first

OK, sounds like the good Dr. is in his summer re-runs.

why, celebrate, of course!

Can somebody/anybody find a link or more information about JPM Chase withdrawing their own money from Madoff four months prior to the Ponzi scheme being unearthed??? (which sped up the ponzi scheme’s unraveling)Apart from the multiple trading/reporting violations (not reporting the fraud to the SEC, FINRA, etc…) by taking their own money out and not their client’s money, they failed in their fiduciary responsibility to act in their client’s best interest.Apparently, JPM Chase did this with insider knowledge that they gained from taking over Bear Stearns… (JPM Chase was the cash custodian for Madoff. When they took over Bear Stearns, they gained access to the trading side of Madoff’s operation (which cleared through Bear Stearns) JPM Chase was able to see that not only was the cash side empty, but the broker side was not capable of operating either, and did not have the ability to make the trades they were making nor did they gel with the “profits”.)I’ve been on vacation for the past couple of weeks and missed this story and haven’t seen it anywhere???? …and I’m kinda shocked I don’t see anything about it here???If true, this is potentially the biggest insider trading scheme ever done!!! ….and there should be people lining the streets right now! Heads should roll! If Madoff created the largest Ponzi scheme, I’m sure Madoff’s cash custodial bank pulling their own funds (with inside information) would clearly put this at the top of the: “worst cases of insider trading” list.All the best,Miss AmericaHide replies Reply to this comment By MA on 2009-08-24 11:35:03Not difficult to believe, but likely supressed and will partially surface in the future, well after the fact, as to continue to avoid indictment.Welcome back – it was lovely that you were able to take several of vacation.Reply to this comment By HangemHigh on 2009-08-24 12:24:08Hey MA,Feeling much better after 4 years. But No celebrations.Reply to this comment By Guest on 2009-08-24 13:04:32 The upshot here: after buying Bear Stearns in March of ’08 (where Madoff had a long trading relationship), JP Morgan (nyse: JPM) execs smelled a rat and pulled all their funds from Madoff accounts. However, they allegedly failed to tell any of their clients to pull their funds, and these were clients who had invested with Madoff at JPM’s recommendation. Not to mention that they didn’t contact the SEC to report their suspicions. That’s disgusting behavior. Now, several clients are suing.http://dailybail.com/home/tales-from-the-banking-cesspool-madoff-the-unethical-jpmorga.htmlReply to this comment By Guest on 2009-08-24 13:11:39Hey MA … this is a great story! You need to follow up this one, and try to get all the details out. Is this what it takes today for investors to be protected – insider information on cash flows and trading operations?!!PeteCAReply to this comment By PeteCA on 2009-08-24 13:39:09Hide replies Reply to this comment By repost on 2009-08-24 14:14:47Just more fodder for the argument that Bear Stearns (et al) should have been left to follow their natural course of demise.Reply to this comment By SimpleISBest on 2009-08-24 15:06:53Congratulations, MA. I think you just broke the story.Reply to this comment By Guest on 2009-08-24 15:37:53Based on the fact that Martha Stewart went to jail for a “trivial by comparrison” offense… My thoughts are that Dimon and many of the other cronies at the top could/should be looking at lifetimes in prison if there is any truth to this.This seems to me, a bit hard to cover up and/or gloss over.My hopes are that this allegation is being heavily investigated… but if it is true, I wonder if anyone would ever know. (because even though it would be hard to cover up, it might be costlier not to cover it up)…maybe that’s why we don’t see this story breaking on every website? It’s being squashed?Miss AmericaHide replies Reply to this comment By MA on 2009-08-24 15:45:55Precisely MA. BTW were you vacationing in Switzerland by chance mate?Reply to this comment By Guest on 2009-08-24 15:52:22Get Max Keiser on it!!Reply to this comment By Guest on 2009-08-24 16:47:40

Nice find dude. Thanks for sharing.

Try this oneProbe shines spotlight on pair of JPMorgan accountshttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cba1452-86cd-11de-9e8e-00144feabdc0.html

Thank you Mr. Repost. If there is yet another thread, I hope you will continue reposting until the truth, whether it be for or against JPM, emerges.

Americans: Serfs ruled by oligarchs.http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5034.shtml.By Paul Craig Roberts

New York Times is reporting the President Obama will re-appoint Dr. Bernanke as Chairman of the Fed.SWK

First they ridiculed Roubini and he is proven to be right, just a little late. Now they deify him after he missed the bottom and kept seeing a return to the lows that never occurred. Now he’s seeing a recovery that is threatened by food and energy prices. He uses repetitive phrases like anemic recovery, brown weeds, and the train has left the station and people hang on his every word. Soon he’ll be on the Fox News circuit with Gerald Celente. He favored the actions of the Fed and Treasury and even criticised them for being not strong enough. Then he tells us that the actions of the Fed are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Why did he advocate those actions in the first place if the consequences are what he is now telling us? Since this blog is made up of some of the best minds I’ve encountered on the blogesphere, I wonder why there are very few posts critical of Professor Roubini, now that he has been proven wrong so often. Do you feel disloyal? Are you so bonded to the man that you can’t see the reality of what he is expounding? I am very disappointed in the brainpower I have come to appreciate on this blog. Just because you may be convinced that banksters run this country and most of the media is feeding us false information, is no reason to accept what Roubini is saying without holding his Dr. Scholl’s to the fire once in a while.

The criticisms and outright lies emanating from the MSM against Zero Hedge show the penetration of ZH into the mainstream’s territory. When you get a lion backed into a cave, which ZH has done, he fights, and he fights dirty. He lies and cheats and he defames, and he casts aspersions a la the New York Post. It means Zero Hedge is hurting them, and hurting them badly. ZH issued this rebuttal:Zero Hedge’s Op-Ed To The New York Times Submitted by Marla Singer on 08/23/2009I sent this Op-Ed proposal to the New York Times on Friday. Perhaps they will print it. If so, I will donate the proceeds (don’t they pay you $450?) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Zerohedge.com is a finance-focused weblog bringing together nearly 40 anonymous contributors dedicated to providing the public with a deeper, more detailed discourse on all things finance. After less than ten months since our first post, we’re among the top online publications nationwide in terms of readers, eclipsing other properties with several years of history, A-list contributors, and the backing of the country’s largest, mainstream media firms. Like many publications before us, not least the Federalist Papers, we encourage our contributors to use pen names. Part of our rationale in adopting a publication-wide preference for anonymity (or, technically, pseudonymity) for our contributors and staff is to avoid making “the story” about the messengers rather than the message. We believe content should stand on its own merits; if it cannot, neither a sterling reputation on the part of the author nor dazzling penmanship will manage to prop it up. Likewise no amount of nefarious author history should, in isolation, tear down well-written, fact-based discussion and analysis. An intelligent and skeptical audience should not be dazzled by several layers of foundation, whether on a swimsuit model or a sow.On Thursday, following weeks of criticism of our anonymity on CNBC and elsewhere, a reporter from the New York Post confronted our public relations representative over the alleged identity of one of our contributors. As a matter of policy, Zero Hedge does not comment on the identity of contributors or staff, but over the course of a 30 minute conversation with the reporter, something interesting emerged: the reporter in question was so befuddled by this policy that she barely knew what to say. She had, quite literally, no idea how to write a story that wasn’t primarily about personalities. Her attempt to bribe our public relations representative with favorable coverage for an exclusive is an example of what is wrong with financial reporting today. When reporting egos flatter (or threaten) other egos to pull facts, or garner the access required to secure a six-figure advance for their upcoming tell-all book, does anyone really believe we can expect an objective retelling of the facts worthy of the sacred, constitutionally-protected trust we as citizens have given the Fourth Estate? Have the press forgotten that this is, in fact, a trust, and not a quitclaim deed? Do they not realize that they are the Estate’s trustees, and not its property owners?Now, more than ever, anonymity is critical to the Republic. This should surprise no one. It has been a critical part of speech in this country since before its founding. Without the courageous and then-anonymous writings of, e.g., Thomas Paine or the authors of The Federalist Papers, our nation would be a very different place today. Though we cannot confirm or deny that Thomas Paine or any of the founding fathers are Zero Hedge contributors today, we do believe we understand something of their motivation for using pen names.Early on in Zero Hedge’s history the view surfaced that, to bring up circulation, we should dumb down our content and post more biographical detail to bolster our credibility. Thankfully, we decided against that. The results, in terms of readership, and despite the absence of “credentials” as they are traditionally understood, speak for themselves. This is but one reason that today more than ever, we think it is time to end the cult of personality in financial reporting. It is no accident that Harry Markopoulos (the accountant whose repeated attempts to expose Bernie Madoff to anyone who would listen were as often ignored) sought to avoid the limelight.In 1995, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commissions: “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority…. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the bill of rights, and of the first amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society.” Given the financial events of the last twelve months, we think it clear that this must be the end of the status quo for financial regulation in the United States. We are also keenly aware that a number of extremely well-resourced, established players have little incentive in seeing any change at all. As we live in an age where posting on a blog can get you fired years later after a casual, lunch-hour Google search by a Human Resources representative, has there ever been a more important time for anonymous speech in financial reporting? We think not.We revel in an educated, skeptical audience that takes us to task for every fact, assumption, and bit of analysis we write. We think this keeps the focus where it belongs, away from the personalities and egos that muddy the water of skeptical inquiry. Believe us, doubt us, argue with us, then decide where the best analysis is being generated: from reporters at brand-name media outlets, without a lifetime of expertise on the subjects on which they write and whose allegiances lie as much as with the sources they need to keep happy as with the readers they purportedly serve, or with those insiders who by shedding the burden of identification, are free to expose the abuses, absurdities, and abscesses of both those in power and those who report on them.”Marla Singer,” Zero Hedgehttp://www.zerohedge.com/article/zero-hedges-op-ed-new-york-times

An increasing majority of equity market volume has been comprised of just five financial stocks — Citi, AIG, CIT, Fannie, and Freddie. On Friday August 21, these five stocks accounted for roughly 30% of overall market volume. This is quite remarkable.http://www.zerohedge.com/article/five-financial-stocks-dominating-market-volume

I feel the same as this blogger who wrote on Zero Hedge today: What happened to this United States of America where we used to have good jobs, wages, and home ownership was for all people with a 15-year mortgage ? I’m an older person and I am upset. My children do not understand why they aren’t doing well, why they cannot find jobs in DAYTON, OHIO. My Mom doesn’t understand why she can’t earn any interest on her little savings account in the bank the way she did in years past & why does the bank charge her fees instead of paying her interest on her savings. I just feel like crying. No matter how hard I try, life doesn’t seem to be working anymore the way “it used to be”. Please, someone respond to a novice who is trying to understand economics. Did it start with NAFTA & the outsourcing of good jobs to cheaper wage countries so that WALL ST. could make more profits ? Sincerely……………..http://www.zerohedge.com/article/negative-equity-not-factor-re-defaults#commentsAs you can see, Obama and the central bankers neither intend to give Dayton, Ohio, any relief nor allow it any exits. Obama and Bernanke have targeted you–you who are either voting against them or you who have the money. The congressional staffers are sitting around 24/7 figuring out how to get money from you, not money for you.IMO, America, at the core, is like a volcano exploding. There are thousands of flowing wrinkles of injustice and criminality and greed and beyond. I am hearing and reading about them every day. The bankers have kept America on the edge and people are livid.I agree with Bob Chapman. Things are not going well, according to the people who were in Greece, i.e., the Bilderbergers. The central bankers are trying to pull this thing back and stop it, he said. But it’s way beyond their ability to stop the destruction, economically and financially, not only in the U.S. but in the world. They’re going to have to live with it. If it doesn’t work out, the public is going to ask who did this to them, and take their wallets and put them in jail.In short, all is not well in Camelot. They’re creating a depression on Main Street as they pump out fiat to pay off their derivatives, and we get to pay interest on it while the elites who created the mess get to buy up everything in the U.S., and we get to live in a depression.And the “banker in chief” as Bloomberg calls Obama, pats Bernanke on the back and sends him forth for another round.

We are learning the rules of game… Aways remember that we are OUTSIDE “the circle”… We cannot see inside the box… We can just use scientific methods to take conclusions… We are making miracle with the few information we have…

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-careInteresting overview of American health care: present status, history and causesSome excerpts:Quote:Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy….I’m a businessman, and in no sense a health-care expert. But the persistence of bad industry practices—from long lines at the doctor’s office to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of preventable deaths—seems beyond all normal logic, and must have an underlying cause. There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed….The housing bubble offers some important lessons for health-care policy. The claim that something—whether housing or health care—is an undersupplied social good is commonly used to justify government intervention, and policy makers have long striven to make housing more affordable. But by making housing investments eligible for special tax benefits and subsidized borrowing rates, the government has stimulated not only the construction of more houses but also the willingness of people to borrow and spend more on houses than they otherwise would have. The result is now tragically clear….Comprehensive health insurance is such an ingrained element of our thinking, we forget that its rise to dominance is relatively recent. Modern group health insurance was introduced in 1929, and employer-based insurance began to blossom during World War II, when wage freezes prompted employers to expand other benefits as a way of attracting workers. Still, as late as 1954, only a minority of Americans had health insurance. That’s when Congress passed a law making employer contributions to employee health plans tax-deductible without making the resulting benefits taxable to employees. This seemingly minor tax benefit not only encouraged the spread of catastrophic insurance, but had the accidental effect of making employer-funded health insurance the most affordable option (after taxes) for financing pretty much any type of health care. There was nothing natural or inevitable about the way our system developed: employer-based, comprehensive insurance crowded out alternative methods of paying for health-care expenses only because of a poorly considered tax benefit passed half a century ago….Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no? Is this really a big problem for our health-care system? Well, for every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves….Moral hazard has fostered an accidental collusion between providers benefiting from higher costs and patients who don’t fully bear them. In this environment, trying to control costs is awfully tough. When Medicare cut reimbursement rates in 2005 on chemotherapy and anemia drugs, for instance, it saved almost 20 percent of the previously billed costs. But Medicare’s total cancer-treatment costs actually rose almost immediately. As The New York Times reported, some physicians believed their colleagues simply performed more treatments, particularly higher-profit ones. Want further evidence of moral hazard? The average insured American and the average uninsured American spend very similar amounts of their own money on health care each year—$654 and $583, respectively. But they spend wildly different amounts of other people’s money—$3,809 and $1,103, respectively. Sometimes the uninsured do not get highly beneficial treatments because they cannot afford them at today’s prices—something any reform must address. But likewise, insured patients often get only marginally beneficial (or even outright unnecessary) care at mind-boggling cost. If it’s true that the insurance system leads us to focus on only our direct share of costs—rather than the total cost to society—it’s not surprising that insured families and uninsured ones would make similar decisions as to how much of their own money to spend on care, but very different decisions on the total amount to consume….In 2007, employer-based health insurance cost, on average, more than $12,000 per family, up 78 percent since 2001. I’ve run several companies and company divisions of various sizes over the course of my career, so I can confidently tell you that raises (and even entry-level hiring) are tightly limited by rising health-care costs. You may think your employer is paying for your health care, but in fact your company’s share of the insurance premium comes out of your potential wage increase. Where else could it come from? Let’s say you’re a 22-year-old single employee at my company today, starting out at a $30,000 annual salary. Let’s assume you’ll get married in six years, support two children for 20 years, retire at 65, and die at 80. Now let’s make a crazy assumption: insurance premiums, Medicare taxes and premiums, and out-of-pocket costs will grow no faster than your earnings—say, 3 percent a year. By the end of your working days, your annual salary will be up to $107,000. And over your lifetime, you and your employer together will have paid $1.77 million for your family’s health care. $1.77 million! And that’s only after assuming the taming of costs! In recent years, health-care costs have actually grown 2 to 3 percent faster than the economy. If that continues, your 22-year-old self is looking at an additional $2 million or so in expenses over your lifetime—roughly $4 million in total….Whatever their histories, nearly all developed countries are now struggling with rapidly rising health-care costs, including those with single-payer systems. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits….Health care is an exceptionally heavily regulated industry. Health-insurance companies are regulated by states, which limits interstate competition. And many of the materials, machines, and even software programs used by health-care facilities must be licensed by state or federal authorities, or approved for use by Medicare; these requirements form large barriers to entry for both new facilities and new vendors that could equip and supply them. Many health-care regulations are justified as safety precautions. But many also result from attempts to redress the distortions that our system of financing health care has created. And whatever their purpose, almost all of these regulations can be shaped over time by the powerful institutions that dominate the health-care landscape, and that are often looking to protect themselves from competition. Take the ongoing battle between large integrated hospitals and specialty clinics (for cardiac surgery, orthopedics, maternity, etc.). The economic threat posed by these facilities is well illustrated by a recent battle in Loma Linda, California. When a group of doctors proposed a 28-bed private specialty facility, the local hospitals protested to the city council that it was unnecessary, and launched a publicity campaign to try to block it; the council backed the facility anyway. So the nonprofit Loma Linda University Medical Center simply bought the new facility for $80 million in 2008. Traditional hospitals got Congress to include an 18-month moratorium on new specialty hospitals in the 2003 Medicare law, and a second six-month ban in 2005….Consider the oft-quoted “statistic” that emergency-room care is the most expensive form of treatment. Has anyone who believes this ever actually been to an emergency room? My sister is an emergency-medicine physician; unlike most other specialists, ER docs usually work on scheduled shifts and are paid fixed salaries that place them in the lower ranks of physician compensation. The doctors and other workers are hardly underemployed: typically, ERs are unbelievably crowded. They have access to the facilities and equipment of the entire hospital, but require very few dedicated resources of their own. They benefit from the group buying power of the entire institution. No expensive art decorates the walls, and the waiting rooms resemble train-station waiting areas. So what exactly makes an ER more expensive than other forms of treatment? Perhaps it’s the accounting. Since charity care, which is often performed in the ER, is one justification for hospitals’ protected place in law and regulation, it’s in hospitals’ interest to shift costs from overhead and other parts of the hospital to the ER, so that the costs of charity care—the public service that hospitals are providing—will appear to be high. Hospitals certainly lose money on their ERs; after all, many of their customers pay nothing. But to argue that ERs are costly compared with other treatment options, hospitals need to claim expenses well beyond the marginal (or incremental) cost of serving ER patients. In a recent IRS survey of almost 500 nonprofit hospitals, nearly 60 percent reported providing charity care equal to less than 5 percent of their total revenue, and about 20 percent reported providing less than 2 percent. Analyzing data from the American Hospital Directory, The Wall Street Journal found that the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems made a combined “net income” (that is, profit) of $4.27 billion in 2006, nearly eight times their profits five years earlier….Here’s a wonderful example of price opacity. Advocates for the uninsured complain that hospitals charge uninsured patients, on average, 2.5 times the amount charged to insured patients. Hospitals defend themselves by contending that they earn from uninsured patients only 25 percent of the amount they do from insured ones. Both statements appear to be true!…Ten days after my father’s death, the hospital sent my mother a copy of the bill for his five-week stay: $636,687.75. He was charged $11,590 per night for his ICU room; $7,407 per night for a semiprivate room before he was moved to the ICU; $145,432 for drugs; $41,696 for respiratory services. Even the most casual effort to compare these prices to marginal costs or to the costs of off-the-shelf components demonstrates the absurdity of these numbers, but why should my mother care? Her share of the bill was only $992; the balance, undoubtedly at some huge discount, was paid by Medicare.http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11429

I have some experience fighting organized crime… The best strategy is make the cells fight one each other by just say the truth in the correct timing… Its like chess… They are all the time cheating one each other…

And the cells are not friends… They compete one each other and cheat all the time one each other… They steal one each other…

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve must make records about emergency lending to financial institutions public within five days because it failed to convince a judge the documents should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska rejected the central bank’s argument that the records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions. The collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression,” according to the lawsuit that led to yesterday’s ruling.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aMO_r2xLw7e8

Many bloggers (ZH for one) and posters on this site (MM CA) have pointed out how various figures related to the economy are being manipulated to show a rosy picture.I’d love to know if Dr. Roubini uses statistics handed out by the govt. or discounts them in some way?How is it possible to trust results of an analysis grounded on fake statistics? What does all this mean for economics itself?

Much of recorded history demonstrates that when faced with this sort of dilemma, the politicos have almost always gone with inflation in the hopes that the general increase in prices (debasing of the purchasing power of whatever en vogue as a store of value) will prove less of a risk to them. They would rather face seething masses of gainfully employed but largely harmless people who are desperately running on the rat-wheel to keep up with the rising costs of their basic necessities rather than being confronted by an army of underemployed, resentful, and truly dangerous people who at last have nowhere else but the politicos to turn their anger.I think we already know which way things are going to go, and it is starting to show up in the inflation figures on the horizon.

Advertising Alert:Apologies for I have been fishing er, herehttp://www.angling-malaysia.comAsk for my old Curator pal Andy (forgive him but he is Irish)And for some health, try my friend Marion: marion.lind@yahoo.comhttp://www.balungplantation.comAs Asia have no social umbrella, people have to innovate and work.Oh, has anything happened lately? Nothing, eh.Ho hummileage will vary

PJBYou called for $ collapse by end of july. Now august is almost gone. What say you?

Actually, a day for a national strike, or maybe a boycott, is a great idea. But I believe that Americans are too afraid of loosing their precious job to stay out of work for a day, or would have too many excuses to hit the stores even at a moment of national solidarity. Many of us are too pudgy to make sacrifices. And the rest are too afraid to risk anything. The opposition would claim it is a socialist movement and scare everyone with their cheap rhetoric. Sorry to say, the “ruling class” has molded the average American into a soft bit of milk toast. Sad but true.So if you want to have this national day, you lead the organization and see if you can get some interest. Do you have a blog where folks can read about it and pass the word along?

I for one do not agree that the best policy was to bail-out/bail-in. My suggestion on how to proceed was the following quotes below. So instead of flushing out the system of all the toxic waste, including the criminal banksters, politicans and media who should be in jail for their crimes against humanity – we have empowered them, enriched them further – but to what end? A commodity driven holocaust? Hyperinflation? Hyperstagflation? It is “to what end” that Roubini now begins to wonder about. It is all just another social experiment headed towards an unknown end.My moral compass immediately informed me to say that this is going to all be about, “pay me now or pay me later.” I believe that this path of “paying later” that has been chosen will be horrible. But since it is happening it seems it was meant to be – a form of self-inflicted chastisement if you like.Perhaps in the time of immense suffering that is coming into our world man will bend the knee once again and find that higher power so clearly missing in all this excess. Suffering has always been the path to greater wholeness. Thus it seems we should not “resist evil” too strongly… Let it have its way now that it has been unleashed. It’s just – why “double down” – already life is hard enough without adding to the misery index with obviously immoral policies of bail-in/bail-out in an attempt to correct a previous immoral policy. Get ready for a JOB experience – that fellow in the Old Testament who lost everything and sat on a dungheap covered in boils.

A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is always the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base, — and that is the one base thing in the universe, — to receive favors and render none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. Compensation (1841), Emerson, §33.

Further,

Bubble, bubble, the Empire’s in troubleBubble, bubble, the Empire’s in troubleSo we’ll pass a bill….a magic pill andPrint more fiat cash on the double!Sleight of hand throughout the landThe Money Master’s stock in trade.They’ll cure our ills with dollar billsMore than all the grains of sand“Buy and hold”, “We’re oversold!” the traders will avow.“The Dow will rise…it would not be wiseTo pull your wager out right now.”So they lobby the shills on Capitol Hill to backTheir Giant Ponzi Scheme.While the bankers insist…the pols assistIn funding a Socialist’s wet dream.Do the voters protest? Is there civil unrest?“Not while there’s distractions galore!The media is there to avert the electorate’s stare,And if not, we’ll start a war.”“Buy on the dips!” The Kudlow’s quip“This market is bound to rise.”And the Keynesian’s unite in the dead of the nightTo give Krugman the Nobel Prize!And now we float upon this bulbous boatThat distorts everything we seeIn futile hope that we don’t interlopeWith pointy-edged reality.For when our denial bubble pops,Our lifestyle’s will dropIt will suddenly become clearThat all the wealth they stole through stealthWas never really here.©2008 Jim Valeri; See comments in Governments got religion after peering into the systemic meltdown abyss

Funny you say this……because I was just thinking about my “Evaporflation” and “Condenflation” theories again.The basic premise of both were that price discovery is not possible due to both the under and over stating of the economic data that is used to calculate both.I still think the 2 terms should be added to the worldwide economic vernacular, as they are based on basic science with application to finance. Sure, I’d love to coin the term, but more so, I’d like to accurately state our current economic status. (rather then say cockamamie things like: “we are experiencing StagDeReFlation Lite with a side of Hyper StagInflation”)Let’s just call it what it is.Un-price-able!An “allowable” deviation of error can still be worked into traditional economic theory, but I believe that we have seen an unprecedented under/over calculation based on years of under/over stating that has been further compounded by YEARS of compounding inaccuracies.The problem is, traditional economists are “box thinkers” that don’t seem to take this multiplier effect into such consideration where as they need to throw out their old book on economics 101.If you’re interested, I wrote much more on this some time ago:http://www.rgemonitor.com/globalmacro-monitor/256056/evaporflationAll the best,Miss America

Roubini has a lot of connections to unpublished data. He also uses Global eceonomic data to determine what will happen in the US. What the the US publishes is only what they want us to see. They cannot totally lie and manipulate so that is why we get some tibits of data, even if it is bad.

We are screwed. Bernanke again? Nothing is changing. Average Joe American, in addtion to having NO JOBS, is more disconnected then ever from GOVT and the PTB. Tens of Millions of Americans are hurting and all anyone cares about is Fucking Wall Street. We are all going to get what we deserve… The PTB is winning… I have 810 credit score, yet every single one of my CC cards (7 total) have been raised to between 18-29% and I have no balances. AMEX sent me three letters this week… They are setting up every Avwerage Joe American to where you play by thier rules. So much for all the Credit card protections Congress passed… When are all the idiot Average Joes going to wake up?

I don’t know from where Ben (The Great Bubblemaster) pulls out his ideas, but they undoubtly lack a pleasant atoma.

Influenza A very convenient to avoid popular “street” protests. Or not?In this widespread rotten and corrupt system I wouldnt be surprised to eventually learn that even Influenza A could have been “programmed”.No police, only virus.

Look For An “X” Shaped Economic RecoveryBy Peter MoriciWill the economic recovery be enduring-V shaped? Collapse after a short time-W shaped? For the middle class, it may be none at all-an X.By conventional wisdom, the housing bubble, credit crisis and collapse in consumer spending caused the recession.With home sales rising, new cars flying off lots, and Wall Street profits soaring, analysts see an imminent recovery, but the economy is running on steroids.About 90 percent of existing home sales are distress sales-foreclosures and homeowners in financial difficulties. New home purchases are juiced by the $8000 first-time buyer subsidy that expires December 1.Summer car sales were pumped by cash for clunkers.Regional banks are failing under bad commercial loans, and mortgage-backed securities purchased from Wall Street financial houses. In part, Wall Street posts big profits by shifting its debauchery onto smaller brethren, and the FDIC may run out of cash to guarantee regional banks’ deposits.Clueless behavior by big players is frightening. Automakers are boosting production, assuming car sales will continue at their torrid summer pace.Wall Street is planning big year-end bonuses instead of shoring up capital for a possible second dip in the recession. The backup may be a Broadway lyricist to pen “Bail ‘em out again Ben.”Consumers, recognizing danger, stay away from the malls and seize what dollars they have.The economy will be lifted by businesses rebuilding depleted inventories and replacing outdated computers and federal stimulus dollars. Those simply will not deliver annual GDP growth greater than 2.5 percent or many new jobs.The stock market will rally with modest growth, because U.S. multinationals produce so much in Asia where growth is robust.To Wall Street, the recovery will appear V-shaped, but for ordinary workers, it will be an X.Unemployment will reach 10 percent, and stay there until President Obama stops obsessing about redistributing wealth by nationalizing car companies and health care and raising taxes on energy and the wealthy.The country needs pro-growth policies-fixing the huge trade deficit and the banks.Dollars spent on imports that do not return to purchase exports can’t be spent on American products. That saps demand for American-made products, keeps factories and offices shuttered, and idles workers.The trade deficit is mostly oil and Chinese consumer goods. Export more, import less, or the economy flops.Without bank credit, businesses can’t expand, entrepreneurs can’t create, and workers don’t work.Obama dodges the toughest aspects of the banking morass. Compensation structures built on the too big to fail doctrine permit Wall Street to take huge risks, shift losses onto smaller investors and the government, and suffer too few consequences for their calamities. Until those change, Wall Street bankers will be too busy chasing rainbows to adequately reestablish lines of credit to regional banks essential for business expansion.Buy only as much as you sell, reasonable pay for honest work, and let the reckless fail.

left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. tell Average Joe soemthing and they will beleive it, even if its two different versions…

All that will be left is Walmart. The rich and PTB will have thier own stores, way of getting thier high end stuff and toys. the rest of us, Walmart.F..k Walmart…. they should be broken up. If not, goodbye Best Buy, goodbye Target, goodbye Sears, Goodbye Macys and most others too…The game has changedAug 20th 2009 | NEW YORKFrom The Economist print editionThe recession has spelt disaster for most brands of packaged goods, but not allGetty ImagesJUST last year, when Alan Lafley, the boss at the time of Procter & Gamble (P&G) released his book “The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation”, readers flocked to understand the business strategy of the world’s largest consumer-goods firm, then worshipped as a paragon of strong management and profitability. Now, however, the company is confronting a game-changer that Mr Lafley had not foreseen: a global economic downturn.Earlier this month P&G reported profits of $2.5 billion, down 18% in the most recent quarter from a year earlier. Sales of its products—which include such brands as Bounty paper towels and Tide detergent—were down 11%. Analysts worry that it might take years for the company to restore its profits to their former levels.For most packaged-goods firms, recent earnings reports were grim. Unilever, the world’s third-largest consumer-goods firm by sales, announced this month that profits in the second quarter were down 17% from a year ago. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Scott paper towels, Sara Lee, a manufacturer of frozen foods, and Colgate-Palmolive, with its eponymous toothpaste and soap, all saw revenues drop in the past quarter. Firms that specialise in food, including Nestlé, Kraft and Kellogg, are holding up better than those that sell products for cleaning and grooming, but only because consumers are preparing more meals at home.Consumer goods were once believed to be as recession-proof as any industry can be. Shoppers might not be able to afford Rolex watches and champagne during a downturn, the theory ran, but everyone still needs staples such as soap and toilet paper. Yet sales have fallen in this downturn, thanks largely to growing competition from stores’ own brands, or “private labels”. Private-label goods tend to cost about a quarter less than branded ones, and so appeal to penny-pinching consumers. Some shoppers are also forgoing altogether items that they used to consider staples, such as air fresheners or special detergents for sensitive skin. The big brands’ recent, ill-timed price hikes of as much as a fifth in response to rising commodity prices have accelerated the trend.Retailers have also been giving more shelf space to their own products, on which they earn better margins, further squeezing the big brands by making them less visible. Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, a marketing expert at the University of North Carolina, estimates that the share of private-label goods is now 20% at Wal-Mart and 35% at Kroger, two huge American retailers.In the past year private-label sales have grown by around 9% in America and 5% in Europe, gaining market share from branded goods in many categories. Middle-market brands, measured by price or sales, are particularly vulnerable to competition from private labels; even in countries like Germany, where private labels now account for almost 40% of sales, the best-selling and most expensive brands have not lost much ground (see chart).Many analysts believe that the flight to private labels will outlast the downturn. Ali Dibadj of Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, estimates that about half the people who have recently switched to private labels will never go back. The quality of private-label goods has improved, making it harder for consumers to discern any difference between a store’s brand and a more expensive rival, particularly for commodities such as paper towels or milk.Yet not all consumer-goods firms have succumbed to the onslaught of the private label. Reckitt Benckiser, a medium-sized British firm, reported a 14% increase in profits in the second quarter compared with the previous year, and an 8% increase in sales. The firm, which is the world’s biggest manufacturer of household cleaning supplies, such as Lysol disinfectants and Spray ’n Wash stain remover, has raised its sales and profit targets for the year, whereas P&G has reduced them and Unilever has scrapped them altogether. This was not just a lucky quarter. While Reckitt’s net revenue grew by 9% between 2005 and 2008, P&G’s was up only 5% and Unilever’s 6%.Reckitt puts its success down to management, marketing and the positioning of its brands. Its hierarchy is surprisingly shallow: there are only one or two managers between the chief executive and his regional marketing officers. This allows the firm to make decisions more quickly than its competitors, says Bart Becht, Reckitt’s boss. The firm can turn ideas into goods on shelves in around nine months, at least three months faster than its rivals.Mr Becht insists that consumers can still be persuaded to pay for more expensive, branded goods. Reckitt increased its spending on marketing by 25% last year, when most of its competitors were cutting back. The firm takes pains to cater to all budgets. It sells four versions of its Finish dishwashing detergent, for example, at different prices. (The latest and most expensive version of Finish, called “Finish Quantum”, costs more than twice as much as the most basic variety.) Reckitt is still adding extra frills to its goods, and pricing them accordingly. It recently released a new air freshener with a motion sensor to tell it when to spray its perfume, which is a fifth more expensive than the humbler sort, for example. Mr Becht says consumers will not pay for minor alterations, such as new flavours and scents, but they will for more significant innovations. “We’ve proven that in a downturn, consumers don’t walk away from better products,” he says.This is a very different strategy from that of Reckitt’s rivals, which, after years of sprucing up their products and pushing up their prices, are scrambling to introduce cheaper options. P&G, which has one of the most high-end brand portfolios of any of the packaged-goods firms, has tried to attract customers by launching “basic” versions of its popular brands. It recently released Tide Basic, which costs around a fifth less than its more upmarket cousin. But taking an existing brand downmarket in this way can be dangerous, analysts say. Consumers are unlikely to revert to the more expensive version if they are offered a similar product for less.Unilever, P&G and others are also cutting their prices and increasing sizes to compete with private labels—although that can obviously cut into profits. Targeted advertising, which directly compares the quality of a branded product with a private-label rival, is also a short-term solution for consumer-goods companies, which are keen to remind their customers why paying more is a good idea.The worst of the pressure on consumer-goods firms should dissipate when the recession ends. But if the pessimists are correct, and a good number of Western consumers stick to the frugal habits they have learned in recent months, branded products will continue to suffer. One way to revive growth will be to place a greater emphasis on emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, where private labels are unlikely to take hold in the near term, since retailers are smaller and do not have the knowledge or resources to produce their own brands. In that regard Unilever, which already gets over half its revenue from emerging markets, is better positioned than P&G.Another strategy would be to sidestep retailers completely and sell directly to consumers through the internet. P&G’s new boss, Bob McDonald, has alluded to this sort of plan. It could be exactly the type of “game-changer” his company desperately needs.

I am a little surprised that Ben Bernanke decided to continue as chairman of the Fed. It’s not at all surprising that the Obama administration and the Wall St. banks would want him to continue … but it does raise eyebrows that he would say Yes. Afterall, he could probably walk away from his current position and go back to academia with a fair amount of grandeur and the possibility of a top-notch chair position somewhere. So I think mr bernanke should have taken a page from the playbook of Al Greenspan – it’s best to retire while some people in the world are still giving you kudos.The problem with sticking around at the Fed … is that sooner or later the consequences of your (disastrous) financial policies always catch up with you. And that’s what I think will happen to Ben Bernanke – he will get to experience the long-term consequences of releasing enormous amounts of liquidity into the western banking system.Ben Bernanke and Lance Armstrong both have something in common … they should have called it quits while they were ahead of the pack. PeteCA

I hope the fuse is lit; but let’s hope it wasn’t lit to burn the evidence. Look at how many months the Fed and its hundreds of professionals have had to cook the books and obfuscate the evidence since the lawsuit was filed, mark to fantasy you might say. If the courts were serious, they would have impounded the Fed’s books immediately, before there was a chance to replicate them. It’s too late now. The Fed didn’t reveal the books when it was needed. The fact that they’re being forced to come up with an answer now is propaganda, IMO: noboby will believe it. And who’s to say they didn’t have two sets of books in the first place, or no books. This is a secret organization, with more power than the Federal government. The Fed has never been audited, and under Barack Obama–who has more central bankers in his administration than any other administration in history according to Nathan Martin of Nathan’s Economic Edge–there will be no truth exposed now of where these monies went or where they are.Frankly, I’m glad Obama has reappointed Bernanke “because the Fed chair has done so well.” The audit is just one of the things pushing against the Fed. Bernanke ties the net around all of the miscreants rather than having the spot light redirected to some new guy. The appointment nails Obama and Bernanke to the same crowd.There’s a cartoon out this week showing an old poster on a building of Obama with a great big HOPE sign written across the bottom that you can hardly read any more. The cartoon’s caption is, HOPE’S FADING…Speaking of which, Peter Orszag says the deficit is worse than thought and he’s revised the 10-year cumulative budget deficit projection to around $9.051 trillion, up from its February projection of $7.1 trillion. I also heard on radio that the forecast for GDP growth has been adjusted lower but I can’t find it anywhere to confirm it.

like all athletes its about the high and competition…Bernanke loves the game…. He is a gambler… The damage has been/was done long before his time… he just made it worse… there is no one else IMO that could get us out of this mess…

“The damage has been/was done long before his time”BS. He’s been there a long time, and he was in the thick of things way back when.

Good points, Medic. But there are at least two good reasons we can’t just give morphine in many cases.First, the powers that be don’t want that. Try it and you’ll get sued. The crime of health care “reform” about to be perpetrated on the American people will be written by an ignorant vested interest–the plaintiffs lawyers.But the real reason we can’t just give the morphine, and you touched on it, is that Americans don’t want to die of anything.Americans need to awaken a faith that there is someone Supreme, that they are not the center of this universe, that there is something beyond this life.Otherwise, the fear of dying will lead to ever-increasingly-expensive technologies, just to prolong the inevitable. Sooner or later, that lack of faith will come crashing down, like the housing bubble.

Maybe the real reason they call economics a “dismal science” is because the critical data (eg., the Fed’s balance sheet) isn’t available to the dismal community.Maybe that’s why there are so many conflicting/confusing opinions. One thing’s for sure: Obama and Bernanke don’t want you to have the facts.

The World Finance Crisis & the American Missionby Robert Skidelsky

In fact the present financial meltdown is producing the market-led adjustment that has eluded policymakers. Willy-nilly Americans are having to spend less and save more; the decline of Chinese export markets forces China to shift its growth emphasis to domestic development; the weakening of the American economy has produced an automatic decline in the relative value of the dollar against other currencies. But unless these market-led adjustments to acute crisis become conscious policy choices in both China and the US, the global imbalances will recreate themselves and we will limp out of this crisis into the next. Crisis always enlarges the possibility for reform. [Martin] Wolf’s prescriptions for rebalancing the world economy are still relevant: emerging market economies need to spend more and save less, and mature market economies need to spend less and save more. This would automatically right the listing ship. But how is this to be done?

Entire NyRB article => The World Finance Crisis & the American Mission

New Thread

Have you seen walmart’s latest brand name stuff? White packaging with basic product names. They do feature small pictures of the product on most items, but it’s very reminiscent of the generic packaging.

Where did we go wrong you ask? When greed for greater and greater profits overtook ALL other considerations, lobbyists took control of government and completely corrupted both parties. The knee jerk reaction of the elites in govt was to save thier elitist buddies in private sector by “allowing privatization of profits and socialization of the losses”. This has been the greatest debacle since the GD and it is amazing to me and others how so many reasonable intelligent Americans are either oblivious to what has happened or just “don’t give a damn” because they are still making money! Expect the pain to continue until enough people wake up and decide to do something about it-that’s if we haven’t already crossed the threshold reaching the point of no return.

Get MoveOn behind it.

The libertarian crazies continue to have wet dreams about the “true” capitalism, as if it ever existed or can exist.

Bernie is a stud. These investors were so arrogant they thought knowing Bernie made them entitled to returns nobody can get!!Thank God Bernie did a number on some of those Jewish charities whose agenda is to do destructive social architecture on the people of the United States.We should hire him to run the SEC.