it coming?
More and more it becomes clear Western Media are much more a part
of the problem and not of the solution; why is the learning curve
not taken my dear Media folks?
For the rest: The Afghan elections were not
that important because it still a puppet regime only held up by
foreign powers.
Item 2) New Afghanistan
year record: 295 coalition death and counting...
Since the last update 28 more military
coalition death reported, on average just above 3 a day. So that's
not bad...
Item 3) A short guide for
more economical stimuli.
Lately the German and French gross domestic
product took a turn in the positive direction, some say it is
because of the government stimulus spending.
In some countries there are programs to take
old cars in and change them into new ones, details vary, for
example in the USA you can get 4500 dollar and in my home country
1000 euro.
With the scientific eye it is hard to see how
the destruction of otherwise good cars can be good for the
economy. Lets explore this kind of thinking a bit deeper:
Destroying things is good for the economy, or
more precise:
Destroying things is good for the GDP.
Actually old things like cars and buildings
don't count for the GDP while the new stuff replacing it does
count for the GDP of this year. (And with big buildings a lot of
years!)
Since I love the Americans so much, I would
love to help them with a new stimulus package proposal:
The US military should deploy al Qaida
operatives and give them a training as a pilot bomber. After the
training they are supposed to bomb away American cities, this has
a lot of benefits. Let me name a few benefits:
1) Now al Qaida folks are bombing US cities,
they think they are winning the war! In reality the demand for new
cities will make the US economy so strong that winning the war on
terror is a cake walk!
2) With selective bombing in California
and/or Florida a lot of that negative house price decline can be
prevented. That will stabilize the economy!
And just be creative; the al Qaida pilots
could also spray poison from the sky on farm fields or throw dioxin
in the Great Lakes or the Great Canyon.
Think of the countless billions needed to clean that up!
That would give some good kick ass to the
beloved GDP!
Item 4) USA Case Shiller
housing index came out today.
New Case Shiller housing index out today:
year on year decline (20 city index) was minus 15.4% and the first
Q on Q increase observed.
I never took the time to type a lot of data
into a reliable statistics program but all in all everything is in
line with my (negative) logistic model that says:
US house prices will bottom out at the end of
2011.
Lets post no links on the CS index
detail...
Item 5) The empty
item.
Empty, empty empty... Use your own brain
please.
Till updates.
(16 Aug 2009) Only an Afghanistan update:
In a few days time it is election day in
Afghanistan, until now (that means since about 2001) I had always
asked for no attacks on such election days, in Afghanistan and in
Iraq.
This time it was different; the Taliban
wanted a boycott anyway and why should I try to save another day
after almost 8 years of stupidity from NATO & the likes?
But lets look at some Media stuff from
yesterday (source),
quote:
"We have already announced that the people should not participate in the election," he said. "We have announced that the people should not participate in this American process. We are going to block the highways and roads leading to polling centers and attack those polling centers where we see Americans and other foreigners."
Comment: Today the Media files constantly
reported that polling stations will be attacked, but if these are
mainly polling centers where Americans and other foreigners are
spotted it's fine by me.
Since the last update we also had 8 more dead
coalition soldiers, so statically speaking that is rather low
compared to the eight years of war...
At last the picture of today:
Till updates.
(12 Aug 2009) Before the two items I would like
to show you there is retired US colonel who also thinks the
Taliban should execute the Bergdahl
prisoner...
You vuking don't believe it, but here is a nice quote (source):
As members of Congress and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, it was with incredulity and disgust that we watched Fox News Strategic Analyst Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters (Ret.) suggest on your airwaves that Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl,
"abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post, and just walked
off," and stated that, if this is true,
"the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal
bills."
Comment: Who needs enemies when you have
officers like that?
Item 1) More 'Total USA debt' analysis.
Item 2) The 24h Afghanistan update from yesterday.
Item 1) More 'Total USA
debt' analysis.
A few days back (03 and 07 August below) we
looked at total debt in the so called non financial sector in the
USA (to be precise, mortgage, consumer, business, state and
federal debt together).
Based on the last 17 Quarters it was found
the debt grew linear over time with a speed of 575 billion a
Quarter.
Today we do exactly the same but we include
the 17 trillion of the debt US financial sector has upon herself:
Start = 2005 Q1 = 37124,6
End = 2009 Q1 = 50952,9 (all in billions unchained dollars, FED source)
On average this climbs a whopping 860 billion
every Quarter.
Does this look like a credit crisis to you?
It might be that some sectors of the US economy have some debt
restraints but the overall debt growth is by far not in a crisis.
Just like the previous time we take a look at
the differences with the linear growth model and just like the
previous time a cubic model for the differences is plotted:
I also plotted the linear model for the
differences, since the linear growth was filtered out it is 100%
logical you observe a horizontal line.
The cubic model has R square above 0.80 so
that is a good fit, remark it does not make much sense to
extrapolate to the future because a cubic model is handy to use in
the neighborhood of inflection points.
I could also have used some kind of sinus model or a linear plus a
sinus model but that would involve much more labor only to get
similar results...
Conclusion: With or without the US financial
sector debt the results are similar; still not much of a real
crisis observed, only a credit shift.
The estimated standard deviation for the
difference is about 350 billion so a 95% likelihood bandwidth is
about plus or minus 700 billion; only the last observation is not
in that bandwidth. (That is only 1 of the 17 observations.)
Item 2) The 24h Afghanistan
update from yesterday.
The picture below is from yesterday evening
(at the moment of writing the score for August still stands at
27).
So 7 freshly filled coffins observed:
In case you don't think the Afghan government
is not a puppet government you should read this WP file:
(10Aug2009) Just some links & just some
bla bla talk from me.
Barry posts some good graphs about 'total USA
debt', it is important to understand there are plenty of ways to
measure 'total debt'. If you include all the promises made to the
USA baby boom generation it could be as high as 71 trillion, if
you think that is not a realistic approach you can concentrate on
actual debt obligations that could be hold up in a courthouse or
so.
Important is the fact that whatever
measurement you take; debt growth is always a multiple compared to
GDP growth or total profit growth or derivates like total tax
revenues. Furthermore the graphs validate my view that we don't
have a credit crisis yet since total debt growths proceeds it's
own path and ignores everything else.
This credit crisis is a fake, we only have a credit shift. Link:
The Hill is reporting that the US Federal
deficit grew another 181 billion in July to reach 1.3 trillion for
this US fiscal year. It will be very interesting to see if indeed
the 1.8 trillion estimate will be reached on 30 Sept this year
when the fiscal year ends.
Again these large numbers only validate that we have a credit
shift and not a credit crisis. Link:
More on US investment bank Goldman Sucks; I
still don't understand why there are no hedge funds out there
having similar results. I don't buy into the hypothesis that at
Goldman Sucks they are that smart, that is a nonsense hypothesis.
Tech Ticker has a funny video:
Bloomberg has a short video interview posted
with Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, if you are a regular reader of
this infamous website you know that I often disagree with this
particular Noble prize winner.
I think Paul is just another debt hugger that thinks more borrowed
money will save the day year in year out. Lets waste no more words
on this wise guy, link:
Economicpic data is telling us that consumer
credit is down sharply in the USA. Oh oh the poor consumers cannot
borrow anymore to pay for the daily things like food.
Don't forget that when it comes to foreign nations that USA is
always the first to point out that a prosperous middle class in
society is the best thing to have.
On the USA home front rich got richer & poor got poorer &
the middle class only had inflation compensation for many years.
When you talk crap you get crap. Link:
Drugs and the USA...
You know there is some kind of theory out there that says
societies often fall in the same trap as 3 to 4 generations ago.
The rationale given is that there is no one around to explain the
dangers. It's a charming theory; when your grandparents tell you
as a kid the faults they made and how much damage it did to your
family, you will take notice.
The next MSNBC link is just that; it is about 100% the same when
it comes to opium and Indonesia one century back.
Didn't I say only yesterday that we still have a severe danger of
a 'pesticide solution' to the Afghan drug problems?
Media files like the next are only a path to 'solutions' like
that, mark my words: in 2011 or so we could see more 'final
solutions' to Afghan poppy stuff:
Opium addiction ravages Afghan families
(Second title: Scourge of remote villages leaves even babies hooked.
But when in the USA a 4 year old shoots his 2 year old sister you
never see 'gun addiction' or so.)
The last link is a repeat from yesterdays
'empty item', it is about that captured US soldier named Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl.
Let me quote:
Maulvi Sangin, an insurgent commander for eastern Afghanistan, said the Taliban's governing body was awaiting a response to demands it made to the U.S. for his return.
"The American's fate is in the hand of (leadership), which is waiting until a response from the Americans to its demands," Sangin told The Associated Press.
Sangin would not elaborate on the demands or say if any deadline had been given. A spokesman for Sangin had previously said the soldier would be killed unless the U.S. stops airstrikes in two areas of eastern Afghanistan.
Comment: Now wow wow wow, I have deep knowledge
when it comes to trying to influence air strikes. As a matter of
fact, didn't I year in year out declare so called Military Bloody
Days and didn't I tell Western air forces exactly how much air
ammo they were allowed on those days?
Did the fuckheads from the Westen air forces listen to my demands?
They never did so in the end I was forced to allow biochemical
attacks to be used against the population, this still stands for a
few decades by the way.
Let me keep it short to the Taliban leadership:
Execute Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl this week, make
sure his body is never found & embrace yourself for at least
another decade of war.
These were the 7 links of today, till updates
my dear reader! (By the way, it is now 2009 and the next link only
feeds my insights that we will have 'pesticide solutions' in, lets
say, 2011. The new nigger prez is a nonperformer just like Dubya!
The eight link: U.S.
to Hunt Down Evil Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban (NY
Times))
(09 Aug 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit.
Item 2) Is data mining a bad thing?
Item 3) Afghanistan could take 40 years, says new UK army chief.
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update (actually a 48h update).
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit.
And another US fiscal year where the debt
limit needs to go up.
It's a funny read but the reason I post is is again explaining how
those fake US Federal Funds work. Reuters source,
quote:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit on Friday, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October.
"It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations," Geithner said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that was obtained by Reuters.
Comment: The 12.1 trillion statutory debt
limit is something completely different compared to the official
Federal debt of 6.7214 trillion the Federal Reserve is publishing
(FED source).
The difference is found in those Federal Funds like Social
Security or that bank rescue fund from the FDIC.
All these Funds are only accountancy vehicles that measure inlays
minus outlays, but don't think there is actually money in it!
The US government uses a 'cash in cash out' accountancy system and
surpluses in for example Social Security inlays are simply spend
this fiscal year, the 'surplus' goes in the form of non public
tradeable Treasuries into the SS Fund.
All talk that Social Security funds will be
'depleted' in 2037 is utter nonsense,
but year in year out at least once a month you see stuff like that
coming along.
Why American journalists year in year out
refuse to understand their own Federal financial system is
something I only partly understand; on a nation wide view you can
classify this as 'suicidal behavior', may be suicide is not the
right word. But 'stupid' is also not a right word to use; a lot of
people who write on that are not stupid.
May be it is best to compare it to an entire
decade of Media writing about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction;
also a decade of nonsense.
Just like their present day talk of
'depleting Social Security funds', dear assholes: These funds were
depleted years ago, you assholes just never understood...
Item 2) Is data mining a
bad thing?
To be honest, I never went to one of those
1500 Euro for two days of lessons in data mining. I also never
tried to get a crack of very expensive software that uses data
mining for big databases for big business...
I only thought, naive as I am, that now we
have bigger computers we can crack the secrets hidden within
larger databases with just a few clicks of the computer
mouse.
Just like the mining of metals like gold or
copper is very different now compared to 1500 years ago.
To my surprise a Wall Street Journal writer
named Jason Zweig says:
Ok ok Jason has some points; you should not
use data mining in a dumb way just as you don't mine for gold in
fresh clay soil. But when I think further while recognizing the
'weird things' Americans have, let speak the next quotes for
themselves, quote 1:
Mr. Leinweber got so frustrated by "irresponsible" data mining that he decided to satirize it. After casting about to find a statistic so absurd that no sensible person could possibly believe it could forecast U.S. stock prices, Mr. Leinweber settled on annual butter production in Bangladesh. Over an 13-year period, he found, this statistic "explained" 75% of the variation in the annual returns of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
Comment: R square being 0.75 is surprisingly
high, it all gets more bizarre when you read quote 2 on US money
managers:
Mr. Leinweber still gets inquiries from money managers who want him to share his data on Bangladeshi butter production so they can get the latest numbers and build a trading strategy around them. "A distressing number of people don't get that it was a joke," Mr. Leinweber sighs.
Comment 1: Without much data mining my
hypothesis is that having money managers like that is pretty
normal when your country has the world Reserve Currency Status. It
only breeds fools who think they are masters of the
universe.
Comment 2: Scroll to the previous update item
2; the cubic model for future USA non financial debt growth also
has R square of about 0.75.
The linear model has R square at 0.997 so I think the USA will go
on collecting huge chucks of debt, about 575 billion a Quarter...
We'll see how this all pans out, until now
there is still 'strong international demand' for US government
debt. Who knows if the Federal Reserve has opened some outlays at
the Cayman islands (Maiden Lane CI) to ensure the international
demand...
Item 3) Afghanistan could take 40 years, says new
UK army chief.
Lately, without consulting the Afghanis, I
stated to that shithead that leads the USA military that the
shithhead could have another decade of war if that is what this
shithead wanted.
So with great fun I observed the new UK
leader of military stuff talk about 30 to 40 years of involvement.
Lets quote:
Richards, who will become Chief of the General Staff later this month, told the Times: "I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner – development, governance, security sector reform – for the next 30 to 40 years."
He said British troop involvement should be needed only in the medium term and that the role of the army would evolve, adding that the focus should now shift to the expansion of the Afghan national army and police.
"Just as in Iraq, it is our route out militarily, but the Afghan people and our opponents need to know that this does not mean our abandoning the region," he said.
Comment: Well Richards it is not that hard to
solve the drugs problem and the economical development problem in
Afghanistan at the same time. Little problem: In the year 2002 it
was the same and when you now in 2009 talk about 30 to 40 more
years I can only tell you this:
Do you want 400 years of war
if you proceed as stupid as you have in the last 8 years?
If you want it you can have it!
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan
update (actually a 48h update).
With only 2 more reported dead coalition
military slime it will be hard to reach a 100+ filled coffins this
month!
But compared to Iraq, Afghanistan was always
a hard thing!
This does not take away I wish the Afghanis
luck in staging attacks; live well and fight well! (And never
forget you have to do the fighting while I am only tracking
statistics, again: good luck & use you God given
brain!)
Item 5) The empty item.
Empty as the vacuum of space... Please use
your own brain!
Not empty enough?
Ok ok, it was years back when I advised to
use all captured soldiers for biological
experiments. May be it is a favor of Muslim religion this
did not materialize, but my dear Mullah Omar what will be next?
Source:
But advises like that are not given without
reason; there is still a high likelihood that Western military
forces will go for the pesticide thing
to solve the drug problem in Afghanistan and you Taliban might be
honorable guys by refusing the biological path of warfare so it's
best to put an end to the discussion with a simple execution of
the honorable Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl.
Furthermore: The USA does not negotiate with
terrorists, so execute the Bergdahl guy and let his body never be
found.
Till updates.
(07 Aug 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Is USA unemployment down?
Item 2) US total debt growth; update.
Item 3) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 4) USA Federal tax revenues plummeting.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Is USA unemployment
down?
Right now US stock markets are up 1.7% on the
'better then expected' non-farm payrolls and the 'fact' that
unemployment was down to 9.4%.
All the television coverage presented this as
good news and with broad smiles spattering from their stupid faces
they brought the 'good news'.
Lets look at what the Bureau of Labor
Statistics makes from this, link:
And look in the first table (table A) to
observe (all in thousands):
Civilian labor force .... 154,504| -422
Employment ............ 140,041| -155
Unemployment .......... 14,462| -267
Not in labor force ...... 81,366| 637
You see those not in the labor forces climbed
637,000 while the labor force itself shrank by 422,000. If you
think that's good news, it's fine by me.
And the statistic 'unemployment' is measured
in the next way, quote:
They were not counted as unemployed because they had
not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Item 2) US total debt
growth; update.
This updates 03 August (see below), I was
curious what the differences were with that weird linear model
(for total non financial sector debt, see below).
The differences are as next, all in billions
of US bucks of course:
The largest difference is the latest at minus
340 billion compared to the linear model. Why a variable as total
debt would behave like a linear growth model is unknown to me,
that falls into the category 'strange' because there is completely
no relation between GDP growth and debt growth.
The diff variable is now without the linear
growth estimate, does it now fit another curve at relatively high
significancy? (This is a tricky technique for only 17 data
points!). It turns out a cubic model fits very good (but to be
honest cubic models like these usually don't live that long...)
Tricky or not, the cubic looks very
promising:
Item 3) The 24h Afghanistan
update.
Three more dead military coalition slime
observed while in the meantime and as usual year in year
out:
Of course tax revenues are down in almost all
countries. But some countries have some filled coffers waiting for
economical turmoil like this, for example when they have an
unemployment fund it is usually filled with real money from real
taxes.
In the USA they us a 'cash in cash out' and
as such there are no coffers filled with value. According for the
Federal accountancy rules, no cash is in these funds.
Social Security tax receipts are down less than a percentage point from last year, but in May the government had been projecting a slight increase. At the time, the government's best estimate was that Social Security would start to pay out more money than it receives in taxes in 2016, and that the fund would be depleted in 2037 unless changes are enacted.
Comment: This is perfect Orwellian talk, in
fact the funds are filled with debt and if this debt is 'depleted'
in 2037 that means hidden debt is paid off at last. What in the
meantime happens to those dependent on SS is still unknown.
Item 5) The empty
item.
Empty empty empty, will the cubic rule diff?
Make up your own mind.
Till updates.
(06 Aug 2009) Only one item; Afghanistan.
Item 1) Afghanistan, drugs and the 24h
update.
Item 1) Afghanistan, drugs
and the 24 h update.
After 8 years of waiting there has been about
zero point zero progress in the Afghanistan so called 'drugs
problem'. It is absurd to read with every dead coalition member
that they are always there 'to help the people of Afghanistan'
while in fact the mess goes on year after year.
This is all a circus and the Media works
along with keeping this a circus by interviewing so called
'experts' who are lost in the war on drugs and still think in
'evil versus good'. Always we are told Afghanis should harvest
wheat so they can feed themselves...
The only way out is turning illegal opium
into legal opium, you know that stuff used as a basic ingredient
in for example pain killers. Of course the 'experts' are the first
to kill reason and declare 'illegal opium is higher in price then
legal opium', they forget always to mention that the high prices
are only an artificial construct and a result of the war on drugs.
Beside this wiping poppy growth from
Afghanistan will not dent the supply of heroin; just like
marihuana you can grow it indoors. (In this country almost no
marihuana is smuggled in; almost all is produced locally.)
A good read is the next (it starts with a
village where there is no paper money but only opium as money):
A nice quote that show the official anti drug
policies will never work when executed as stupid as now:
On a hill flanking the highway in Argu District, a four-hour drive southeast of here, a thin farmer is bent over cutting wheat with a hand-held sickle. Abdul Mahin says he is several hundred dollars in debt to the man who sold him fertilizer.
"If we plant two bags of wheat, then we'll have just enough money to buy the seeds to plant another two bags of wheat," says the gray-bearded farmer. "We're going backwards. Of course we're angry at the government."
A small number of farmers in other towns are planting opium despite the ban. Most are seeing their fields destroyed, as government agents intensify patrols.
Comment: There is no use destroying Afghan
poppies, if the Afghan supply declines at some point in time drugs
money will be used to create indoor growth.
Of course the USA and NATO ignore this elementary boundary
condition; they prefer to fight windmills in the mountains of
Afghanistan...
A quote from one of these idiots:
"These poor farmers are going to get stepped on and get hurt in this effort," says former Drug Enforcement Agency official Doug Wankel, who organized the U.S. counternarcotics effort here in 2003. "But it's a pain that has to be endured for the good of the masses."
Comment: This quote sums up the USA; arrogant
to the bone and stupid to the bone!
And what about the Afghanis who don't have a
clue that the USA is using them to fight war on drugs while this
will not change a single thing in the Western countries? Quote:
Zainuddin, the head security officer for Darayim district in Badakshan, says he feels awful every time he uproots a poppy field.
"Sometimes I cry as I am hitting the poppies," says Zainuddin, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. "Because I know these are poor people and I am taking away the only thing they have."
Comment: No comment, I feel sorry for these
misguided people.
__________________________
The 24h Afghanistan update; a strong decline
in reported numbers because we had only 6 reported dead military
slime in the last 3 days.
Without links; also police leadership was attacked, rockets on
Kabul observed and sadly enough a family going to some wedding
festivities too.
Lets end this update with a funny note;
Suppose you want to grow indoor opium to make
heroin, where can you get seeds?
(May be these seeds produce next to nothing
in quantities of opium, just like all other USA products it could
have lousy performance.)
Till updates.
(03 Aug 2009) Two items:
Item 1) This credit crisis is a fake, until
now it is a credit shift.
Item 2) Afghanistan 24h update.
Item 1) This credit crisis
is a fake, until now it is a credit shift.
Something strange is going on: Every Quarter
total debt in the USA grows by about 500+ billion. Lately there
has been talk about some kind of 'credit crisis' but this is not a
crisis!
As you see in the graph below the 'American
way of life' is still preserved (the linear model spits out R
square 0.997 and that makes future predictions of total debt
highly predictable). Source (See the first column without the 17
trillion fin sector debt):
Start = 2005 Q1 = 24969.2 billion
End = 2009 Q1 = 33931.9 billion (about 2.25 trillion a year).
Total labor force in the USA is about 130
million workers, lately minimum wages in the USA were put higher
lets say 7.50 $/hour.
What is the total of wages to be paid in a 40
hour a week in a year? That's simple:
130 million
times 7.50 times 40 times 52 = 2 trillion.
Make up your own mind:
Is this credit crisis only a fake where small
bubbles collide into bigger ones only to burst too? All we have
seen is a shift in total debt to government and FED balances and
that's about it.
Item 2) Afghanistan 24h
update.
No fresh coffins reported, but July was
upgraded from 75 to 76.
Till updates my dear reader.
(02 Aug 2009) Only one item:
Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan
update.
This item is, as you might have guessed, a 24
hourly Afghanistan update. The slimy military forces had some more
coffins to fill and that always brings joy & pleasant feelings
around here. (Five more coffins reported: yesterday was upgraded
from 4 to 6 and today 3 more deaths so the statistics are right on
track to deliver a triple digit death toll to the slimy
militaries!)
You know today I suddenly realized that a lot
of the present soldiers were only 10, 11, 12 or 13 years of age on
09 Sept 2001. They were kids back then and now they are soldiers
because of the large payments they can get.
Dear Afghanis and Taliban, we have serious
matter to discuss: The boycott of the presidential elections this
month. As far as I know reality the Taliban want a boycott of
these puppet elections; that is fine by me.
Historical footnote: Every time when there
were elections, let it be Afghanistan or Iraq, and I asked to
withhold attacks on that election day, this actually happened and
more or less zero attacks were observed. End of the
footnote.
(Of course the slime from the US military
always explained the lack of attacks via 'beefed up security' and
more of that bla bla bla talk. It is well known that USA
economists don't understand their own economy and the same goes
for the US military: They don't understand their own
wars...)
This time it is different: attacks on
election day are allowed while as usual the advise is given to
minimize civil deaths. It is far more important to reach a triple
digit death toll for the military forces while elections for a
puppet regime are not that important.
I hope I am clear and I wish the Afghan
fighters good luck in staging attacks.
May be it is best if election day is just an average day, not more
attacks and no less attacks.
Graphic of today (for the US military: the
number five refers to the five more coffins filled, I am sorry to
make this explicit but after 8 years I know perfectly how stupid
you folks are...):
At last a CNN link confirming today's
reported dead military slime:
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also said he expects talks to help end the Afghan conflict. But Mullen said the time was not yet right for negotiations.
Comment: Hey you fuckhead Mullen, do you
understand your own war? Have you ever heard of the so called
'zero-one project' that maximized US death toll in Iraq?
Over 400 US slime dead in a 3 months time span and two years later
the US military still does not have a single clue...
Congratulations!
I bet you never heard of the 0-1 project, you are only one of the
perfumed princes talking low level insights.
You are a leader of shit, similar to Donald Rumsfeld.
By the way, do you want another decade of war? You can have it my
dear fuckhead!
Till updates.
(01 Aug 2009) Two items:
Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 2) Just a few links.
Item 1) The 24h
Afghanistan update.
Both yesterday as today 4 coalition slime
died in Operation Revenge the Twin Towers (oh, sorry, it is
Operation Enduring Freedom).
Based on the time frame 2002 - 2008, on
average the August casualties were double compared to July while
July 2009 has been the most deadly month for the entire war in
Afghanistan.
July 2009 closed with 75 coalition slime killed, I don't expect
this number will change.
If conditions are more or less the same this
year, we might expect up to 150 coalition slime deaths in August.
But lets not put the bar at unreasonable heights; any triple digit
number will do...
Here is the graphical stuff, above table is
from yesterday and the lower from today:
Item 2) Just a few
links.
EconomPic argues that the annualized USA Q2
gross domestic product likely is minus 2.3% instead of the
reported minus 1%. Link:
Barry arrives at a similar contraction but he
leaves the changes in imports/exports out because the decline in
imports is far bigger compared to the decline in exports.
(Declining imports give rise to a higher GDP.) Link:
Yesterday the Bask separatists group ETA was
formed 50 years ago, on the two days before that there were two
attacks leaving dead two paramilitary police. I really don't cry
for the dead Spanish police slime; in my house it is well known
the Spanish police is very corrupted by drugs.
In Spain it is pretty standard that if you get caught with 50 kilo
of high quality weeds, your courthouse documents will say it is
only 35 or 40 kilo. Since your courthouse punishment is always
related to the amount you smuggled, you will never say 'Dear
judge, in fact it was 50 kilo'. Spain is a corrupted country on
this detail, by far not as bad a Mexico but Spain definitely
carries a lot of dirt.
ETA attack link (the file reads like a copy
of the Indonesian hotel attacks; two bombs went of and a third did
not):
The Indonesian attacks could have been
claimed, I say 'could' have been claimed because a lot of
observers think that some UK soccer team was the target. Since
attacking sportsmen or sport events is 180 degrees against all
what I wrote on target selection for al Qaida International, I
only write 'could have been claimed'.
And there is some Telegraph file that states
that Manchester United was 'the target' because 'as Christians'
they are the enemy of Allah... I think some details are lost in
translation & at the Telegraph they think soccer players are
just as important targets as their salaries are high... Please
smoke more weed my dear Telegraph. Link:
The Financial Times reports that Manchester
United would only check in on the 18th of July, bombing was done
on 17 July so how could they have been a target?
In short: The claim for the attacks could be true, but the
emphasis on Manchester United is strange and weird for an al Qaida
International affiliate. FT link:
Musings on the US shadow housing inventory:
Not only banks hold shadow inventory (stuff not placed on the
housing market because prices could fall further by that and as
such the banks shoot themselves in the feet).
About 12% of US home owners would like to sell their house if
conditions were better... The poor Americans; foreclosures will
only rise and rise while this 12% figure will too. Link:
Lets compare GDP growth versus total debt
growth. For the GDP we use chained dollars (chained dollars are
without inflation chained to the year 2000):
2000 Q1 = 11,043.0 billion,
2009 Q2 = 12,892.4 billion or 16.75% in 8.25 years.
That is 1.9% real GDP growth a year.
Remark that total profits of the US economy will grow more or less
like the GDP grows. (Source: bea dot gov, chained
dollars)
Now for total debt levels:
Begin 2000 = 17305.0 billion,
End 2009 Q1 = 33931.9 billion or 96.08% in 9.25 years.
That is 7.55% a year. So debt growth is about
four times the real GDP growth.
Remark that this 34 trillion in debt needs to be serviced from the
total profits of the US economy, this is simply not possible...
(Source: FED Z1 flow of funds d3.htm)
Item 2) The 72h Afghanistan
update from yesterday.
Although I was away a few days there were
only 2 more military deaths reported.
Of course the monthly totals can change a bit, but we had over 70
coalition deaths this month (Reuters):
The picture below contains yesterdays
screenshot, today 4 more deaths were reported.
Till updates.
(27 July 2009) I won't update for a few days, so
this is the last 24h Afghanistan update.
Two more UK folks got killed, one 'whilst on
foot patrol' and the other 'whilst on vehicle patrol'. Could
happen... (MoD
release)
In the Afghan drug trade I found the next
unbelievable quote (NYT source):
One short-term solution being urged by senior Defense Department and military officials would be to pay Afghan farmers not to plant poppies in the next growing season.
Comment: After 7 or 8 years the Western
forces still haven't figured out that illegal opium can only be
replaced by legal opium.
This all is a ridiculous circus: In 8 years time zero realistic
replacement plants have been observed.
Lets proceed with:
And, just like yesterday:
Till updates.
(26 July 2009) Only a link & the 24h
Afghanistan update.
Link:
I see burning water run uphill with this next
Bloomberg file:
The FASB’s approach is tougher on banks than the path taken by the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, which last week issued a proposal that would let companies continue carrying many financial assets at historical cost, including loans and debt securities.
Comment: No comment, the article speaks for
itself.
__________________________
The 24h Afghanistan update (that is 24 hours
late by the way):
Yesterday 2 British reported dead, today an
attack on Italians but no dead reported.
So it was a kinda boring day...
From the above 'thing with 2' via a few mouse
clicks you can make the next picture, but is that art?
Of course it is not art you silly!
Till updates.
(24 July 2009) A short Indonesia hotel attacks
update + the 24h Afghanistan watch.
After a full week still no responsibility has
been claimed, so this gets more interesting by the day. The lack
of responsibility creates a void and the void is filled with
speculation and educated guesses.
A nice read is written by Stephen Coates
(Asia One news), link:
Analysts have been puzzling over why the Marriott bomber, whom police believe was as young as 16, descended from his room on the 18th floor to the lobby and walked straight into the small meeting room rather than the closer and more crowded main restaurant.
"In this case they penetrated the hotel and reached the heart of their target," Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna told
AFP.
Comment: No comment beside this; Info on the
two Dutch killed is amazingly sparse. Why this is I don't know, or
may I do know but prefer to keep the mouth shut...
__________________________
In Afghanistan another 2 US slime got killed
today, for the Pentagon boys & girlz: That explains the use of
the '2' in:
Till updates.
(23 July 2009) Just a few links + some bla bla
talk of me.
Like expected the DOW tested 9000 today, for
me this is good proof the FED is flooding liquidity again with
their ZIRP stuff. This also means the only thing keeping consumer
inflation low is the under utilization of the productive part of
the economy.
The 'Media reason' for this climb was the
increase in sales in existing US homes; the financial press still
hasn't figured out housing has strong seasonal components.
Stating that sold volumes are on the rise month on month is about
the same level of stating more apples are ripe in October compared
to August.
It is important to understand why people that
are clever tell foolish words like the DOW going to 15 thousand or
so.
That is because they are inside a very complicated system that has
a 375% debt to GDP ratio. The debt levels simply keep on growing
much faster compared to profit growth, this credit crisis is still
a fake (the real one still has to strike).
William C. Wheaton is explaining via
reasoning along the supply side that US housing will bottom out
soon. He forgets important 'supply side' factors like the shadow
inventory (no one has a clue about the size) and the fact 30% of
US houses is without a mortgage so all that mortgage debt is
concentrated in the other 70% of houses.
Needless to say, foreclosures will only rise...
Did you know that at the Bank for
International Settlements (the Central Bankers Club) in Basel they
have economists? And even chief economists?
Dumb as I am I always thought they went there to party...
But serious, the next is a nice but long read about William White
And last but not least; only one American
killed today in Afghanistan, a pity. Amen.
Till updates.
(22 July 2009) Only one item:
Item 1) Nice 24h update from
Afghanistan.
Item 1) Nice 24h
update from Afghanistan.
This item is about, as you might have
guessed, a nice 24h update from Afghanistan. Only 24hrs back we
observed 59 killed coalition slime in Afghanistan, now it is 62!
Today some Dutch Media outlet reported that
the month of July was the most deadly in the entire war in
Afghanistan.
They forgot to mention that for every year
since 2001, August always had more coffins filled.
Till updates.
(21 July 2009) Only one item:
Item 1) Nice 24h update from
Afghanistan.
Item 1) Nice 24h
update from Afghanistan.
This item is about, as you might have
guessed, a nice 24h update from Afghanistan. Only 24hrs back we
observed 52 killed coalition slime in Afghanistan, now it is 59!
What a difference a day makes...
Till updates.
(20 July 2009) Five items:
Item 1) More evidence the moon landing was in
fact a hoax...
Item 2) Two bombed hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Item 3) Total dead US slime in Afghanistan & Iraq stands over
5000.
Item 4) The news from 1930.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) More evidence the
moon landing was in fact a hoax...
It was 40 years ago today... Man oh man I am
getting old!
I remember sitting at the right of my parents black & white
television and my father tells me to keep my mouth shut because
'they are landing on the moon'.
There are still groups that think it was a
faked; a giant hoax, filmed in the desert or inside a big movie
studio. (Just like AIDS is a military invention to kill blacks and
gays & the World Trade Towers came down via remote controlled
air craft and controlled explosions.)
It is not that difficult to find some clues
it is all a hoax:
Just study the US health care system and ask
yourself if such a nation could have put a man on the moon 40
years ago.
(Ok ok, may be that kind of reasoning is not
very valid because you can also start with USA military techno and
work back 40 years...)
Item 2) Two bombed hotels
in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Three days back luxury hotels the Ritz &
the Marriott got bombed, until now there are no claims of
responsibility observed.
A lot of Media attention goes to Mr. Noordin Top;
if only half about what is claimed about him is true, he
definitely is a remarkable guy. Just a source file:
After 3 days it was confirmed 2 Dutch were
among the 9 dead, it was told identification was very difficult so
the Dutch couple must have been close to the bomb.
For the time being I cannot comment very much
on this attack (see for example what I wrote on 29 June below) so
we wait and see...
Item 3) Total dead US slime
in Afghanistan & Iraq stands over 5000.
A few weeks back I was stupid enough to think
that total US military death in Iraq & Afghanistan stood at
4950. Dumb as I was I did not check the usual
source and as for today total US military deaths:
War
on terror; US mil death until now.
Theater of
operations
# dead US
slime
Afghanistan
742
Iraq
4327
Total
5069
So I was dumb (or late) with checking total
dead slime, on the other hand now I find it stands at 5069 the
news could have been worse...;)
In the table below you can see how big this
spike in Afghanistan is (all coalition countries together):
That's an amazing upswing! Congratulations my
dear Afghanis!
Item 4) The news from 1930.
Just a link to assorted Media headlines from
the corresponding day back in 1930:
Today we ponder the question about who or
what kills most Americans.
Of course when it comes to killing Americans all normal people
instantly get a smile on their face, that's normal. I too like it
when Americans die, the slower the better & the more pain and
suffering the better!
To keep it simple you can choose from three
categories:
What kills most
Americans?
Cat 1: The evil al Qaida network, or
Cat 2: Investment bank Goldman Sucks, or
Cat 3: The wonderful health care system they have over
there.
For category 1 I will post no links because
total still stands below 10 thousand well deserved filled coffins.
It is a pity it is still that low, on the other hand the al Qaida
scare preserves the 'American way of life' and that detail does
wonderful things for category 2 and 3.
Real funny in category 2 is a YouTube vid as
found at ZeroHegde, link:
To be honest I never thought about the number
of people that die because the Goldman Sachs folks suck such a lot
of money out of the system. The Goldman Sucks folks use that money
to buy expensive cars, high quality chocolate, expensive whiskey
& of course a lot of political donations but all in all that
kind of luxury economy does not bring much benefit to the rest of
the US society.
Lets say the skew wealth and income distributions gets about 100
thousand Americans killed every year. (It's just a rough estimate
based on nothing.)
Compared to al Qaida they are much better, but it is still peanuts
compared to Cat 3.
(Never forget: The Americans are always very willing to pay such a
Goldman price because that is 'the American way'.)
Category 3 is the best; Healthcare the
American way!
How they ever created a healthcare system like that is far beyond
my knowledge, if you tie health care insurance to employment you
only get what you deserve.
For example, quote 1:
Average monthly COBRA payments for a family typically exceed $1,000, while the average monthly unemployment insurance payment, calculated from weekly average payments, is $1,425.15.
Comment: This is soo much better compared to
anything al Qaida could do...
For example, quote 2:
Sham plans, or “fake” insurance The National Association of Health Underwriters warns that rising price tags on health insurance has paved the way for the creation of more sham plans, often which offer lower cost and coverage than the market standard. These plans, it says, are “created to look like authorized health insurance plans but are never intended to pay benefits or abide by state insurance laws.”
Comment: Once more we observe the benefits of
'deregulation', in my home base nation we also have health care
problems; they are known as the 'waiting lists'.
Yet selling fake health care insurance is many lightyears away
from the problems we have.
It is a clear signal of an entire nation in disarray; fake health
care insurance...
I love it; it gives Americans what they deserve!
And in order to kick ass, what about quote 3:
High out-of-pocket costs The New York Times recently profiled a couple whose health insurance provided for $150,000 a month in “hospital coverage,” but excluded nearly all the routine care that hospital patients typically receive such as tests, medication, and operating room care, essentially meaning that the insurer treated hospital stays like hotel visits, covering room and board but very little treatment. In the Harvard study on medical bankruptcy, the average out-of-pocket medical costs incurred with those who had private health insurance was close to $18,000.
Comment: What can I say? It is so many
lightyears away from European practices we can only conclude that
Americans deserve this kind of stuff.
That whole of America is just one big fake, it is a fake nation,
at best a paper tiger.
I love the amount of suffering the fake US
health care system gives to their own population, the suffering of
this blatant stupidity is huge. This USA nation is clearly not a
world leader when it comes to basic stuff like health care, the
USA is only a collection of weird stuff sucking out the savings of
the rest of the world.
(My advice, as usual in the last 8 years of
this website; Kill that nation
because humanity as a whole is/are better of without them.)
Till updates.
(15 July 2009) Two items:
Item 1) And the Joseph Goebbels prize for war
propaganda goes to...
Item 2) The math of Paul Krugman.
Item 1) And the Joseph
Goebbels prize for war propaganda goes to...
Today an interesting report came out about
Israeli war crimes committed a few months ago, it contains stuff
like using Palestinians as human shield, bombing houses without
any kind of military need and of course the use of white
phosphorous in densely populated area's.
I have not read the report because I did not
have time but lets recall a few details from just a few months
ago:
--About 1300 to 1400 hundred dead
Palestinians, on the Israeli side about 13 deaths. That gives a
ratio of 1:100 and this ratio is ten times as big as comparable
ratio's as we have from the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the Warsaw
ghetto uprising 10 Jews died for every German soldier.
--About 55 thousand Palestine houses destroyed, zero on the
Israeli side.
--And the white phosphorous bombs had widespread use, as far as I
could see it the Israelis have 'clusterbombed' this kind of weapon
& any fool could see it was not used in accordance of the very
limited international rules we have for stuff like
that.
"In some cases a civilian would be forced to walk in front of soldier while the soldier places his gun barrel on the civilian's shoulder," the report states.
Comment: No comment.
Phosphorus shells can be used to create a smokescreen for troops. In creating the diversion, the element ignites when exposed to oxygen and can cause severe burns. International law calls on militaries to limit the use white phosphorus in civilian areas.
Comment: Worldwide armies love this stuff
because a white phosphorous grenade of just a few hundred grams
produces an awful lot of smokescreen smoke. From a military point
of view such weapons make sense because infantry can use this in a
meaningful way in war as it was fought, for example, in the
Vietnamese war.
The Israelis made it artillery fun and may be air fighter fun;
when used inside civil area's it is simply a war
crime.
_____
Now who has won the Joseph Goebbels prize for
the best war propaganda?
With head and shoulders above all her peers
it is the Livni lady that compared pictures of wounded and killed
Palestine children to pornography.
When it comes to dead corpses from Jews or
children from the holocaust you never hear the Israelis complain
about pornography, on the contrary these pictures are always used
in order to validate the right of existence of Israel.
But when we see Palestinian kids without arms or legs it is
suddenly 'pornography'.
At last I am not going to post a bunch of
maimed Palestine children. I only speak out my amazement of the
support our European political leaders give to Israel.
Why should we support another apartheid
regime committing war crimes?
I only wonder...
Item 2) The math of Paul
Krugman.
A few days back I challenged Paul Krugman to
cough up some validation about why running giant deficits would
save the US economy in the long run.
More precise I asked for a theory that
insures that every borrowed government dollar today would give at
least one dollar in future tax income for the US
government.
My problem with the US economy is very very
simple:
Debt levels are so high on all levels of the
US economy and in all sectors that the interest obligations always
outstrip the total profits of that level or sector of the economy.
If interest obligations are larger compared to your profits you
will hit the wall.
It's as simple as it is Paul...
I also informed my honored audience with the
fact that Paul is rather lousy in math...
The honored audience can check for herself
who is in the right in the long run by looking at some math from
Paul.
In the next graph from Paul it is very
important to understand the reasoning behind it, as usual the
concept of 'default on debt' is not there. Here is Paul's math:
Again: It is important to study the reasoning
behind it because in case Paul is in the right the USA will be the
dominate military for the next decades and in case my simple
minded vision about debt levels is the main scenario, the fucking
US military will loose her dominance.
And please don't get fooled: Public sector
deficit is at a record level right now so we are at the very right
side in the graph of Paul Krugman.
Till updates.
(14 July 2009) Only two items with only one link
in it. I am sorry because a good and comprehensive update would
need at least 12 to 15 links but I am lazy & you have to find
the missing links for yourself.
Item 1) Whatever happened to Basel II?
Item 2) More on Goldman Sucks.
Item 1) Whatever happened
to Basel II?
For years it has been in the making and 2009
was supposed to be the year of implementation of the Basel II
accords so banks would become more transparent and we were
promised parts of the shadow bank system would come to light.
It is now the second half of this year 2009
and I have observed zero point zero information on this detail in
the first half of this year.
It is well known that Central bankers are
very good in hiding the fragile parts of the financial system, you
must not view this as some 'evil thing' but as something that
comes naturally with running fiat money systems.
Under the Basel II accords, plans were to
include some of the balance fun in the shadow bank system (the
'off balance' items of our beloved banks). This all does not
materialize and we ponder the question: Have the Central bankers
something to hide?
Or do you think Central bankers are always
strait shooters?
Just an easy example from my own country:
For months our Dutch Central bank knew about
problems in Iceland, yet they never warned the public because that
would 'trigger' the problems in Iceland.
As a consequence the bill for Dutch tax payers was much higher,
this all with thanks to our local Central bank and Dutch Central
banker Nout Wellink.
So when stuff gets serious, Central bankers
keep their mouth shut.
Does the same go for the Basel II accords?
Central bankers only keep their mouth shut
because a lot of the toxic waste is concentrated in the shadow
bank system and as such outside official bank reporting.
My guess is; it looks that way.
In case you as a reader don't have a clue
what shadow banking is, you can read the next file (found via
Barry):
Shadow banking was encouraged in the USA
although I don't know if it originated there. It is more or less a
way to get cheaper credit, inside a fiat money system cheap credit
is a powerful thing; it easily explodes the whole thing because
our human brain is not wired for fiat money.
From a history point of view shadow banking
is about the same as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; cheap mortgages
only blow up house prices.
Item 2) More on Goldman
Sucks.
Goldman Sachs, the investment bank with the
smartest folks on board is what common folklore tells us. Is it
true? Is it the best and smartest of what investment banking has
to offer?
Or are they collectively just a bunch of
suckers, only good at sucking out dead corpses?
Since I am always eager to learn more from
really smart people, lately I did read some news about how Goldman
Sucks changed her so called 'Value at Risk' or the VaR model banks
use.
I was not impressed, any idiot can come up with the fact that
small caps on the S&P 500 are not liquid when the entire
markets go down down down. They had more of that commonsense that
even my granny could have pumped up if she would be alive.
So what explains the large profits they
posted today?
Is it the giant selling of US government
bonds (GS is a primary dealer)?
Is it because on average they are so smart?
If they are so smart, why is there no
hedge fund out there repeating profits like this?
Make up your own mind: I think it is mostly
front running on a large scale.
If your mind thinks otherways, good luck with it.
End of this update.
Till updates.
(13 July 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Were last weeks cyber attacks coming
from North Korea?
Item 2) What's a Supplemental Liquidity Provider? Is Goldman Sucks
one?
Item 3) More fun on banks.
Item 4) Arguments against a bankslaughter law.
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Were last weeks
cyber attacks coming from North Korea?
Last week there were some cyber attacks (a
distributed denial of service from a bot network they say) in
South Korea and the US of A.
The South Koreans blamed the North Koreans,
the US of A did not blame anyone and even denied to confirm
websites like those from the White House were part of the dds
attack too.
I don't have a clue if it was North Korea or
a distributed club of computer hobbyists that wanted some
fun.
Now scroll down please to the 4th of July
update:
If everything is ok you see two pictures:
--On the first you see a screenshot of a
North Korean beer commercial.
--On the second you see a pint of beer I brewed myself + some
blackberries from my garden.
For pictures I mostly use the jpg file
format, you can make them sleek and slender so even deep inside
Africa you still have reasonable download speed of this
page.
A few days later I remarked that the picture
from my own beer did not display right; that's strange, after 8
years of always the same work procedure this time the picture did
not display at all.
Removing the picture from the server and
uploading it again also did not help, so instead of a jpg I turned
it into a png file (almost 500 kB instead of 88 kB) and this time
it was properly to see.
So I don't know, lets try the old jpg once
more:
If the above is still a blank, my mind is
too. (But hey you don't hear me complaining, anything is better
compared to those nasty cyber attacks that wipe out all files five
directory layers deep within one second. I had stuff like that and
that's definitely not coming from the NK but with a high degree of
likelihood from the USA cowboys.)
Item 2) What's a Supplemental Liquidity Provider?
Is Goldman Sucks one?
The story of the stolen Goldman Sachs source
code doesn't have much follow up the last days while after my
humble opinion a source code that could disrupt markets is a
highly interesting thing.
A long time ago I have complained a few times
about automated trade; robot trading is up to 50% of all
transactions on for example the NYSE and as usual it's completely
unregulated, there is zero point zero oversight and nobody knows
exactly what is going on.
On Barry's hangout was found the next (King
report source):
For the past several years Street operators have assumed that the computer jockeys who were being employed by proprietary trading departments on The Street were developing algorithms that would find other algorithms that represented buyside orders so prop desks could trade against those orders.
Another trading prop that has been occurring for years is certain firms feed their electronic trading systems into prop desks so traders can see in real time money flows into and out of stocks and groups.
However recent revelations are forcing the Street to consider the possibility of automated front-running on an unfathomable scale. The two ‘front-running’ issues are: 1) ‘queuing’ [of orders] – finding orders loaded into a system, particularly limit orders, and trading against them; and 2) ‘latency’ – discovering and then front-running electronic orders or a penny or more by exploding the latency or lag in execution.
Comment: Lets first correct the latest words
from the quote, it likely should read:
discovering and then
front-running electronic orders at a penny or more by exploiting
the latency or lag in execution.
For the rest I have no comment, it could very
well be true because the judiciary in the USA works very simple:
as long as it is not explicitly forbidden, it is
allowed.
And since it is allowed, stock exchanges like
the NYSE do this.
If you still think that for every stock sold
there is a buyer and vice versa, let me wash your ears with the
next utterly bizarre quote:
Exchanges will pay firms ¼ of a penny if they ‘provide liquidity’ when an order appears in their system. This is extra incentive to front run order flow… Theoretically a firm could ‘scratch’ all day and profit. The NYSE Euronext (Oct.24, 2008): A newly announced pilot program will establish Supplemental Liquidity Providers (SLPs), a new class of upstairs, electronic, high-volume members incented to add liquidity on the NYSE.
The program will reward aggressive liquidity suppliers, who will complement and add competition to existing quote providers.
Comment: So far for the fairy tale that for
every seller there is a buyer; when you sell or buy stocks you
only trade against the margin of a 'Supplemental Liquidity
Provider'. Needless to say the SLP has a complete insight in the
order book of a particular stock; they can see all buy and sell
orders if the article is correct.
And if they can see all buy & sell orders on a particular
stock like Goldman Sucks, do you understand how much more info the
SLP's have?
In the USA anything goes, just anything as long as it is not
explicit forbidden...
One quote more for the road:
When a firm has an 87.5% trading accuracy record, something unnatural is occurring. And we wonder why the buy side has been so docile and malleable when the money is being derived from them!
Comment: Of course the buy side is docile,
don't forget the buy side is mostly Americans and Americans
worship the rich. Goldman Sucks is rich and as such has the right
to be worshipped.
Some time ago I did hold the US chick Meredith Whitney
in some kind of esteem that was higher compared to other US chicks
& dudes.
Little problem: chick Meredith now thinks
that solvency of US banks is no longer a problem because
accountancy rule 157 is no longer with us.
So chick Meredith is now downgraded to whore
Meredith.
Solvency of US banks no longer an issue? My
dear whore Meredith, accountancy gimmicks that suddenly make an
entire industry becoming solvent again only raises questions about
the solvency of the Federal parts of the USA.
It might have slipped the attention of your
wonderful mind, but all in all debt levels are still growing like
they used to; only a nation that is insolvent can come up with
accountancy gimmicks like scrapping rule 157. That is the main
flaw in your analysis & I won't forgive you: From now on you
are 'whore' Meredith.
Check the stuff from whore Meredith out at
8.58 minutes of the first video in this link:
When bankers or Central bankers behave irresponsible
and blow up a few banks or the military might of entire nations
(like the Greenspan idiot), they always come away with it.
But when you replace 'Bank company' with
'Water company' or 'Milk company' or 'Fireworks company' it is all
very different: water, milk and firework CEO's easily find
themselves in front of court if they sell poison water, milk, or
fireworks that have malfunction.
When it comes to banking, no such
restrictions are there: In the first place laws and regulations
are such nobody understands them and in the second place there is
some weird need to worship bankers because nobody understands
exactly what they do.
Trust me: Even the bankers themselves have no clue what they do.
I myself am very much in favor to courthouse
cases against idiots that blow up banks that are vital for the
entire system, I also know this will not
happen because at the courthouses they are far too dumb to
deal with bankers. Bringing in the expertise is also impossible
because folks with brains usually don't like to work for those
kind of institutions.
The most dumb arguments against bankslaughter
laws are found with this (source):
"In the first place, Collier doesn't seem to have given much thought to the costs of over-deterrence. Bank executives faced with the prospect of a criminal investigation and possible conviction would likely be overly cautious. We'd lose a lot of socially beneficially risk taking by criminalizing bank failure.
There's also a serious fairness issue. Only those executives whose risky bets blow up get investigated, prosecuted and punished. Those whose bets pay off are untouched. This means that being unlucky in the markets becomes a criminal matter. Criminality becomes a kind of lottery."
Comment: Come on people, what goes for water
and milk companies also goes for banks. As far as I know reality,
no milk man has ever been before court because he was unlucky in
the markets...
Item 5) The empty
item.
The empty item is always here so you can use
your own brain.
If it is not empty enough you can see the US
Federal deficit for the month of June: Only minus 94.4 billion or
about 300 US$ for every citizen for just one
month of government work...
You never hear the Geithner thingeling on
statistics like that when he is abroad explaining 'the US dollar
is safe'.
Oops: On the currency markets there is also front running so the
US$ is always 'strong enough'... You never hear the Geither thing
upon that.
Till updates.
(08 July 2009) Today a new
entry to the Nightmare files (about the incompetent IMF
predictions on global and local economical growth that came out
today).
And, with an amazing speed, in the Chinese
ethnic troubles all murderers simply get a death penalty. (Dutch
source file: Iedere moordenaar krijgt de doodstraf
)
Death penalty is regardless of ethnic background, so Uighur
or Han Chinese, all killers get the death penalty.
I have to say this brings some relief to my
mind, I wish the Chinese government luck & wisdom in keeping
ethnic troubles at a minimum.
Till updates.
(07 July 2009) Only a few links + my usual bla
bla talk. Here we go:
This morning Dutch business channel RTL7
reported that Bloomberg reported that mortgage insurer PMI Group
reported that US house prices would bottom out only in Q1 2011!
And that is supposed to be 'news'??? After my humble opinion for
at least a month or six I am telling US house prices bottom out at
the end of 2011.
(Bloomberg files this under Personal Finance, from this we can
conclude PMI sells mortgage insurance at the household level to
individual house owners.)
Check the stuff out at Bloomberg:
The Goldman Sucks source code theft takes a
new detail: The Goldman programmer is bailed out for 750 thousand
US bucks. What do you think of the bailout practices in the USA?
Is the law equal for the rich versus the poor?
When you walk out after a few days (meaning you can pay for your
bailout) the simple minded public thinks you are innocent, when
you cannot pay you stay in jail much longer. Beside this outside
of jail you can work on your defense much better compared to the
poor guy that stays in jail.
Make up your mind: Does the USA worship the rich yes or no?
Check the Goldman Sucks details in:
A few weeks ago I explained that a full blown
civil war inside China could lead easily to up to 50 million
deaths making it comparable to World War II in absolute death
toll.
A short time back there was some fighting in a factory resulting
in 2 dead Uighurs, after that a demonstration that started
peacefully ended in over 150 dead Uighurs (they are mostly Muslims
by the way).
And today the Han Chinese mobs tried to make good revenge but they
only got tear gassed.
Conclusion: The Chinese government is full throttle towards chaos.
Why kill Uighurs and only tear gas the friendly Han?
Bloomberg source:
Remember combatant enemy Dubya and his vice
pres Dick Cheney?
Cheney is the idiot that is famous for stating 'deficits' don't
matter and indeed now the USA is into a situation where one more
trillion of Federal borrowed or printed money indeed doesn't
matter at all.
I moved earth, heaven and hell to get the idiot Dubya reelected a
second term. It all panned out fine, may be the Almighty was on my
side or may be it was the other way around.
One more for the road: here is an old file saying the 'deficits
don't matter' crap from the Cheney crap:
In case you are completely bored with all
that old Michael Jackson stuff, why not enjoy some better music? I
could post hundreds of better music, but selected is something
from a guy I never heard from before, his (artist) name is Peter
Fox:
Till updates.
(06 July 2009) Wow, five items! Why not only
two? (Answer: I needed to offload some tabs in my browser.)
Item 1) Quants here quants there.
Item 2) FED senior economist: USA lurching towards debt explosion?
Item 3) Honorable judge: These bankers are guilty of bankslaughter.
Item 4) Paul Krugman: More stimulus needed, just trust me
because...
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Quants here quants
there.
What's a quant? I don't know exactly but it
is someone coming from a honorable study like Quantum Physics
working for the financial industry creating 'financial
innovation'.
You can also argue that quants build the
first atom bombs before that became a specialty in itself. More
general you can say quants come from a real academic study like
physics, math, chemical studies and later work for a bunch of
idiots with too much cash on their hands.
The optimist in Wilmott thinks that people realize these models don't work. But he's not really an optimist. "What I think is going to happen is that people will forget and we'll just keep going on the way we have been with nothing really changing," he says. Wilmott is encouraged by President Obama's proposals to tighten regulation of derivatives; he thinks it'll keep quants on a shorter leash. But he's also stunned by the lack of outrage over the financial mess. The violence that erupted at this year's G20 summit wasn't anywhere near what he thought it should've been. "Where the hell was everybody? If people aren't angry now, they'll never be."
Comment: Of course people are not angry, they
don't understand the troubles and to them it is like a curse of
nature. Their pensions might vaporize but like the sheep they are
they don't kill in return.
For example nobody has asked for the execution of Alan Greenspan
and or Jean Claude Trichet. The populace, or the sheeple, they
just do not understand...
The link above is quant stuff in a pure form,
stuff like high frequency trading and trying to get an advantage
on the nano second.
It might be yes or no some evil guy has
stolen computer source code from Goldman Sucks. The story might be
true, I don't care if it is or not.
All I know that I consider Goldman a bunch of suckers.
The story is a nice read, but what counts is
that up to 50% of all trades on the New York Stock Exchange are
automated trades. Welcome to the robot world; if you want to make
some money as a human trader you must understand the robots
because the robots don't understand fundamental analysis.
On the contrary; robot trading is constantly
used to prop up the USA stock markets leaving the rest of the
world constantly wondering why those markets go up up up at very
strange times on very bad news.
Item 2) FED senior
economist: USA lurching towards debt explosion?
The UK Telegraph has some simple article
about how the USA will be torn apart under her debt weight she
could easily suck in because of her reserve currency status.
Mr Congdon said the study illustrated the “horrifying” consequences for leading western economies of bailing out their banks and attempting to stimulate markets by cutting taxes and boosting public spending. He said the markets had failed to digest fully the scale of fiscal largesse and said “current gilt yields [public debt] are extraordinary low given the size of deficits”.
Comment: We observe exactly the same problem
as in the item above: The markets just don't understand and they
are too stupid to price US Federal debt at the right price.
Right now the USA Federal budget is about 50% borrowed money,
there is no theory that explains every Federal borrowed dollar now
will generate at least one dollar in the future.
But dumb idiots hold on to a dogma from many decades ago: USA
Federal bonds are a safe investment.
I can't help it; if they want to loose their
money it is fine by me.
Item 3) Honorable judge:
These bankers are guilty of bankslaughter.
Do bankers and Central bankers come away with
their crimes because we lack the lexicon? A guy named Paul Collier
argues that way and he is very convincing.
When I drive irresponsibly in traffic and a
busload of people die there are always prosecutors going for
manslaughter (no intend to kill but the irresponsible behavior was
so bad that it was logical people could die).
When I go out on the street to buy some milk
and vegetables and I meet an old enemy, we get into some argument
and a few seconds later one of us is dead. Again manslaughter is
the courthouse thing.
Yet when bankers and Central bankers blow up
the thing, there is no equivalent like bankslaughter.
Item 4) Paul Krugman: More
stimulus needed, just trust me because...
My vision on rewarding Nobel prizes for
economics is very simple:
This is only some incest clique shoving the
prize hin und her inside their incest clique.
It has nothing to do with building economical
theory that helps humanity as a whole, it mostly serves the USA
economy and if we wait another decade we can see who is more on
the right:
Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman or moi,
Reinko Venema.
What's the case?
Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman thinks the
present US economical stimulus package of $787 billion price tag
is inadequate to lift the country out of recession.
So Paul, as the fake economist you are, I
challenge you on the size of the 'stimulus needed'.
All you have to do is
craft a clear cut theory that explains every extra Federal
borrowed dollar today will create at least one extra dollar in tax
revenues in the future.
If you can do that Paul you deserve at least
10 more Nobel prizes!
I think the 'marginal tax return' on present
US Federal borrowing is negative (meaning it costs more than
future tax returns will give back).
It is well known Paul is bad at math and good
at speaking words, I don't buy your stuff Paul. Please give the
Quants what the Quants need:
A solid theory to back up your crap.
Item 5) The empty
item.
Empty empty empty, the empty item is always
there so you can fill it up for yourself.
Till updates.
(04 July 2009) The weather was lovely today
& North Korea (test) fired seven medium range missiles
(Bloomberg source).
Lets enjoy the weekend and the weather with a positive note:
After North Korea tested another nuclear bomb
some weeks ago, I wrote that there would be ramifications.
Ramifications in the sense of new branches in diplomatic /
political / military thinking & acting.
Yesterday the journo's from the local
business channel found a North Korean commercial for beer. They
said it was the first beer commercial ever in North Korea and
although it has nothing to do with military or political thinking,
you could classify this as some ramification.
From the last article an important quote is
placed, very often you see people doing difficult on the
television explaining more US Federal debt is a good thing. They
always forget to mention the so called 'quality of the deficit'.
Quote:
The U.S. government reports its accounts on a cash basis. That means it matches the cash that comes in the door against bills it must pay in that current year. This is how small businesses run their accounts.
Comment: Lately there was some talk about
2016 and that was important and so because Medicare outlays would
be larger compared to money received. Most people think there is
no problem because prior to 2016 there were decades of Medicare surpluses...
Little problem: These surpluses are gone and not inside the
official deficit, why do the so called 'analysts' always forget
that?
Till updates.
(30 June 2009) Two items:
Item 1) Ben Bernanke the new bubble blower in
chief?
Item 2) More on the fucking police here in Groningen.
Item 1) Ben Bernanke
the new bubble blower in chief?
Without offering any kind of proof; P/E
ratio's for the US stock market are about the same as they were on
the 2007 high.
A few weeks after the 2007 high I did a
second activation of the NightmareOnWallStreet, it took some time
but eventually the DOW was cut in half from 14000 to 7000.
You might think the USA folks have learned
their lessons on the P/E ratio's but this is not the case and we
wonder why.
To focus the brain, here is a screen shot of
market behavior that is so commonplace lately: without any news or
against all negative news the US stock markets only climb:
It only climbs without any reason; it is well
known that large parts of money like pension fund money is still
sitting on the sidelines. So where is all this new money coming
from?
Is it the US Federal Reserve with her zero
interest policy?
Having P/E ratio's like this, what other
party has the power of prop up the markets like this & it
makes you wonder: will they ever learn it over there in the USA?
Please remark that the FED interest rates
have to be defended on a daily basis; only when the FED is
overflooding the markets with 'enough liquidity' short term
interest rates can stay that low.
All in all the DOW Jones levels look like
another bubble so Ben Bernanke is doing exactly that what made
Alan Greenspan famous.
Don't get me wrong: I applaud this bubble. I
know that if the USA tries to get back to the interest rates a
healthy economy needs that in just a short timespan the entire
nation would go bankrupt.
So there is nothing new under the sun: bubble
bubble bubble & without the bubbles and the printing of money
the military hegemony will vaporize like an eskimo in the sahara.
Item 2) More on the fucking
police here in Groningen.
I have been thinking about the latest
fantasies of the local police as if I was some kind of drug
dealer, how they arrive at stuff like that is easy to understand:
The Dutch nation needs a Madrid size of
bombing, only after that the local police will stop her strange
ways of thinking.
I cannot organize stuff like that for myself;
without doubt my phone is tapped, email always read by persons of
limited brain capacity & so on & so on.
My dear local police: since the year 2001 you
are highly interested in me while I am not interested in you. I am
sorry that when the Muslims tried to kill me prior to the 911
attacks in America, I did not call for your help.
Don't you still get it? Prior to 09 Sept 2001
I already considered you a bunch of shitheads and now in 2009 (and
all the years in between) there is only more validation of that.
Don't you remember Theo van Gogh? Theo was
also very good in insulting Muslims, please remark Theo is dead
for years and I am still alive. Theo deserved his killing,
he thought that hanging out the clown would save him from what he
deserved.
Did I act like the clown Theo van Gogh?
Of course not, on the contrary I explained to
the thing known as 'international terrorism' what kind of attacks
are helpful and what not.
As a result (just an example) I explained I
had lack of insight about what would happen if terror strikes just
before elections. A few months later we had the Madrid bombings,
only 200 deaths and about a thousand wounded & or
handicapped.
Even on the 'doctors attack' in Great Brittany
I can tell you a nice story with a lot of deep knowledge in it.
How do the fuckheads of the local police
react?
After so many years now in 2009 they only
investigate if I am some kind of drug dealer...
I think I smell coffins...
Till updates.
(29 June 2009) Today I am in a good mood, yeah
yeah a very good mood. In a few months time it will be inevitable
I will pass the 'zero mark' meaning my net debt position will be
positive after two decades of having a net negative debt position.
You might argue that a positive debt position
(for Americans: more savings compared to debt) is 'very normal'
for a 40+ year old guy, but my enemies have large powers and since
2001 they have done their stinking best.
Just a few examples:
Year 2001: Police constantly tracking where I
am in the city, they did that because I was supposed to 'stalk
females'.
Year 2001: I am working in Germany, Dutch
military police is doing stuff like checking if I am in my hotel
room yes or no. Furthermore I had the impression like I am
followed everywhere, it was easy to measure: If you leave the high
speed Bundesbahn and drive to some village, criss cross the
village for no reason at all, return to the high speed Bundesbahn
& why this car constantly in your neck?
Lets skip a few years, not because the local
police stopped spreading weird rumors but because we had second
derivate stuff:
Year 2008: The child abuse case. This time I
was supposed to abuse my kids, at first I thought this was just
set up number 1007 of the local police. But after reading selected
parts of the 7 to 8 month investigation I could find no direct
link to the local police.
Rather likely it was a weird family member, the family member is
in relative close contact to the local police.
That is why I consider this a second derivate thing.
Last year I was only waiting: Without doubt
the shitheads from the local police would find 'something' for the
impending year 2009.
Year 2009: Last week two fucking police
officers rang my doorbell. It seemed that I, Reinko Venema, was
the subject of an investigation into selling drugs...
On the one hand you can argue that being a
child molester last year to being a potential drug seller this
year is some improvement.
On the other hand I smell coffins, not a few
but a lot of them.
If the local police does not clean up her
act, they are invited to smell the fresh coffins too in a relative
short time. I will only act if this is needed, yet for the time
being it is forbidden for
international terrorism to strike against Denmark because they
pick up NATO leadership and the Dutch cannot run away from their lousy
political leadership of NATO.
I think I smell coffins...
__________________________
After the above words it is important to link
the Goldman Sachs revenues. No difficult stuff on the 'Value at
risk' model banks use to prevent damage.
Just the good stuff, Goldman Sucks is
extremely good in sucking in 100+ million profits a day during the
present market conditions. They are good, I will not deny that!
In case you don't know what P&L is,
P&L is profits & loss. Good stuff:
Lets leave it with that, may be I am bragging
with future coffins in the Dutch landscape, but can you count on
that?
Till updates.
(25 June 2009) Two items only.
Item 1) US durable goods up?
Item 2) Two cops gave me a visit this week (mostly in Dutch).
Item 1) US durable goods
up?
Yesterdays big ticket news was the fact US
durable goods were surprisingly up. It was only some month on
month improvement, the year on year stuff says we might be into an
L-shaped recovery.
A few times, long before the DOW 7000 was
breached, I told you a few times I expected the DOW to go down to
7000 and flat after that.
At present times, now we approach the half
2009 mark, most long term economical data suggest more some
L-shape and not some V- shape. Others talk about W-shaped
stuff.
Anyway to make a long story short:
'Stabilizing' in these weeks/months only means the L-shape wins in
significance. While the fact that US stock markets are still far
too expensive is nicely reflected in a graph at Barry's hangout.
It looks at historical total market cap to
GDP ratio's; a rather cold shower for the green shooters I might
say...:
Item 2) Two cops gave me a
visit this week (mostly in Dutch).
Two days back I was doing supermacho things
like folding the laundry and hanging out the wet laundry to dry.
The doorbell rang and from above I looked out of the window:
Two fucking cops at my front door!
(The rest is in Dutch)
Dus ik kijk naar buiten en zie daar twee
coppers staan, er was geen peloton ME bij dus ik denk 'Die gasten
komen vast niet voor het zero-one project' dus maak ik maar
geluiden als 'Hee hallo'.
De coppers kijken omhoog pal tegen het
zonlicht in en geven aan behoefte te hebben aan het voeren van
dialoog. 'Als het u schikt' zeggen ze nog als ik boven sta maar
zodra ik de voordeur opengedaan heb is het van 'Moet dit nou op
straat?' en 'Mogen we even binnenkomen?'
Tja, daar moest ik even over nadenken want
mijn woonkamer is bezaaid met allerlei opengewerkte computers,
gereedschappen en materialen (ik ben een roer mechanisme aan het
bouwen). Bovendien moest ik nog stofzuigen, al met al nouwelijks
een omgeving om tot zinvolle dialoog met de Groninger Politie te
komen...
De ene agent was zelfs de officieële
wijkagent en die ander was wat vager; het leek op een leerling
maar was duidelijk z'n pukkels al lang kwijt. De wijkagent
probeert zich naar binnen te lullen met 'Moet dit nou op straat'
en hij projecteerd allerlei vriendelijke lichaamstaal.
Na wat heen en weer kletsen mogen de heren
dan toch naar binnen, het hoge woord komt er snel uit: Is er
sprake van drugshandel, is er niet veel aanloop naar deze woning
en hoe zit dat met Jacqueline D. en nog een persoon?
Ik spreek mijn verwondering uit over deze
lage beschuldigingen en ik adviseer de wijkagent om te
solliciteren bij het weekblad Privé. Want daar zijn ze ook heel
goed in het volgen van roddels, wie heeft deze roddel opgezet wil
ik weten?
Vreemd genoeg, hoewel mijn vraag toch heel duidelijk was, kreeg ik
een heel vaag antwoord van de wijkagent.
Toen wilde ik wat meer weten over Jacqueline
Drenth en ik wou weten waarom zij zo belangrijk was. Vreemd genoeg
was Mw. J. Drenth ineens 'totaal irrelevant'.
Om van de gelegenheid gebruik te maken en
omdat ik toch een drugs dealer was (in hun ogen dan) begon ik uit
te leggen dat de Nederlandse Staat ongeveer 350 jaar lang opium
verkocht in Indonesie. Dat de Nederlandse Staat vlak voor Wereld
Oorlog nummer 1 voor ongeveer 10% van haar total financiering
afhankelijk was van opium opbrengsten ging er nog wel in.
Maar toen ik begon over belasting zegels op
opium pakketjes (net als de tegenwoordige belasting zegels op
tabac), gaf de lichaamstaal van de agenten aan dat ze wel genoeg
gezien hadden.
Met net zoveel plezier als ze binnen kwamen
gingen de dienders weer weg.
Ik even later naar de dikke man verderop in
de straat: Wie is JD?
De dikke man wijst en alles is helder als
glas:
De coppers hebben de huisnummers verwisseld...
Tot opdatums.
Till updates.
(22 June 2009) Five items:
Item 1) Almost 5000 US slime dead in the war
on terror.
Item 2) Econbrowser: How to lose on a sure-fire bet.
Item 3) US workers loosing unemployment aid.
Item 4) US consumers saving like Hercules?
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) Almost 5000 US
slime dead in the war on terror.
Right now about 634 US military slime has
died in Afghanistan and 4316 slime in Iraq. Since 634 + 4316 =
4950 we are now about 1% of the 5000 target.
Compared to Vietnam, where about 60 thousand
US slime got killed, it's still peanuts for the US military. I
don't know how much Vietnamese died during those long lost years,
but as a percentage of the population it might be the same as Iraq
(around 4% of the entire population).
Non of the war objectives have been met; al
Qaida leaders still safe and because of the use of Iraqis killing
Iraqis the US military almost succeeded into civil war in Iraq.
The weapons of mass destruction are still only found in the hysterical
imagination of the US folks; strange to see that nation time in
and again thinking weird stuff.
From the war on drugs, Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction or house prices; only the USA will fight in a way that
makes the problems only worse. And if in the process a few hundred
of thousands die, you must never blame America because they never
did something wrong...
Luckily broken marriages, alcoholism, suicide
rates, homeless rates and so on are still on the rise for these
slimy people. It is a pity no sons and daughters of US Senators /
Congress folks are among these deaths; America recruits her shit
mostly among the trailer trash people (the lowest social
classes).
Item 2) Econbrowser: How to
lose on a sure-fire bet.
The most funny financial file from last week
was written by James Hamilton from Econbrowser dot com. It is
about credit default swaps, CDS is a way to insure yourself
against the default of some credit.
Only you might not name it 'insurance' because in that case
reserves are needed and it is well known what Americans think of
non productive money like reserves.
It appears from the WSJ account as if little Amherst Holdings of Austin, Texas was happy to sell the big guys like J.P. Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of America something like $130 million notional CDS on a $27 million credit event, used the proceeds to buy off and make good the underlying subprime loans, and pocketed $70 million or so for their troubles. The big guys, on the other hand, paid perhaps a hundred million and got back zip.
Said big guys, naturally, are screaming bloody murder, trying to bring in the lawyers to show that Amherst wasn't playing by the rules of the game.
Comment: The US judicial system works rather
simple: as long as something is not explicitly forbidden, it is
allowed. So those big banks are rather dumb to bring in lawyers
trying to show this wasn't played by the rules of the game because
there is nothing that obliges you to play by those rules.
It is weird to observe big banks react like this; isn't the non
regulation of free markets the highest good in the world?
Item 3) US workers loosing
unemployment aid.
Last week the green shooters had a new green
shoot: The number of unemployed US workers getting aid was
dropping for the first time in many months...
The green shoot smokers instantly understood
reality: The economy is recovering and so the number of
unemployment aid people decline. That is simple to understand.
Barry has a nice graphic explaining that a
nice 47% of unemployed folks leave the unemployment aid without
finding new work. Link:
Why the green shooters constantly talk that
strange and explain the financial & economical news in such
strange ways is easy to understand:
They don't know what they are talking
about.
Just like weapons of mass destruction, or
that weird statement that US house prices are only a reflection of
a strong US economy (Ben Bernanke), these guys just don't
understand reality.
Item 4) US consumers saving
like Hercules?
One of those green shoot smokers is a lady
named Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab.
She sees a recovery on the way and this chick is a chief
investment strategist!
Liz Ann thinks the US consumers have made a
Hercules effort in saving 5.7% of disposable income. What a lovely
dumb chick; the USA needs to save about 5% of the entire gross
domestic product and not a lousy 5% of consumer disposable income!
Dumb dumb dumb as only Americans can be.
Liz Ann had this to share, quote:
Even as the U.S. savings rate has risen from negative levels to 5.7%, household debt as a percent of disposable income has only fallen to 131% from 133% last September, she notes.
"The pace consumers are attempting to shore up their situation is unprecedented," but it's a long, long way to go before spending and income growth reach a "normal relationship" below the 100% mark, Sonders says.
Comment: This looks like shaky calculus at
best, suppose you have exactly 133% of your disposable income in
some forms of debt like credit card debt or car debt. At an
interest rate of 5% you need almost 7% of disposable income just
to stabilize your debt... I don't see a Hercules at work here,
much more likely the decline from 133% to 131% is more related to
folks defaulting on their debt.
Tech Ticker has a video with the chick, her
legs ain't bad (at least compared to her brains):
As usual this item is for using your own
brain, I know it will hurt but if you take some pain killers you
can actually use your own brain for yourself!
So will North Korea fire a missile against Hawaii
on the 4th of July and will Iran disintegrate towards civil
war?
Try to think for yourself and check in the
future if you were more right then wrong.
Good luck with it!
Till updates.
(15 June 2009) Sorry for not updating for so
long, but a lot of financial news is taken over by the green shoot
smokers who constantly ventilate their hallucinations. And I did
not like it to comment on so much accumulated stupidity every day.
But here is another update, lets go to the
items:
Item 1) IMF: US banks still need to write
down 1600 billion US$.
Item 2) Do you smuggle drugs or US Treasuries?
Item 3) An Israeli coyote promotes eating vegetables while keeping
the meat himself.
Item 4) Do you believe the USA would listen to international
regulators?
Item 5) The empty item.
Item 1) IMF: US banks
still need to write down 1600 billion US$.
Less then two weeks ago the IMF stated that
globally about 2.5 trillion US$ needs to be written down, about
1600 billion in the USA and 737 billion here in Europe.
So that is one side of the spectrum: 1600
billion to go...
On the other hand we have the US Obama
administration stating that if banks raised 89 billion fresh
capital they all have passed the stress test...
(Remember the Goldman Sucks boys? Constantly
telling everybody they never needed the 10 billion in TARP aid
but, ha ha ha, needed 5 billion in new stock offerings to pay back
5 billion.)
It has to be remarked that very often I do
not agree with the IMF; I think their view on the US housing
market is far too optimistic. US house prices will likely bottom
out at the end of 2011 after falling about 50% from their 2006
top. (Strangely enough the US stress test uses a 48% house price
decline, how they rhyme that with only 89 billion in fresh bank
capital is one of the mysteries of the USA.)
The views offered by the IMF & team Obama
are highly conflicting, ok ok the mark to market rule is no longer
with us so we will observe all kinds of funny accountancy gimmicks
to the tune of countless billions in 'true profits' but shave away
1600 billion with the mark to model rule?
You can judge for yourself who is in more the
right: the IMF or team Obama.
In the Italian/Swiss border town of Chiasso
the Italian police stopped two Japanese men and searched their
luggage. They did not find any drugs like heroin or green shoot
weeds, instead they found:
--249 US Treasury bond certificates - undeclared - with a value of $500m each
&
--10 Kennedy bonds at $1bn.
Only $134.5bn of US Treasuries & that is
2% of all outstanding US public debt (see for example this Federal
Reserve file, two before last column & scroll down).
The seized notes include 249 securities with a face value of $500 million each and 10 additional bonds with a value of more than $1 billion, the police force said on its Web site. Such high denominations would not have existed in 1934, the purported issue date of the notes, Mecarelli said. Moreover, the “Kennedy” classification of the bonds doesn’t appear to exist, he said.
Comment: A pity the story likely isn't true,
Kennedy bonds from 1934 are definitely a collectors item. So it is
actually not true that two Japanese men drove around with 2% of
all US public offered debt, but it makes you wonder:
What were these Japanese men thinking?
Item 3) An Israeli coyote
promotes eating vegetables while keeping the meat himself.
Yesterday on the television CNN was on and
the CNN reporters spoke of some 'important' speech to be done by
the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. The CNN journo's pretended
this was all very important because it was about 'peace' and a
'Palestine state'.
My interest was aroused because Netanyahu,
dumb & arrogant as he is, would propose exactly what the
former apartheid regime of South Africa would propose:
A Homeland for the Palestinians...
In case you don't know that detail of
history: The SA apartheid regime created a few homelands for the
niggers to live in. These homelands were actually inside South
Africa but they had all the stuff niggers liked: A homeland King
that fucked a whole lot of female niggers, a lot of corruption and
although I cannot proof it beer and booze for cheap of
course.
Netanyahu had it all figured out; a
demilitarized zone where Palestinians can live in peace. Netanyahu
had some talk about democracy and as usual forgot to mention that
Arab political parties are not allowed in the apartheid country
known as Israel.
Netanyahu had more things figured out: The
holocaust was a main driver in getting an Israeli state, but
according to Netanyahu: if there would have been a Jewish state,
the holocaust would not have happened! Netanyahu did not elaborate
on his superior knowledge: how exactly would a holocaust have been
prevented given the military equation of those years???
For me life is simple: Israel is just another
apartheid regime and for that you must not look at the Gaza strip
or the West Bank but simple stuff as found inside Israel. Just a
few details:
--Minimum wages, lots of Arabs work below the
minimum wage.
--Medical stuff, Jewish folks get the best, second hand stuff is
for non Jews.
--Prisons; do Israelis lock up pure Jews together with others?
--Medical treatment in prisons; get Jews a better treatment?
-- And so on and so on.
You only need 30 minutes and the Google thing
to get some answers, yet our political leaders in Europe and the
USA constantly support the Israeli apartheid regime.
Why this is I don't know, all it takes is
some Google searches and you can validate for yourself that Israel
is just another apartheid regime.
Why our leaders support this is something I
still don't understand.
And if you would do a truly 'democratic
thing' and hold a referendum in Israel and her neighbors about
Israel's right to exist, would Israel win this?
Or would the neighboring countries spit it out as the collection
of whining Jews they are?
Therefore I say monsieur N is keeping the meat to himself.
Item 4) Do you believe the
USA would listen to international regulators?
Lately there is talk about new international
regulators to prevent a new meltdown of the entire financial
system.
I never commented upon that because this talk
is mostly coming from our political leaders and as such has no
weight.
Look at Item 1) above: The IMF stating there
needs to be about 1600 billion more in write downs while in
practice the USA changes the mark to market rule & all
troubles are over and it's rulers come with idiot stuff like 89
billion in fresh capital will save our banks.
Therefore my proposal is to make US citizen
Peter Schiff the new international financial regulator. The next
video is from the past, but in the future a real international
regulator will be treated exactly like that.
I mean, I understood for myself back in the
spring of 2004 what could happen on the US housing market. Suppose
in the autumn of 2005 some international regulator would inform
the USA of dangers to housing bubbles.
How would the USA folks react?
More or less exactly as they reacted towards
Peter (it's a Daily Show vid via Barry):
At the end of the table you find that average
weekly income = $613.67 while average hour salary equals $18.54.
That means the average US working week is only 33 hours. Of course
there are many part timers but there are also plenty working two
jobs and still cannot afford healthcare...
Only 33 hours a week, that ain't much.
End of the 15 June update.
(04 June 2009) Two items centered around US
stupidity and arrogance.
Item 1) Green shoot: unemployment benefits
fall.
Item 2) Hillary has guts: China tell the truth about Tiananmen
square!
Item 1) Green shoot:
unemployment benefits fall.
The USA green shooters had good news today:
For the first time in 20 weeks the total
number of people getting unemployment benefits fell!
Upon inspection it is only 15 thousand and
the numbers are 'seasonally corrected' without telling what
seasonal correction model is used: If it's a multiplicative
version you can get huge downshooting corrections in this time of
the season.
It is very easy to understand how someone
falls out of unemployment benefits:
1) This person has found a job.
2) This person has come to the end of the benefits.
At Yahoo finance they never get tired of
posting dumb stuff, here is how they portray it:
As a matter of fact, total numbers in
unemployment benefits is much more a race between those who get
unemployed and those that come to the end of benefits without
finding a job. And no longer a race between those who loose their
job and find a new one...
For every job opportunity there are five or
more job seekers, check it out at Barry's hangout:
Item 2) Hillary has guts:
China tell the truth about Tiananmen square!
Two decades back we had the (student)
uprising in China, it is well known and well documented and
official death toll numbers are between 200 and 300.
Very likely real death toll was far higher
and runs into a couple of thousand. You can argue the Chinese
authorities were too hard handed but with all the knowledge I have
accumulated I too would have ordered for a crackdown.
May be you have heard of the breakdown of
Yugoslavia; a very violent process that killed in far bigger
numbers compared to the Chinese uprising.
And that is the problem of the one party regime in China: if from
one day to the other you allow multiple parties and it all goes
wrong, deathtoll could lie between 10 to 50 million people. And
that is a whole lot of violence, comparable to World War II or so.
So I can understand that the Chinese
authorities are a bit cautious on this detail, on the other hand
one party systems just like king & emperor systems never
survive in the long run.
What does the American Secretary of foreign
affairs makes of this?
She urged the regime to "examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal".
Comment: That is a very big mouth from a
power slut from the USA. In Iraq we had so called 'excess death
toll' of about one million directly related to US war policies of
using Iraqis to kill Iraqis. We see zero point zero 'learning
& healing' in the USA because of that.
Oops, now I remember, weren't the economical sanctions against
Iraq not also in the order of one million extra deaths? Just a
detail: Iraqis could not buy water pumps because in theory you
could also pump biochemical war stuff with that; how many died
from the lack of simple water pumps & how many times Tiananmen
square fits in that hole?
Did we observe any 'learning & healing'
on that?
No we don't, this time evil Iranians are supposed to nuke Israel
away in a very short future...
After my humble opinion power slut Hillary
Clinton should shot up her stupid mouth and better tell the truth
about secret prisons around the world, tell exactly what happened
there so both the Muslims & the USA could start a 'learning
& healing' curve.
Till updates.
(03 June 2009) Just a few links.
To be honest I do not understand all the
'positive news' from lately; housing was the biggest asset class
in the USA, it will shrink by 50% or at least 10 trillion US$ and
all these fools think it is a matter of months before the damage
is undone...
I just don't get it; one of your legs is
amputated, you see green shoots at the end of your stump and that
is 'good news'.
Home sales appear likely to head upward this summer, potentially to levels not seen since the stock market collapsed last autumn, but prices are expected to keep falling well into next year. Layoffs, which are causing foreclosures to soar, coupled with rising mortgage rates could dampen any real estate recovery.
Comment: Beside the fact that sold volumes
rise going into the Summer for lets say the last 20 centuries, you
can also explain this rise in volume via the rise in
foreclosures...
__________________________
In the US healthcare fun I found a strange
statistic that was unknown to me.
Source link:
The report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers says that health care costs -- now about 18 percent of the gross domestic product -- will rise to 34 percent in 30 years if left unchecked, wreaking havoc on the federal deficit, businesses and working Americans.
Comment: 18% of the GDP? Congratulations! But
what's the problem? As long as the nurses and doctors have money
in their pockets they can put food on the family and as usual the
economy will boom in no time (anyway that is how Dubya, Cheney
& the Paulson clown always looked at economical stuff).
"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.
Comment: Now the US money press is in full
swing, why does the USA bother to calm China on this detail? If
the Chinese sell AAA rated Treasuries, the Federal Reserve can
always 'mop it up'.
The Americans themselves started printing, when one says 'A' one
also has to say 'B'.
__________________________
Not all board members of the US Federal
Reserve are of 'vomit eating quality', just look at the ancient
words as spoken by Philadelphia Fed's Charles Plosser.
The Federal Reserve should not be involved in financing toxic assets that date from the bubble era, Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed, has told the Financial Times.
“I think it is a bridge too far,” said Mr Plosser, arguing that such proposed Fed loans would expose the US central bank to credit risk and tie up a sizable chunk of its balance sheet in long- term assets that would be hard to price and liquidate.
Comment: This Plosser guy smoked too much
green shoots, that's obvious. Now the money printing machine is
on, all credit risks are gone monsieur Plosser! Why this 19
century talk when it is now century number 21?
Just print money, make sure it does not
reach ordinary people & live happily ever
after...
Till updates.
(01 June 2009) Two items:
Item 1) The General Motors bankruptcy is a
nice laboratory study for the future.
Item 2) The Federal Reserve does not understand her stuff once
more.
Item 1) The General
Motors bankruptcy is a nice laboratory study for the future.
Today it emerged that GM will go for the
Chapter 11 thing, this is of interest because the whole USA has
similar stuff.
As far as I know the details, GM has about 90
billion in assets and 160 billion in liabilities. The actual
numbers are not important, all it matters is that liabilities
outstrip all assets, just like the future of the entire
USA.
For every GM worker today, there are 2 or 3
workers in retirement. The GM bankruptcy will affect those elderly
very much, via the bankruptcy GM will no longer need to pay for
these non productive people.
In the past GM never ever set aside the
savings needed for the future payments for retirement, the workers
never complained about that. As a whole the USA has done the same;
there simply is no money to give the future elderly a reasonable
standard of living. All that is left is the money printing
press...
All in all the GM retirement folks simply
deserve their fate; that is simply the price to pay for your
stupid 'American dream' so sell your car, sell your house and
please go live on the streets where you folks belong.
On the street is where you belong, on the
street you can dream the American dream...
Good luck with it!
Item 2) The Federal Reserve
does not understand her stuff once more.
The US Federal Reserve is well known for
standing outside reality when it counts for real. Remember the
Greenspan conundrum? Long term interest rates as set by the
markets dived below the short term stuff the idiot Greenspan
controlled, yet nobody sounded the alarm.
Remember that famous video where Alan
Greenspan told how much money American households 'saved' by using
adjustable rate mortgages?
Remember that under Alan's rule the short interest stuff was
raised to 5.25% while at that point in time debt levels in the USA
were already so high, holding on to a historical 5% level would
only lead to bankruptcy of the USA?
Yesterday I found a nice Reuters file, here
is the source link:
To understand how deep the FED does not
understand elementary future developments you must read this
quote:
Do rising U.S. Treasury yields and a steepening yield curve suggest an economic recovery is more certain, meaning less need for safe haven government bonds and a healthy demand for credit? If so, there might be less need for the Fed to expand the money supply by buying more U.S. Treasuries.
Or does the steepening yield curve mean investors are worried about the deterioration in the U.S. fiscal outlook, or the potential for a collapse in the U.S. dollar as the Fed floods the world with newly minted currency as part of its quantitative easing program. This might be an argument to augment to step up asset purchases.
Another possibility is that China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt, has decided to refocus its portfolio by leaning more heavily on shorter-term maturities.
Comment: It is hard to comment upon so much
accumulated stupidity, if the small shifts in the China portfolio
are seen as a serious cause of the steepening I think I cannot
comment on such idiot stuff.
Quoting on:
"I'm in wait-and-see mode," said one Fed official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We laid out the asset purchase plan and we're following it. That is going to have some affect on various interest rates, but together with a hundred other things. So I don't think we should be chasing a long-term interest rate," the official said.
Comment: It is well known what 'asset buying
programs' are; the FED buys garbage against far too high prices
(otherwise it does 'not work'). Just like in all those borrowing
programs where collateral is accepted at say 41% of face value but
the 100% of face value is still on the books of the banks.
As a rule of thumb you can say: If the FED buys it or borrows you
money against it, it has to be garbage.
And now these idiots from the FED are buying AAA rated US
Treasuries, doesn't this imply Treasuries are garbage?
Did not the US Federal Reserve themselves decide to buy 1250
billion in mortgage backed shit and on top of that 300 billion in
Treasuries?
Seldom you see weird stuff like that!
Till updates.
(31 May 2009) There was lots of good economical
news out last week, lets split it up along tactical and strategy
lines. Why split it up like that?
Just for no reason at all, why should anything always have a
reason?
Tactical news:
US housing volumes sold news: The fraction of
foreclosure sellings is 45%, of course this is the statistic
without new houses. Lets hope when this fraction climbs above 50%
the 'greens shooters' have found a new green shoot.
When over 50% of second hand houses are
forced sellings, this has to be a green shoot. Let me
explain:
When it's above 50% the 'room for
improvement' is far bigger compared to further deteriation to
100%. When 65% is a forced sell, don't forget that 65 > 35 and
as such we have more 'good news' from the USA.
Both tactical and long term
strategic:
Now it is 100% clear the USA cannot finance
her recovery via savings or taxes, the money printing press is the
main vehicle. How much money will they print?
Nice quote from this Bloomberg source:
“The Fed has to step up the purchases just to keep rates from rising further,” McBride said. “As much buying as the Fed is doing this year of Treasuries and mortgage-backed debt almost exactly equates to the amount of new Treasury debt being dumped onto the market.”
Comment: We are talking about 1250 billion in
mortgage backed shit and another 300 billion in US Federal debt.
As far as my figures for Europe are correct; 80 billion for weird
stuff and zero government bonds...
Given the content of the quote we can also wonder if it might make
a difference:
1) FED buys 1250 billion MBS & 300
billion Federal debt, or
2) FED buys all Federal debt produced this year in the land of the
debt huggers.
I don't think it is much of a difference,
constantly the real levels of debt are not talked about and as
such the actions of the FED are more or less insignificant.
Both tactical and long term
strategic:
Another Bloomberg file (source)
and another quote:
This time it’s different because the Congressional Budget Office projects Obama’s spending plan will expand the deficit this year to about four times the previous record, and cause a $1.38 trillion shortfall in fiscal 2010. The U.S. will need to raise $3.25 trillion this year to finance its objectives, up from less than $1 trillion in 2008, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of 16 primary dealers of U.S. government securities that are obligated to bid at Treasury auctions.
“The deficit and funding the deficit has become front and center,” said Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research LLC in Chicago. “The Fed is going to have to walk a fine line here and has to continue with a policy of printing money to buy Treasuries while at the same time convince the market that this isn’t going to end in tears with fits of inflation.”
Comment: For the short term inflation is not
much of a problem, given the US population size of about 300
million inhabitants the 1.38 trillion shortfall is only about 4600
US$ for every inhabitant. (And that only to keep the government
working.)
If every US citizen would receive 4600 US$ from the FED, consumer
inflation would be rampant.
And a possible inflation on the US Treasury markets? I don't see
it happening; all idiots that still hold 30 year long Treasuries
and still work with a 'value in = value out' model only need a
clean hair cut.
And strategic:
On USAToday they threw all debt from the past
combined with future obligations into a big mixer. Source file:
I don't think it is wise to portray it this
way, better is to differentiate between debt contracts that
already exists (about 3.5 time the USA gross domestic product) and
the future obligations.
It is well known that at an annual interest
rate of 5%, oops 5% of 350 still equals 17.5% of GDP needed to
service interest on the debt only.
Conclusion: Authorities try to lower the rates for a long
longtime.
Funny quote from the 'mix it all up'
article:
Bottom line: The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion.
The numbers measure what's needed today — set aside in a lump sum, earning interest — to pay benefits that won't be covered by future taxes.
Comment: It is just my particular opinion but
fools picking up long term US Federal debt in these times are only
fools. Why doesn't the FED try a new program? Something like the
GBMP progam? (GBMP = Gimmie Back My Profits.)
Till updates.
(27 May 2009) Two items:
Item 1) The problem with Moody's and the Aaa
rating of US government debt.
Item 2) Bloomberg and the openness of information.
Item 1) The problem
with Moody's and the Aaa rating of US government debt.
The problem with rating companies like
Moody's, S&P or Fitch is they are all American companies.
There is no reliable international rating agency, there are only
profit driven rating companies.
The conduct of these companies in the present
crisis is also well known; in fact if you were a large enough
institution you could buy all the AAA ratings you needed on your
products. (An internal email once said "If they structure it
with cows, we can rate it".)
Far more worrisome is the fact the rating companies need computer
software to 'rate' the stuff involved, this means the rating
employees cannot give a rating using only paper, pencil and a hand
held calculator.
To put it simple: Just like bankers selling options or using the
'value at risk' models, these employees simply have no clue about
what they are doing.
Last week S&P put the United Kingdom on a
'negative watch list', that gave some turmoil in the markets.
Strangely enough people started wondering if what goes for the UK
will also go for the USA...
Ok ok, the UK runs a 12 to 13% deficit of
GDP, have no explanation why this borrowed money will 'do the
trick' (bring in more future taxes and give GDP growth that will
last a long time) and has no savings of any significance.
In short: With or without S&P any idiot
can see this cannot have the highest rating.
Same goes for the USA; 50% of all Federal spending is borrowed and
printed money and there are zero economists who can explain if all
the borrowed money will be paid back (or represent similar kinds
of wealth).
In the past short sighted idiots at Moody's
defended the USA as follows:
The USA has tremendous taxing
capabilities, if they raise taxes only 1% of GDP in just a decade
you look at over one trillion in extra taxes.
The Moody's defense is nonsense in many ways;
just try to raise taxes 1% of GDP and see what happens... Beside
this the rating companies only comment on 'public traded debt' and
neglect all internal debt in the US government; that is why the
rating companies are utterly irrelevant. Just as in the past when
they rubber stamped AAA on every product that came along, their
analysis of the US financial situation is a joke too.
Lets look at some nonsense Moody's came up
with today (from Bloomberg), source:
And one of those quotes that usually go
without proof:
The U.S. rating is supported by “a diverse and resilient economy, strong government institutions, high per-capita income, and a central position in the global economy,” New York-based Moody’s said in a statement. At the same time, the firm warned that any “reassessment” of long-term growth prospects could put pressure on the rating.
Today’s announcement may help soothe concern among investors who sold U.S. assets in the aftermath of Standard & Poor’s cutting Britain’s rating outlook, spurring concern about a similar fate for the U.S. The Obama administration has committed to reining in the budget deficit once a recovery is under way.
Comment: This is just stupid talk, just
looking at what is always table number one in the Federal Reserve
Z1 release (debt growth by sector, source)
simply says: GDP, profit or tax growth is always a tiny part of
debt growth.
One thing is clear with today's statement from Moody's: Just like
the rest in the US financial sector they don't have a clue.
Item 2) Bloomberg and the openness
of information.
Many months ago Bloomberg started a judicial
case against the US Federal Reserve; they wanted more insight in
where all that tax payer money went in all those programs to
support the financials.
After some time the FED gave in and now we
have monthly updates like the last one:
Doesn't this mean the FED gives only 41 cents
for every dollar collateral pledged?
So the courthouse stuff from Bloomberg did
pay off; how could we ever know the FDE pays only 41 cents for
every pledged collateral dollar?
Now how about splitting up the statistics
along printed money yes or no?
There are persistent rumors that the FED buys
more and more US government debt directly at the auctions of that
debt. I think that is of interest because Central Banks buying
government debt directly when it's auctioned is one of the most
pure forms of printing money.
You have to read a bit between the lines, but
even in dumb headed Yahoo files there is nothing found to the
contrary:
Here in Europe it is pretty simple: the
European Central Bank is not allowed to buy government debt so a
failed auction is a failed auction as the UK folks might have
observed. But those USA folks, you simply cannot trust them; you
don't know how much government debt goes to the FED. You just
don't know...
Till updates.
(25 May 2009) Finally another green shoot, it's
a perfect one: a green shoot about the relation between
unemployment and rising foreclosures in the USA.
The article does not quantify it but as a
rule of thumb you can say about one third in unemployment numbers
'relates' to foreclosures, quote:
Over the period when BLS was reporting 500k plus job losses a month, from November’08 to February ‘09, the numbers of distressed properties “increased more than 473,000, exceeding 1.5 million.” Total loan value = more than $224 billion. (Sources: The Times, First American CoreLogic).
A case of shaky statistics was found
yesterday at Bloomberg, it is one of those slap happy stories
where dumb journo's that know nothing of statistics 'proof' the
situation get 'better'. Quote:
Combined sales of new and existing homes likely advanced to a 5.02 million annual rate from a 4.93 million pace in March, other figures may show.
Comment: This is stupid in many ways, in the
first place the US housing market has strong seasonal components
where prices & volumes usually climb until deep in the Summer.
In the second place, it is only 1% more and as such the reported
number falls within all confidence intervals around the five
million number.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&
sid=aaLCktFTN9XE&refer=home
Nuke
stuff.
North Korea tested today another nuke,
according to the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation
the Richter scale numbers were (source):
Russia, which called the test a threat to regional security, said the blast was about equal in power to the U.S. atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in World War Two, or about 20 times larger than the North's one kiloton test in 2006.
But the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation contested that, saying the magnitude of the latest test was "slightly higher than in 2006, measuring 4.52 on the Richter scale, while in 2006 it was 4.1."
Comment: If the Vienna based organization is
correct with the Richter numbers, in that case since 4.52 - 4.1 =
0.42 the second blast has 10^0.42 = 2.6 more shaking amplitude and
if this wikipedia
file is correct you need 2.6^1.5 = 4.3 more energy released in
the second nuke.
On the other hand the Russians are in the right if the next info
is correct (source):
"The magnitude of the quake, measured at 4.5 on the Richter Scale, was more powerful than the past one which was measured at 3.6," Yoo Yong-Gyu, a senior researcher at the Korea Meteorological Administration, told AFP.
Comment: This looks more like the Russian
version of the numbers and if I dig in my own memory I am not sure
but the number '3.6' rings a bell. So lets stick to the Russian
projection of reality for the time being.
Political ramifications.
I don't know what to think of this, may be
the words of a Chinese analyst came most close to the truth: May
be after all they want to become a nuclear power.
Last year we observed the destruction of a
cooling tower and now this.
The only conclusion can be that indeed North
Korea tries to become a nuclear power, there is no evidence found
for other explanations of their behavior.
So there will be some political ramifications
needed, going on as in the past is not reasonable any
longer.
(21 May 2009) Financial markets were just so
boring all of the last 7 days, I did not feel commenting on all
idiot things going round.
You know one of the things standing between a
real economical recovery and all that fake stuff from lately is
the fact there is still much too much money into the system. In
the USA alone rumors say about 4 trillion $ is sitting on the
sidelines and most of that is still borrowed money, these are not
savings looking for long term investments, it's mostly borrowed
stuff going for the fast buck.
All that money needs to get destroyed &
what is better then new fresh investment opportunities in US
banks? Just like Goldman Sucks did; stating they never needed the
10 billion in TARP bailout money but ha ha ha they offered 5
billion in new stock to pay it back... Of course the sucker
investors coughed up the five billion...
As long as there are sucker investors out who
are willing to invest in magic I think it is best to let run God's
water over God's acres.
By the way, not from God but from the FED,
today the expected came out (Yahoo AP source),
quote:
Under the Fed's new projections, the economy will shrink this year between 1.3 and 2 percent. The old forecast said the economy could contract between 0.5 and 1.3 percent.
The unemployment rate may rise as high as 9.6 percent, higher than the old forecast of 8.8 percent. The jobless rate bolted to 8.9 percent in April, the highest in a quarter-century.
Comment: On unemployment I still can't say
much because I still don't know if folks without government
unemployment aid still count in the official unemployment figures.
But GDP estimations are a joke, now about half of the Federal 3.6
trillion budget is borrowed printed money, most
prudent folks don't believe the US GDP statistics.
__________________________
In another development Barry posted some very
stupid graphs about the US Federal deficits or surpluses. In the
graphs all borrowing from the US government to herself is missing;
all US Federal Funds, let it be the FDIC bank insurance fund or
the social security funds are so called 'pay as you go' funds.
Trillions in social security surplus taxes are spend
already, this is not found back in the graphs as Barry
posts it (it has to be remarked that Barry's post is around
comparing Democrats to Republicans, but even then it is a stupid
post):
You can argue that housing starts are a
lagging statistic in the present economical environment, but ha ha
ha why were they a leading statistic in the past?
My
dear reader, now the band of brothers known as the US
Lehman Brothers investment bank is going for the Chapter
11 thing we can conclude that the band of brothers are
broke.
This
is good news and there are some ripples on the 62,000
billion US$ so called 'credit default swaps' market. CDS
is an instrument to pump risk through the entire system,
it maximizes system failure.
But
I don't want to talk about small markets like a 62
trillion market. I have a habit of going after the real
stuff and you can find the real stuff at the Swiss Basel
based Bank for International Settlements. (Source)
That
bank has real stuff to tell, for example in Dec 2007 we
only have 596,004 billion US$ of total derivative
contracts. This is no problem; the USA gross domestic
product is 14 trillion US$ a year and when this 600
trillion joke of the USA banks goes wrong they can
always borrow more money from China, India or
Vietnam.
Here
is the link to the Basel stuff & I hope you have
enough to think about this 600 trillion joke.
In
case you want to know what OTC derivates are, OTC means
'Over The Counter' and thus there is no registration and
no regulation. It is just 600 trillion in free market
stuff, please trust the US banks and go to sleep
safely.
Dated
16 Sept 2008
__________________________
-Food
for thought 2:
And it makes me wonder, it makes me wonder so much...
If
at the end of the second quarter of this year, the total
US financial sector that is about 20% of the US economy,
has 16507.5 billion of debt on herself;
Why
does nobody sound the alarm?
In
the last decade this debt has always expanded
exponentially by 9% a year.
As a comparison, the US gross domestic product has grown
just over 3% in the last decades after we left the
golden standard and hugged fiat money.
Don't
forget 16.5 trillion is far above the US GDP that is
around 14 trillion US$ a year.
This
is elementary math: you can explain it to 16 year old
high school pupils that the US financial sector is
doomed.
But
if 16 year olds could understand this, why did the US
government not understand this? And most of all; why did
the Federal Reserve not understand this?
It
makes me wonder; why full throttle drive towards the big
cliffs?
And here is nice pdf
file for my fellow scientists stating we had
hundreds of thousands so called 'excess death toll'
inside Iraq compared to a non invasion
model. (The so called Lancet file that says that on
average we likely have 650 thousand excess civil death
toll.)
____________________
This is funny: on one of those
lefty antiwar US websites I found a very small Java
Script and from now on I can check my own website upon
the number of dead US slime inside Iraq. Here's the
counter:
____________________
Some old
math I wrote about 13 years ago, it is very simple
to understand: you can differentiate and integrate all
geometrical objects. And when you triangulate a
landscape or a movie scene properly you can later in a
computer change the position of the camera. Of course
you need a new file format because the goody good mpg
format won't work.
This might be of future interest for police or stuff
like that (you can change the camera viewpoint to that
of the victims or that of the criminals. Of course this
is not a miracle; missing information can only be
repaired at a certain level but anyway... The math is
there and it is waiting to be used!
(Ok you also need geometrical integration but that's a
cakewalk, some geometric projection theory, lots of self
repairing codes and very very difficult: a good camera
device. But if these conditions are met you can later
change the camera viewpoint...)
____________________
(17 Oct 2008) This morning I finished a very simple and non
technical article about statistical testing of poisons in food. It
is so horrible non technical that even political leaders can
understand it's content; only seldom I have sunken so low...
A very old (25 years
old) booklet transformed to the pdf format about home
made shaped explosives. I don't think it is of very much
use to the Iraqis but it is fun reading. They even used
a Martini glass to penetrate 3 inches of steel! And all
home made... Have fun reading it (it has lousy
graphics).
____________________
I found a very nice
booklet named 'Explosives
from common materials', it is field study from the
Americans. It covers a lot:
How to make improvised detonators, high explosives,
primary and secondary explosives. It is very good only
the procedure for making alcohol is not handy in Iraq;
if the Iraqis need pure alcohol they should use the wine
method for making pre distillation alcohol and use sugar,
some kilo's fruit (about 10% of total batch produced),
yeast and a lot of water.
____________________
Sayings from famous
and unknown people that shed light on their insights and
their emotional daily running system:
Phrase nr one (from
Dubya or the present lame duck president of the USA):
"The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war!"
--The first Presidential debate
Phrase
nr two, also from Dubya but I have to pump it up from my
memory so there might be some little faults in it (it
was some weeks after the 911 attacks on the USA):
The
enemy is so evil that most people in the USA do not know
what they do why they do!
Phrase
nr three from the former USA secretary of defense Donald
Rumsfeld (if my memory is correct he spoke these words
in the week from 16 to 21 October 2001, at that point in
time we were on the height of the anthrax scares):
And
it makes you wonder; How does he do it? And we would
like to ask this person to come on over to our side and
together fight the war on terror.
Phrase
nr four is from me myself & I:
To
understand your own 'logical thinking' you must know
that logical thinking is only the first derivate of
emotion. That is why all attempts towards artificial
intelligence have failed: computers do not have emotion
build in but we humans, like all other animals,
do.
The above mentioned three phrases of my enemies only
expose their emotional system, lets destroy that
system...
Phrase nr five
is from US celebrity Donald Trump. A few weeks before
this the famous Lancet
report was published calculating Iraqi civil death
toll at 650 thousand (this with a relatively large but
acceptable standard deviation):
For
myself I use 400 thousand killed.
Phrase nr six is from
CNN's Larry King (CNN is received in 200 countries so
therefore the CNN management thinks it's wise that Larry
King can parade every day one or more American
celebrities). When King was asked why he did not use the
internet he responded:
There
are a billion things on the internet.
Phrase nr seven is one
more from the former US secretary of defense. After a
few years in the war on terror he was asked what it all
boiled down to. He said:
Can we
kill the terrorists in a faster rate than the
massandra's spit them out?
Phrase nr eight is
from Osama bin Laden. The phrase is very worthwhile
mentioning because the US CIA folks were in the past
very satisfied with 'Just a few weapon deliveries and we
lured the Russians into Afghanistan'.
When
America needed us to fight their proxy war against
Russia they supported us. The moment the Russians left
Afghanistan we were irrelevant.
Phrase nr nine is from
US four star general Peter Pace, he made it during a
memorial speech on 11 Sept 2006 (exactly five years
after the 9/11 attacks from 2001).
At that point in time total US military death toll
already stood above the number of civilians killed on
9/11/2001.
Right
now the total amount of killed US military members is
approaching the civil death toll from nine September
2001.
Phrase nr 10 is again
from me myself & I. It is around the rebuilding of
the organization after the military campaign in
Afghanistan.
Make
sure to imitate the way the German army was organized
after world war one; That is make sure that every member
can function properly until up three hierarchical layers
higher. If you do that you can grow with an enormous
speed in the future when this is needed.
Phrase nr eleven is
also from me myself & I. It is to proof that I can
be stupid too. I do not know when I wrote it but it was
a long time ago.
I asked the Iraqis the next:
Can
you hold on one more year? After that things will get
better, I promise.
You just don't imagine
how much I have regretted those words, after that the US
military came with bonuses of up to 70 thousand dollars
for enlisting / reenlisting and how could I have been so
stupid as to not have foreseen this?
I mean the Americans run their country on the greenback
& why was I outside reality? Why?
Phrase number twelve
is from a peace loving female neighbor of mine, her name
is Geertruida.
We
people we can speak, so we should not fight war but
speak with each other until our differences are solved.
Of course I had to
remark: Because we have speech we are much better in
making war compared to other animal species.
Phrase nr thirteen is
from the present al Qaida leader in Iraq. I mention it
because I think it was a very important detail, it was
made in his first statement after he took over from
Zarqawi.
We
need help from scientists, let it be in the field of
communications, chemistry, medics, biologicals or
whatever what. You can live your dream and kill the
Americans on a large scale inside their bases. You can
fulfill your scientific dreams.
Phrase nr fourteen is
from CNN's war whore Christiana Armanpour. Why do I call
a whore where in fact she is a respected senior
correspondent?
That is because she understands the difference between a
'commodity driven war' and one that is not driven by
that.
In the entire Iraqi war no CNN reporter has emphasized
that Iraq is very much 'commodity driven' (read stealing
the oil) but when Tony Blair resigns she says:
He
wanted military assistance in Bosnia although there are
no commodities over there.
(Or words of similar
phrasing, I do not recall her exact words but they
boiled down to the above.)
____________________
Not all my hobbies evolve around
war, death and destruction, or financial markets. No, I
also like to cook food and stuff. There will not be many
recipes but here is the index
to some food I made, it is just a small fraction of
what I cook. A very small fraction but the goal is to
come to a feast meal for the Iraqis and Afghanis. So
it likely will take a few more years...
