Dow Hit By AIG

Posted on by

AIG reported losses in the 4th quarter of 2008 of $60.7 $61.7 billion – the largest in corporate history (despite the bail-out). It’s asking for another $30 bn.

In response, the Dow went down to levels not seen since 1997 – below 7000. 

Here’s what AIG and other financial institutions have got from the government so far:

AIG – $180bn

Bank of America – $45bn

Citigroup – $50bn

JP Morgan Chase – $25bn

Wells Fargo – $25bn

Goldman Sachs – $10bn

Morgan Stanley – $10bn

State Street – $3bn

Bank of New York Mellon – $3bn

More at the BBC

Madoff Madness: Some Victims Might Have to Give Up Principal…

Posted on by

“If an investor put money directly into Madoff but redeemed some or all of his investment before Madoff’s arrest, would Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of gathering assets for pro-rata distribution to bilked investors, come after him for the money he already took out? Short answer: yes, if the investor had gains. And it’s even conceivable that the investor might have to cough up principal….”

More  here on the coming wave of litigation from the Madoff fraud.

Comment:

The Madoff case, as you know, puzzles me. From what I’ve read so far, everyone knew fraud was being perpetrated…and no one did anything. Now everyone, from “little people” who lost their retirement through their pensions funds to fund of funds managers and their clients, is expecting the SIPC to kick in and pay for the losses, or to recover them through litigation.  It seems to me that if a fund manager deliberately looked the other way, they were guilty of fraud; they should be the ones held accountable by their investors. But now that the government is involved, expect this to become a racket.

And on that gloomy note, why did Irving Picard, the court appointed trustee, need $28 million to adminster the estate of Madoff? That’s a lot of money. And he was asking for it within a fortnight of the breaking of the story.

Ron Paul On Our Real Enemies

Posted on by

“I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10-mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe. If we get our troops off of foreign soil, those perceived enemies of our liberty abroad are much more likely to stand down and let us be. We have more than enough troops to mind our own business and defend ourselves. It is only for world domination that we have a troop shortage.”

“The Draft: Just Say No,” Ron Paul

Obamanomics: Tax Job Creators, Bankroll Swindlers

Posted on by

“We have no problem with taxing hedge fund operators and leverageurs till they bleed from the ears, and we’ll even go along with a cap on bankers’ salaries (although we’d have preferred they be publicly flogged). But how could a plan that purports to stimulate the economy have overlooked the entrepreneurs who are the lifeblood of American prosperity? A logical answer is that the stimulus package is deliberately anti-capital, a vengeful and self-destructive act against every GOP president since Reagan. To the extent this is so, it could be a long, long time before the economy shows any signs of returning to health….”

Rick Ackerman  

Medicine: A Leading Cause of Illness

Posted on by

“As few as 5% and no more than 20% of iatrogenic acts are ever reported.(16,24,25,33,34) This implies that if medical errors were completely and accurately reported, we would have an annual iatrogenic death toll much higher than 783,936. In 1994, Leape said his figure of 180,000 medical mistakes resulting in death annually was equivalent to three jumbo-jet crashes every two days.(16) Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day. What we must deduce from this report is that medicine is in need of complete and total reform—from the curriculum in medical schools to protecting patients from excessive medical intervention. It is obvious that we cannot change anything if we are not honest about what needs to be changed. This report simply shows the degree to which change is required…..”

From Death by Medicine, Gary Null et. al.

Raimondo on Rothbard…

Posted on by

“Reagan started out by denouncing the power elite and specifically the CFR and the Trilateralists, but wound up with that epitome of the Establishment, Skull-&-Bonesman George Bush as his vice president and successor. Bush is a longtime CFR director, and Trilateralist; most of his major cabinet officers, including his chairman of the joint chiefs, Colin Powell, were CFR members. The Clinton administration is similarly afflicted, from the President (CFR/Trilateral) on down through Donna Shalala (CFRJ Trilateral) and George Stephanopoulos (CFR), with the CFR honeycombed (as usual) throughout the State Department. In addition to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, other CFR members in the Clinton cabinet include Laura Tyson, chairman of the Council of Economic advisors, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, HUD honcho Henry Cisneros; and Alice Rivlin, 0MB director…”.

 Justin Raimondo, author of An Enemy of the State: the Life of Murray N. Rothbard and other books, is editor of Antiwar.co

Thanks to Scott Horton for the link  Raimondo’s latest piece on the stirring up of anti-Russian feeling (preparatory to what? a skirmish with Russia?) should give anyone pause.

Comment:

The crucial reason why bankers have managed to hijack the government is that banking based on a fractional reserve system (i.e. a system where the banks lend out a multiple of the money they hold as deposits) is by its nature inclined to favor debt…and thus to favor statism (that is, favor larger government). Here’s Rothbard on the subject, from the article linked above:

“Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs.”

[Just to clarify, a government bond is the way the government raises money for its programs – by selling bonds, either through auction or through underwriting bank/banks].

Cutting through all the fancy terminology – bonds are debt. Debt is money borrowed from someone on which interest is paid. People carrying debt (borrowers) have an innate preference for inflationary policies, since this reduces the level of their debt. Those who assume the risks of those loans have the same innate preference.  In addition borrowers and those who buy their debt have a motivation to prefer government policies which will let the public underwrite or pay off the debt or assume the risk of the debt…or all of the above.

Obama: Yes to Banksters, No to Haitian Refugees

Posted on by

“BBC called the situation “eye-popping,” and the Miami Herald said it was “the worst humanitarian disaster (for) Haiti in 100 years” leaving:

— Gonaives, Haiti’s third largest city, uninhabitable;

— most of the nation’s livestock and food crops destroyed as well as farm tools and seeds for replanting;

— irrigation systems demolished;

— collapsed buildings throughout the country; 23,000 houses destroyed; another 85,000 damaged; 964 schools destroyed or damaged;

— conservatively about $1 billion in storm damage;

— the threat of famine, especially for children and the elderly;

— 2.3 million Haitians facing “food insecurity,” according to USAID, reeling under 40% higher prices than in January;

— inadequate sanitation and clean water;

— the widespread threat of disease; and

— overall millions lacking everything needed to survive who in normal times struggle to get by.

In December, Director Randy McGorty of Catholic Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Miami said:

“After dealing with this administration on Haitian issues for eight years, I’m forced to conclude that its policy toward Haiti is based on racism. It’s shocking. People (lack everything and) are starving. This callous disregard for human life is inexplicable. Many deported Haitians simply have no communities to return to. It is disappointing that the Bush administration would even consider sending people back to this incredibly fragile nation….(Haiti’s) humanitarian crisis….continues and worsens.”

(South) Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center’s (FIAC) executive director, Cheryl Little, said: “We are attempting to do whatever we can to convince government officials to change their minds on this. It’s an outrageously inhumane act.”

On January 26, FIAC urged new DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to “immediately stay the inhumane deportations and to seriously consider granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians already in the United States.” On December 19, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff denied the Preval government’s TPS request. As a result, Haiti won’t cooperate, so ICE is making Haitians get their own travel documents (including passports) and assist in their own deportations.

Throughout 2008, around 1000 occurred in total. After a near-three month suspension (from September 19 – December 9), they resumed slowly, but picked up noticeably after Obama’s inauguration. According to FIAC, men like Louiness Petit-Frere are affected, deported on January 23: “Here ten years with no criminal record, he leaves his US-citizen wife behind along with his mother and four siblings, all (with) legal status….One of his brothers, US Marine Sgt Nikenson Peirreloui, served and was injured in Iraq.”

In 2008, Obama campaigned vigorously for South Florida’s Haitian vote. Now he’s betrayed it the way he’s abandoning millions of distressed households by providing little in real relief compared to trillions in handouts to Wall Street and the rich….”

More at Stephen Lendman

Comment:

Here’s a link to a report on Haiti’s hope for an Obama presidency

and an open letter from Haitians to Obama on the catastrophic conditions in their country.

The Zwangswirtschaft of America……

Posted on by

The Zwangswirtschaft type of Socialism  

It is, of course, true that this type of socialism preserves some of the labels and the outward appearance of capitalism. It maintains, seemingly and nominally, private ownership of the means of production, prices, wages, interest rates and profits. In fact, however, nothing counts but the government’s unrestricted autocracy. The government tells the entrepreneurs and capitalists what to produce and in what quantity and quality, at what prices to buy and from whom, at what prices to sell and to whom. It decrees at what wages and where the workers must work. Market exchange is but a sham. All the prices, wages, and interest rates are determined by the authority. They are prices, wages, and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantity relations in the government’s orders. The government, not the consumers, directs production. The government determines, directs production. The government determines each citizen’s income, it assigns to everybody the position in which he has to work. This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. It is the Zwangswirtschaft of Hitler’s German Reich and the planned economy of Great Britain….”

More at the Mises site.

Comment:

Zwang means compulsion and wirtschaft is economy, so  this translates as “command economy.”

Now, consider what Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan (!) are demanding – nationalization.

Put it together: Nationalism + Socialism = National Socialism a.k.a. Nazism

Don’t be fooled by all the “nice” sounding stuff:

Health care for all…

Money for science research…..

Sounds good..but the price is saying OK to rule by Kleptocrats. and a managed/command economy run for the Kleptocrats.

This is a  bribe to make you go along with fundamentally dishonest policies.

And this, from the Mises site:

“An investigation of the root causes of the ascendancy of Nazism
must show not only how domestic German conditions begot
Nazism but also why all other nations failed to protect themselves
against the havoc. Seen from the viewpoint of the British, the
Poles, or the Austrians, the chief question is not: What is wrong
with the Nazis? but: What was wrong with our own policies with
regard to the Nazi menace? Faced with the problem of tuberculosis,
doctors do not ask: ‘What is wrong with the germs? but: What is
wrong with our methods of preventing the spread of the disease?’

Life consists in adjusting oneself to actual conditions and in
taking account of things as they really are, not as one would wish
them to be. It would be more pleasant if there were neither germs
nor dangerous barbarians. But he who wants to succeed has to fix
his glance upon reality, not to indulge in wishful dreams.

Group Mind and the Stopping of Thoughts…

Posted on by

“John McMurtry writes that the first rule of the “Group-Mind” is that it cannot adopt itself as an object of critical reflection:

“When the most self-evident line of thought has been blinkered out across a people, only an a priori thought system can account for it. As with other great problems of our era, the group-mind disconnects by stopping thought before it arises.”

Christian ascesis is the practice of giving attention to thoughts as they first appear, thus it is a practice wholly at odds with a priorism and with all forms of mechanical, psychic or associative activity which masquerades as “thought.” According to Father Sylvan, a hundred, a thousand times a day, thoughts that challenge or contradict assumptions and beliefs, thoughts that might provoke self-questioning or discomfort about some fact or emotion or received wisdom, thoughts that might force one to confront one’s own laziness, anger, lack of love, lack of integrity — such thoughts are continually circling the perimeter of the mind and sometimes even penetrate its arena. And yet they come to nothing, they are quickly repelled, conveniently forgotten, dispersed, and covered over by compulsive action, rationalization, explanation, or emotional reaction. Father Sylvan calls this incessant activity of covering over the Question the “First Dispersal of the Soul.” It means that the force of attention is wasted, degraded by absorption into one part or another of the psycho-physical organism, and rendered useless for the growth of the soul. Man becomes trapped in an “automatism of non-redemptive experience,” which he likens to St. Paul‘s “body of death.”

The struggle of Christian ascesis is to contain the energy of the Question within oneself so that the Soul can come into being. Thus, the existence of the Soul is not a given, not an a priori assumption. It is an energy formed through the confrontation with question and contradiction, an energy that has to be sought, recognized, collected and accumulated – “pondered in the heart.” This is why “God can only speak to the soul,” according to Father Sylvan, “and only when the soul exists.”

From the Catacombs

Comment:

This is a fascinating post. The teaching of Philokalia is not different from that of Raja Yoga texts, or, for that matter, from the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurthi, if you put aside the doctrinal content and focus on the psychological observation.  Thoughts that arise in the mind involuntarily seem to correspond to the samskaras of Hinduism and Buddhism, those predispositions and unconscious impulses which attract us to the situations in which karma (fate, moira) plays out.

What has all this to do with politics and the markets?

Much….

i) Being “embodied minds,” the nature of our thinking alters what we perceive – both in the past and in the present. That alteration in perception allows us to strategize action, anticipate problems, and to form coalitions, none of which we would be able to do if we remained obsessed with rigid mental constructs.

ii) Self-awareness of our own internal contradictions permits us to be more generous in our assessments of our antagonists and cures us of the rancid self-righteousness and inflamed dogmatism with which we approach every issue….That, in turn,  gives our opponents space to rethink their own self-righteousness…..and draws thoughful people out of neutrality…

Digital Reading Encourages Risk-Taking

Posted on by

“While the testimonials of digital literacy enthusiasts are replete with abstract paeans to the possibilities presented by screen reading, the experience of those who do it for a living paints a very different picture. Just as Griswold and her colleagues suggested the impending rise of a “reading class,” British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield argues that the time we spend in front of the computer and television is creating a two-class society: people of the screen and people of the book. The former, according to new neurological research, are exposing themselves to excessive amounts of dopamine, the natural chemical neurotransmitter produced by the brain. This in turn can lead to the suppression of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which controls functions such as measuring risk and considering the consequences of one’s actions.Writing in The New Republic in 2005, Johns Hopkins University historian David A. Bell described the often arduous process of reading a scholarly book in digital rather than print format: “I scroll back and forth, search for keywords, and interrupt myself even more often than usual to refill my coffee cup, check my e-mail, check the news, rearrange files in my desk drawer. Eventually I get through the book, and am glad to have done so. But a week later I find it remarkably hard to remember what I have read.”

As he tried to train himself to screen-read—and mastering such reading does require new skills—Bell made an important observation, one often overlooked in the debate over digital texts: the computer screen was not intended to replace the book. Screen reading allows you to read in a “strategic, targeted manner,” searching for particular pieces of information, he notes. And although this style of reading is admittedly empowering, Bell cautions, “You are the master, not some dead author. And that is precisely where the greatest dangers lie, because when reading, you should not be the master”; you should be the student. “Surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns,” he observes.

How strategic and targeted are we when we read on the screen? In a commissioned report published by the British Library in January 2008 (the cover of which features a rather alarming picture of a young boy with a maniacal expression staring at a screen image of Darth Vader), researchers found that everyone, teachers and students alike, “exhibits a bouncing/flicking behavior, which sees them searching horizontally rather than vertically….Users are promiscuous, diverse, and volatile.” As for the kind of reading the study participants were doing online, it was qualitatively different from traditional literacy. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense, indeed there are signs that new forms of ?reading’ are emerging as users ?power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins.” As the report’s authors concluded, with a baffling ingenuousness, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”

More by “People of the Screen'” The New Atlantis.

Comment:

Aha! Here’s the real reason for the financial crash! Glued to their computer trading screens, all those “quants” and geeks who bundled up risk into little packages and shot them across the globe in a viral campaign addled their pre-frontal lobes. More seriously, computer interaction does encourage a kind of virtual reality of quick response, immediate gratification, high-wire devilry and flaring tempers.

Examples:

The Internet porn industry has higher levels of addiction than off-line porn.

Video games are used by the Department of Defense to desensitize potential recruits. Popular games like Grand Theft Auto, for instance, allow players to mimic and experience criminal activity.

Online addiction is even categorized by some people as a separate category of compulsive behavior. Whether that’s excessive or not, it’s true that what’s on our screen affects us in a quite different way than what’s on a printed page. And that’s why one of the best ways to counter government control of the web is to practice a little self-restraint in posting on it.