Tag Archives: robert wenzel

In which I pat myself on the back for keeping out of it..

Posted on by

Over at Bob Wenzel’s entertaining blog, the libertarians are having it out with each other again – the thick libertarians and the thin.

(http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/which-political-party-is-best-for-america/question-2611731/?page=3&link=ibaf&q=&esrc=s)

First, Sheldon Richman took on Walter Block and Lew Rockwell.

He accused them of not supporting their arguments with evidence.

Bionic Mosquito zapped him.

The verdict from the gallery was a resounding win for the home-team.

Then it was Jeffrey Tucker’s turn to come out swinging against Thomas Aquinas,

who, being dead,  was ably defended by the learned David Gordon.

Next, N. Stephan Kinsella arm-wrestled with a minarchist and called him names like “loser,”

which is par for the course, when it comes to N. Stephan Kinsella.

I woman-fully restrained myself from throwing any sticks or stones, as part of my endless violated not-so-New Year’s resolution to “play nicer.”

[See, Mr. Tucker? I took your humanitarian advice to heart in spirit, even though I criticized it in letter.]

But I admit I missed drawing blood.

And I admit I enjoyed watching others draw blood:

http://johnkreng.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/review-of-bloodsport-1988/

But, honestly, I didn’t get much satisfaction from any of it.

A wee bit of Schadenfreude, maybe.

But, for a brutalist outcaste – a “hater” and a “bigot” –

….not bad at all.

Recommended reading: Jonathan Haidt: “Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics”

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: Mt. Gox goes poof!

Posted on by

Mt Gox has gone bust.

Ahem.

We’ll take a quick bow (along with Gary North, Robert Wenzel, Bionic Mosquito, and several others).

We Bitcoin-deniers stood our ground in the face of relentless and shameless]pumping, supported by rent-a-libertarians, like the former chief editor of the Daily Reckoning, Joel Bowman and shameless other opportunists

[On rereading this, I think I want  soften my tone, since the anti-BTC’s have been proved by events.[

See the two MBP posts below:

BTC: My Comments at EPJ

Bitcoin: My Comment at EPJ and Block’s Reversal

See also the following anonymous comments at EPJ in December and November 2013:

My comments are anonymous, because I was worried that the elites might attack people who criticized BTC, just as they trashed Assange critics all over the net:

Comments at EPJ on December 3

 

  1. Anonymous (Lila )

  3. Stick with Gary North, Wenzel.

    Better the known devil than the unknown.

    And talking about unknown devils, who is this Paul Rosenberg from Cryptohippie?

    Who owns Cryptohippie?

    Might they have connections to TOR, Wikileaks, Assange, and/or the Internet billionaires (Zuckerberg, Brin, Thiel, Omidyar)? If so, can DARPA be far behind?

    How would we know since Bitcoin is so mysterious……

    In fact, how would we know if Bernanke himself wasn’t moonlighting as an “anti-Fed” bit-coiner?

    Answer is we wouldn’t.

    Also, what reason could there be for the inventor of an invention of this magnitude (purportedly) to coyly refrain from taking any credit or recognition?

    Another question, why does Julian Assange tout it?
    These are the things which must be investigated before anyone other than fools and gamblers will go near this scheme.

    Anonymous (Lila Rajiva)

  4. Maybe they gain something personally from promoting Bitcoins? Credibility with the hacker-anarchist world, for instance. Maybe even money. How do you know?

    It takes a big person to stick to his guns, even when peer pressure might suggest otherwise.

 


 

Comments at EPJ on December 12:

 

  1. Anonymous (Lila)

  2. @anonymous

    I don’t have time to refute step by step.
    Just the obvious points.

    You claim bitcoin allows you to transfer any amount of wealth anywhere in the world almost instantly and almost free.

    Actually, you can already do that with an ACH transfer (upto 10K), wire transfer ($25 for any sum) cash (as much as you can stuff undetected into your suitcase or cash cards. You can also do hawala.

    The limits in all these cases don’t arise from the medium, but from government restriction, which could be enforced much more thoroughly through BTC than by other means.

    Second. Bitcoins aren’t “free.” They require not only a very good computer, but an excellent internet connection, encryption of a very high order not only for the connection but for the hard drive.. and considerable technical knowledge to thwart the net-savvy people who swarm around bitcoin users.

    None of that is free or widely prevalent.

    In most countries, you don’t even have good enough internet.

    Plus, all of it can be snooped on and shut down.
    That is just one objection out of dozens I could raise.

    Reply

 

1.  Nov. 25, 2013 comments at EPJ

 

  1. Anonymous (Lila)

  2. Shame on anyone who is so credulous to believe this is the “free market” at work.
    Shame on anyone who supports this kind of elaborate con played by the very cartels that anarchists are supposedly fighting.

    Bitcoin is a Rothschild-backed intelligence-funded pump-and-dump. The purpose is to destabilize the dollar and provoke demand for a global single currency.

    It is the global elite-backed “controlled opposition,” using spokesmen from the CIA-infiltrated/ hard-money or “libertarian” community. The ones pitching it will make money as the proles rush in.

    It is easily tracked, easily gamed.
    More so than the dollar or gold.

    This massive swell of interest and pumping by all and sundry is a sure sign of intel involvement.

  3. People promoting this might as well have INTEL stamped on their forehead.

  4. Or FRAUD.

 

Anonymous (Lila)

 


 

November 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM

 

@Philip, Anonymous, edward.

 

Intelligence and government are multi-layered, not unitary.

 

The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Sometimes even the left hand doesn’t know. Just a finger or a nail knows.

 

Intelligence might take a while to understand the potential in something their scientists come up with. So it might take a year or two or more. Then they embrace it.

 

The MSM media is brain-washed one way – the obvious mainstream, Keynesian brainwashing.

 

The alternative media, including hard money people, are past the mainstream brainwashing, but they fall for the second-level brainwashing – they fall for Snowden, Assange, Hacktivism, Crypto-currency, Wikileaks, and all such black operations, meant to appeal to gullible, egoistic anti-govt types.

 

There are legions of agencies involved who profile dissent and come up with the red herrings that will be swallowed by the maximum number of fools and opportunists.

 

The economic dissenters trust their hard-money gurus, but that crowd is filled with two-bit cons who will fit their agenda to whatever the intelligence agencies tell them.

 

Please go back and look at when Bitcoin mania started and look at who has promoted it.

 

Be wise as serpents, my friends. Wenzel’s instincts are right. I hope he will not be dazzled by Mayer’s “expertise” and misled into supporting this con game.

 

As for sources. Do some research directly yourself and see what you find.

 

Reply

 

their ‘endgame’ …. .

 

 

Anonymous (Lila)

 

November 26, 2013 at 1:34 PM

 

@Phil McKreviss, EndtheFed,

 

There are a few libertarian (rightist and leftist) blogs where Assange and Snowden have been deconstructed thoroughly. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Let your fingers take a walk and you will see that they are both mouthpieces for the global elites.

 

Some reliable sources you could read: Cottrell, Rappaport, Creighton, Rajiva, Madison…off the top of my head.

 

China – China is a COMMUNIST country, my friends. Goldman Sachs has a big presence there.

 

End-game is control – maximum control over your assets, your money, your movements, your writing, your thoughts – so they can harvest it all for themselves.

 

The elites would be gods…and for that, they need for you to be less than men. They need for you to be little BITS of a machine.

 

Read everything critically, inwardly, not in this trusting fashion.

 

Rest assured, when something shows up on the internet, with this much fanfare, the elites approve.

 

Freedom is hard.

 

It will not come without sacrificing some time, effort and along the way, some favorite delusions and consolations too.

 

Biggest delusion is to believe that there is any quick simple remedy whereby you get to make a ton of money quicker and liberate “the world” too.
All that is Grimms Fairy Tales in a special edition for libertarians.

Gangster Bankster Sandy Weill Comes To Jesus…Not

Posted on by

Here is an example of why following politics is not about “what” but about “who”.

That means it’s imperative that names are named and context provided in as much detail as needed.

There are many people, including me, who blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall for enabling the financial crisis. Who lobbied for it? Sandy Weill, of Citibank, among others. The repeal profited Weill.

Now, ten years and counting after that heist, here comes Weill to co-opt, for his own motives, the perfectly legitimate demand to break up the banks.

Except, since it comes out of Weill’s mouth, it’s not longer a legitimate move to defend against financial terrorism against the population.

It will have to be rejected.

Naturally, those who are hip to this kind of thing (like the ever so sharp Bob English over at EPJ) then look like turn-coats or defenders of the status-quo.  Of course, they are not. They are just too clever to be played.

But you would need to know the concrete particulars of what’s happening to know that. You can’t just follow some ideological script.

Following the twists and turns takes unremitting hard work, which Mr. Wenzel and Mr. English  amply provide on their deservedly popular masculinist and finance-capital-friendly blog.

[They like to retweet Rupert Murdoch more than I would be happy to. But when they catch one of these kinds of moves, it’s worth putting up with Uncle Rupert…]

“Bob English emails to explain how Weill should make a few more bucks if the Return of Glass-Stegall [sic] comes to a bank near you:

This is like when Lord Evelyn  [Rothschild] condescends himself to an interview with the Money Honey. Something big is in the works and Weill is the oligarch delivering the message today. This is likely part of the battle for the new payments system. But, Weill, post-Citi, isn’t lobbying on behalf of the banks anymore. As you probably know, Weill is ex-AmEx, but he also now has links to MasterCard:

http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/mastercard-and-sonoma-state-university-unveil-long-term-relationship-in-support-of-the-performing-arts/

Someone has to take the fall as part of the generation of political will to enact drastic new legislation that splits retail and institutional banking (if not the currency system itself, per Mervyn King’s suggestion). This is far bigger than the pusillanimous Volcker Rule, and I think it will eventually involve the repeal or amendment of the BHC Act, as I alluded to on the last CA appearance. LIBOR would seem to be but one battle front against the banks (though a major one).”

None of the entrenched financial interests want to be left in the dust when tech is allowed to enter the field (especially, the CIA vis a vis AmEx and MC). So the Weill interview looks like the payment processors are throwing the banks under the bus to keep as much of the action as possible.”

Taibbi’s Penson Video..(Correction)

Posted on by

Correction:
(10/12/09, Monday)

I should have said “allegedly faked” video. I stand corrected. No weasel words, Mr. Byrne (see Byrne’s comment below).

I often post stories on which I have no comment or opinion one way or other, because I haven’t followed them, but think readers might like to. In my last several posts, in fact, I defended Deepcapture’s, Taibbi’s, and Zerohedge’s work, in spite of occasional alleged or real errors.

But the reason I linked to Wenzel’s blog is because Wenzel’s post is pretty funnily written, and I don’t follow Taibbi, except occasionally. I didn’t like his attacks on David Griffin, where he exposed himself as somewhat ignorant. Taibbi also doesn’t attribute people (apparently others have that complaint too). But arrogance and ignorance in one area don’t equate to being incorrect in another.

I’ll add a separate post with the rather long back and forth between Taibbi and his various critics and defenders. I went by Penson’s dismissal of the video, but I’ve since noted that Penson has some history that is troubling and tends to makes its dismissal less credible.

So what else might be construed as “weasel-worded” in my recent blogging?

Perhaps my rather neutral approach to the Byrne vs. Weiss feud, still going strong. Well, I’m neutral about it – who stalked whom, etc. etc. – because I don’t know the ins and outs of it. I had my own experience of being harassed, and can barely keep up with the details of that, let alone someone else’s stalking experience.

I also don’t know which of the two abuses of the market – “stock pumping and money laundering” (criticized by the Wall Street “captured” media) or “naked-shorting” (criticized by Byrne, Davidson “ “Bob O’Brien,” and many others, including Taibbi) – is the more momentous.

As a libertarian, I think naked-shorting is, but that’s only my opinion. Which is why I’ve been neutral. My sense is both abuses are real and extensive.

Likewise, I really don’t know enough about what the SEC’s investigation of Overstock is about. Could it be punitive?

Quite likely, given all we know about the SEC. But does that mean everything else the SEC does is incorrect? Unlikely.

Does that mean what Byrne wrote about “naked short selling” is incorrect? No.

Final point. I tend not to like shrill personal attacks.

That’s a deferral to civility and complexity, not weasel-wordedness.

ORIGINAL POST:

On Matt Taibbi getting suckered by a “faked” (quotes added for now) naked shorting video:

“Carney is a sharp guy, and he has Taibbi nailed on this one, but, I repeat, naked short selling, like a lot of Wall Street, is a very complex game. Carney in some of his other posts suggests there is nothing wrong with naked short-selling, he is off on that one. Some of it can be justified as simple market maker operations, but some of it is major league abuse by very clever insiders, which is the point Taibbi is taking, but doesn’t have the knowledge to back up properly.

Anyway, once you sit down an analyze the entire naked short selling thing, you realize that the bad naked short selling would go away if the SEC would stop issuing regulations that protect the bad guys. Basic common sense and commercial law would put an end to the bad naked short selling, real fast.

Bad naked short selling exists because there is a power source to manipulate, in this case the SEC, and the bad guys are running circles around the SEC.

What you want to understand naked short sales for yourself? Well pull up a chair, give yourself five hours and read this. It’s a great first step.

But, I tell you, it will be much more fun watching Taibbi attempt to pull the bayonet out of his brain.”

More by Robert Wenzel, at Economic Policy Journal.