Category Archives: Crowds

Police State Chronicles: The All-Seeing Eyes Of Advertising

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Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim — but growing — chance the ad is watching you too.

“Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly.

That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.

And even if the ads don’t shift based on which people are watching, the technology’s ability to determine the viewers’ demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they’re reaching their target audience.

While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.”

From AP, via Cryptogon.

Mobs: Male Consumption Patterns Related to Reproductive Strategy

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And more research vindicating the premise of “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets,” from the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. 

“Darwin was initially puzzled by costly traits such as peacock tails that could not be

accounted for by survival advantage; he later concluded that these were features that led to

reproductive advantage (1871). For humans, male displays of wealth may literally be a

costly signal analogue to the peacock’s tail (Miller and Todd, 1998). Displays of

prestigious consumer goods could be an honest signal of male mate value, as they would

indicate available resources as well as skills at acquiring wealth (Colarelli and Dettman,

2003). Veblen (1899/1953) remarked on the relationship between prestige and the

consumption of consumer goods and even suggested that inherited psychological

mechanisms were responsible for this relationship. Colarelli and Dettman (2003) note that

advertisers are well aware of the importance of prestige when marketing products, and will

try to associate a product with prestige even when there is no functional relationship. An

ethnographic study of Amazonian foragers and slash-and-burn farmers found that those

who had greater monetary resources allocated a greater portion of expenditures towards

luxury goods, and this tendency was stronger in men than in women (Godoy et al., 2007).

Male displays of wealth and social status may facilitate mating competition. During

ancestral times, men with greater resource control married younger women, married more

women, and produced offspring earlier (Low, 1998). Males who did not have substantial

resources or status may have been unable to establish long-term relationships. Across a

wide variety of societies, male reproductive success is a function of social and economic

status (Hopcroft, 2006). Even in current foraging societies that are relatively egalitarian,

men with higher status have more mating opportunities (Chagnon, 1992; Hill and Hurtado,

1996).

Several laboratory studies have demonstrated that situational primes making mating

effort salient can induce male intentions to increase economic power as well as allocate

financial resources to conspicuous products. Roney (2003) found that men reported

stronger ambition and desire to earn money when in the presence of attractive women. This

effect was even seen when the men simply viewed photographs of attractive women. In

another study, men who were shown photographs of attractive women had intentions to

allocate more money to conspicuous products, but not inconspicuous products

(Griskevicius et al., 2007). Neither men who viewed photographs of unattractive women,

nor women who viewed photographs of attractive or unattractive men exhibited this

pattern. In a third study, men who viewed photographs of attractive women discounted the

future more so when choosing between small monetary rewards than men who viewed

unattractive women or women who viewed pictures of men (Wilson and Daly, 2004)….”

Comment:

Marketers target our basic drives, where we tend to act with the crowd. For example,  some middle class Americans try to buy the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” in response to aggressive marketing by realtors and bankers.

But once the rise in price begins, even those who’ve adopted a more individual and rational approach are compelled to buy or rish being priced out of the market. In the Indian farming crisis, as well, farmers were lured to buy expensive seeds by very aggressive marketing that played on religious sentiment and dazzled them with the prospect of extraordinary gains. (Link to follow).

One of the things I want to explore is to whether and how libertarian language (about “free choice” and “free speech”) needs to take into account these complexities.

Trader Psych: Incredible Dollar-Swissie Reversal

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“USDCHF – Recent US Dollar/Swiss Franc price action is a testament to the effectiveness of Speculative Sentiment Index-based currency forecasts. Forex trading crowds had remained heavily net-short the USD/CHF since July, and the pair went on to mount an impressive multi-month rally. Most recently, that same crowd capitulated and actually went net-long the USD/CHF near the 1.2000 mark. The US Dollar subsequently went on to post its biggest monthly loss against the Swiss Franc in history—incredible by any standards. Looking to very short-term trading, the crowd is currently net-short the pair, with short positions outnumbering longs by 1.08 to 1. Such a flip gives us reason to look for a reversal, but a sharp drop in open interest gives us little conviction in our forecast. Our forex trading signals previously went short the USD/CHF for sizeable profits, but the strategies now hold a weaker bias….”

– trader, David Rodriguez 

Comment:

This was quite a move up for the Franc and it shows why trading currencies in a regular (non-trading) account is hard to do.

I had planned to buy Swissie at the end of last week and then decided that the dip in the dollar from 86 – 83 on the Dollar Index had already priced in a Fed cut. So I held off, waiting to do it on Monday.

Then came Madoff. And on Tuesday, a Fed rate cut that was historic.

And as a result, from Monday to Wednesday, the dollar lost more than half the gains it made this fall. The Swissie shot up. A great trade on Friday looked almost risky by Wednesday. What if the Swissie fell back after that surge? Trader sentiment switched to shorting the dollar.

As if to confuse sentiment again, at Thursday close, the dollar had recovered some of its footing against the majors.

In Forex, trying to look for a bottom (as I was trying to do with the Swissie) takes just a little too much time for action that quick. Crowd sentiment out there is as volatile as it could possibly be.

Now the crucial thing is if GLD (the ETF, as a proxy for the spot price) can hold above 850 and the dollar over 80 by Friday close. If they do, a trend reversal of the pair will be confirmed technically.

Note: I am talking about GLD and the dollar as inversely correlated, once again. They had decoupled for a while but have returned to their inverse relationship recently.I don’t know how long that will last though. Not very long, I suspect. Notice that GLD is moving out of synch with other commodities. Oil, for instance, is down at 41/2 year lows. GLD’s move, in step with the Swissie, typified a rush to safety.

Pundits & Pols: Don’t Buy Gold; Stay in Cash Says, IBD; IMF to the Rescue (or Miscue?)

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“The same is true for gold, another refuge for cowardly capital. Buying gold amid a financial crisis means paying a premium amid a panic. What happens when that panic recedes? Your gold is worth less….” writes Investor’s Business Daily.

Comment:

Maybe so. Maybe not. But who is saying this? Investor’s Business Daily, which is in the business of selling stocks. Naturally, it wants you liquid and ready to jump in and buy. I’d like to go back and check what it was saying in June or July this year…

Meanwhile, President Bush will be addressing the market panic from the Rose Garden this morning. And the G-7 meet today to consider government guarantees of interbank lending.

The IMF has activated an emergency financial mechanism to help, says Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF chief, who has the ear of Hank Paulson.

And Robert Zoellick, World Bank chief (also an ex-Goldman Sachs man and formerly US trade rep) says poor countries will be hit hard. Maybe G-Sax should sell them some more junk bonds to help them out.

Propaganda Nation: Market Manipulation & Bank Banditry (Updated)

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Do Statistics Back Claims of Complete Credit Freeze?

“Many commentators claim, however, that virtually no transactions are occurring in this market. These claims are completely false. For the week that ended October 1, which is the most recent week currently reported, total commercial paper outstanding amounted to $1,607 billion. Yes, this amount was down from the $1,702 billion reported for the previous week, but is a 5.6 percent drop a good reason to panic? If we go back to March 2008, when nobody was talking excitedly about the commercial market’s “freezing up,” we find that the total amount outstanding, on average, was $1,822 billion, or only 13 percent more than last week. In March, the market was working fine; now it’s “locked up.” This sort of hyperbole, with which we are being bombarded hourly around the clock, is totally without a basis in the facts…..”

Robert Higgs, suggesting that some people are fomenting panic. He asks why.

Comment:

The answer lies in asking yourself:

Who has benefited so far? How? What do they want to happen?

Paulson Plan Premeditated?

Here’s Bill Engdahl tying up the loose ends of my piece on Paulson on how Paulson’s plan benefits the three new super banks, Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi and how they would be used to dominate global, especially European, banking.

Interbank Wars – Latest

The latest in Citi’s fight with Wells Fargo is that Citi has terminated negotiations and is planning to pursue breach of contract against Wells, so Wells is going ahead with its deal. Citi has Goldman Sachs connections: Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and a former Goldman chief is a director. Meanwhile, with regard to Bear’s demise, here is a piece arguing that JPMorgan was involved in gold price manipulation under cover of their bail out of Bear this spring. JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon sits on the Board of the NY Federal Reserve and as such was privy to the NY Fed’s actions re Bear Stearns.

Media Trix

Bill O’Reilly, not usually my favorite person, has been pretty good on standing up to the bail-out. This evening, he had a clip from an NBC skit on the sale of subprime mortgages to Wachovia by a couple, the Sandlers. It mocks Barney Frank’s role in eliminating oversight of Fannie and Freddie. Apparently the video was edited to remove the reference to Frank. The Sandlers had a long list of progressive groups they donated to (including Move On.org).

O’Reilly’s tack seems to be that the positions of those groups is undermined by the funding. That part is far-fetched, but it is time someone pointed out that not everyone affected by the decline in housing prices is an innocent. Many people made fortunes during the boom and are making more money from the bust.

Update – Market Moves Or CyberWars?

Another amazing day. I walked out of the house for 2 hours to buy a laptop for traveling, since my old one had mysteriously lost its internet connectivity. When I came back, the market was closing with a sell off, down 7% (679 points).

It began in the morning when
Paulson announced that insurance companies were in for trouble. That set off the selling in the bank and insurance stocks, including regional bank funds.

The whole thing was compounded by the fact that today was the day the ban on short-selling around 1000 financial and finance related stocks was lifted, so short-sellers were pouncing.

[Companies on the SEC’s list slid 18 percent on average during the ban, compared with 24 percent drop for all financial companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index].

Then, General Motors had a bad day: Standard &Poor threatened to downgrade it (as well as Ford) to junk. GM shares got beaten down under $5; Ford was down over 20% too.

You had to wonder at the timing.

1) It’s the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, today. Recall that the selling began the evening of Rosh Hashanah. Remember that old saw – sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur? Markets are weaker at the time…

2) The declines came on the one-year anniversary of the closing highs of the Dow and the S&P. The Dow has lost 5,585 points, or 39.4 percent, since closing at 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007. It’s the worst run for the Dow since the nearly two-year bear market that ended in December 1974 when the Dow lost 45 percent.

3) The decline is 7 years from 9/11

Anyway, when I got back the damage had been done.

[I ended up buying my computer at a shop that sold refurbished electronics in a rather shady side of town. A cop car was pulling away just as I walked in. But having just been a spectator to one of the biggest bank heists in history, I suddenly found the grungy looking characters hanging around rather harmless].

James Altucher, a trader, has this to say at The Street:

“The single biggest reason the stock market has fallen in the past five days is hedge fund liquidations. Of the top 20 hedge funds in the world, something like 18 are down 20% or more this year. They are getting redemptions, they are liquidating, they are selling stocks with reckless abandon to raise cash. Our job as good investors is to give them liquidity and take their bargain-basement merchandise off of their hands. Let’s get their selling over with so we can make money.”

Well, that’s evident. There was big selling, especially at the end, the kind from sell signals going off in program trading.

Morton Kondracke on FOX News in the evening was telling us sagely that it’s not a liquidity issue, it’s a confidence issue, and (get this) the answer is to create a global central bank. Right. The solution to a confidence problem is to give the markets to the confidence-men.

A note on cyberwarfare might be apposite hear. I dig it up from an old article I wrote that references Laurent Murawiec’s now notorious power-point presentation in 2002 advocating seizing Saudi oil fields. Murawiec is connected to Donald Rumsfeld’s Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which makes InfoWars central to the battle ground.

“In all these cases, IW involves creating phantom cyber-images, which can include phantasms of nonexistent trains, airplanes, stock market orders, and bank transfers; false impressions of the enemy’s troop strength and one’s own, of supplies and movements, of fake attacks and all-too-real defenses; and phantom images of the enemy’s leaders doing evil things on screen because one has video-morphed images of them doing them so.

“Information warfare is not about machines or even electrons. It is about people’s minds, society’s functions, and armies’ strategies. Cyberspace endows us — and our enemies — with new and extraordinary means with which to achieve our respective aims. “We have only begun to cyber-fight….”

More at “Tom Tancredo Takes Out Mecca: The Cyber Wars Playing Near You.”

Propaganda State: Can a Market Panic be Manipulated?

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“In a report published in March by the Bank for International Settlements, economists Jacob Gyntelberg and Philip Wooldridge raised concerns that banks might report incorrect rate information. The report said that banks might have an incentive to provide false rates to profit from derivatives transactions. The report said that although the practice of throwing out the lowest and highest groups of quotes is likely to curb manipulation, Libor rates can still “be manipulated if contributor banks collude or if a sufficient number change their behaviour.”

Thanks to Naked Capitalism.

Comment:

Libor stands for the London Interbank Offering Rate. It is the interest rate at which banks agree to lend to each other over various time periods, including overnight, three months and 12 months.

The post at Naked Capitalism is concerned about Libor being unreliable because of banks understating the rates they are paying (to conceal their desperation). The rate is an estimate set at the HQ of the British Bankers’ Association at 11 a.m. every morning in London on the basis of offers from 16 member bankers. The possibility exists that it could be manipulated.

The Paulson Put(sch): Questions for Hank Paulson

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The Paulson Put(sch)

Questions for the new CEO of US Government Inc.

[Last Wednesday, Hank Paulson was installed as CEO of US Government Incorporated, replacing the now defunct United States of America].

Charles Krauthammer wrapped up an astounding week in American history with a hosanna to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson. The best possible team to have on your side in a financial crisis bigger than any since the 1930s, says he. Bernanke, because he is an economic historian specializing in the Great Depression. And Paulson because he knows everyone in the banking industry and is the perfect person for arm-twisting and deal-making. Financiers aren’t all bad, sniffs Krauthammer. There were all those greedy realtors and home-owners too.

Yes, Charles, we do see that greed is a many-splendored thing, visiting the poor and rich alike. But on a mundane level, the yearning of the cleaning lady who gets herself in over her head with a home loan she can’t pay is not the same sort of public hazard as the cosmic larceny of financiers who’ve skipped out with hundreds of millions from companies they’ve skinned like pole cats…

Read the rest of my latest piece on Paulson’s power grab at Lew Rockwell. You can find other articles of mine on the old archive of Dissident Voice. I will (eventually) get my pieces onto this site in a more approachable way, but being bloggitudinally challenged, that may take a while.

 

Justin Raimondo On Iran’s Weapons of Mass Distortion

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“Are we really supposed to take the alleged Iranian “threat” – which Barack Obama deems “the greatest strategic challenge to the United States in the region in a generation” – seriously? Not unless Photoshop is reclassified as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

Nice piece by Antiwar’s fiery Justin Raimondo on Iran’s recent threat…

Bear Stearns Hedge Managers: Doing The Perp Walk….

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“Two former managers of hedge funds at Bear Stearns were arrested and charged with securities fraud on Thursday, a year after the collapse of the funds signaled the onset of a credit crunch that shows little sign of abating….
The indictments, which will be detailed this afternoon by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, are the first to be brought against senior Wall Street executives linked to a tight credit market that has rattled global markets, led to more than $350 billion in write-offs, cost numerous executives their jobs and culminated in the demise of Bear Stearns.

The two funds had names as obtuse as the complex subprime securities in their portfolios — High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and its riskier sister offering, the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies…….”

More at the New York Times.

Comment:

Tut…And these guys were gods only yesterday. How soon they forget….

All it took was for gas prices to double…..and the mob got out the noose and the gallows…