Once upon a time...

Time for bed son.

But you promised me a story Daddy!

Yes I did…

There once was a country called America.

It was started by a bunch of rich white guys who were upset about their taxes.

Eventually they became the most powerful country in the world when the rest of the powerful countries darn near destroyed themselves.

The rich and powerful Americans saw a lot of opportunity to plunder the planet. They stopped a lot of other countries from developing self-sufficiency through either war or debt. Their wars were fought to make the other peoples free. The debt was created to make the other peoples prosperous.

It was called free market capitalism and democracy and it was good.

But then there was a war that America lost. The war was very expensive and the American people didn’t approve of it.

So rich and powerful Americans had to change the way they used war and debt to plunder.

They started to use debt to make their own people more prosperous and to make wars less messy.

But the wars were very expensive and their prosperous people became more and more indebted to their prosperity.

Prosperity got out of control and the free market crashed.

So the rich and powerful Americans created more debt and launched more wars.

But the free market crashed again.

So the rich and powerful Americans decided that the free market had to be abandoned in order to save it. They created all the debt they could in order to protect their riches and their power. Eventually they couldn’t afford the wars. Eventually they couldn’t afford the debt.

The people became very upset.

And a bunch of rich folks, not just, but mostly, white men (guess that’s progress!), became very very upset about their taxes.

THE END.

Is that all Daddy?

What happened to America?

Well son, that’s exactly what folks began to ask themselves.

But the real America was less of a place than an ideal and lots of folks in lots of other countries aspired to that same ideal.

So America went global as did their prosperity. And although times in the old country might be hard right now at least we have a chance to pursue the American dream.

Now it’s time to go to sleep son you need to be well rested for your exam tomorrow if you want to join the cadre.

Sweet dreams.

To each according to their eligibility... for each according to their greed.

You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don't understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that's why you will not survive!
-Billy Joel


The Oracle at Eccles will bless us mere surplus eaters with transparency this week er scratch that will bless us with unveiling the latest in a series of Jedi mind tricks.

‘You don’t need to see our collateral.’

‘This is not the monetization that you are looking for.’

‘Go about your recovery.’

‘Move along.’

After all it can’t be monetization if it is only temporary unlike death and taxes which unless we apply some semblance of egalitarianism to the latter will result in the economic forecast, the least for the most, of the former.

And golly don’t expect us to keep track of the collateral folks, seriously we’re still using Windows 95. And it is hard to get that stuff onto floppies. Would you care for a nice game of Pong?

But let us all raise our liquidity chalices Nancy Capitalists to the Glee-shaped Recovery! Let us cheer the depreciating scrip and the magnificence of America’s wealth exporting machine!

Nothin’ but blue skies…. waitaminnit…

Thefiscaltimes.com: ‘According to the Census Bureau households paid $2.2 trillion in taxes in 2010 and received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support. 59% of the 309 million Americans in this country got at least one federal benefit in 2009 according to the Census Bureau. Government cash handouts accounted for 79% of household growth since 2007.’

All this whilst wealth inequality is approaching levels last seen since, gee I don't know, the Tyler's Rebellion of 1381?

No wonder 84% want no change to Medicare. No wonder a majority favor increased spending over decreased spending. In fact the only majority for decreased spending is for foreign aid (YouGov poll). McClatchey-Marist recently reported that almost 70% oppose raising the federal debt limit - however 80 percent, including 70% of the teabaggers, oppose cutting Medicare or Medicaid to deal with the budget deficit. Good luck with that.

Where you sit is where you stand.

But you are going to need to stand for something America lest you fall for anything.

Perhaps it is appropriate that a narcissistic, egomanic, borderline pathological, deadbeat shill is at the top of the leader board in the Republican sweepstakes.

Every day in every way this s#$ is starting to resemble a bad science fiction movie from the 70s.

Let’s investigate the oil price Barry? Hint , google Eccles. Let’s arm the mudžahedin against a bad guy? Sure... worked pretty good last time! Let’s bring down insurance costs by giving Big Pharma a half a trillion bucks worth of new premiums? Brilliant! Let’s make the banking system solvent by shoving trillions of bad speculative bets into the rabbithole? Outstanding!

But above all let’s get the spokesperson for the supranational star chamber to better articulate the psych-ops that will keep those shoppers happy and ignore this slow train-wreck of a Great Depression by refuting, negating, and verily daring them to believe their lying ojos….

And at no time will his hands leave his arms.

To each according to their eligibility... for each according to their greed.

The truths you hold to be most dear are lies told to you by liars.

‘Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this?’ – Ezekiel 47:5-6

‘There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles.’- Jim Morrison

‘The iron never lies to you.’ –Henry Rollins

As I sit here in my new office (purchased at 30% off 1998 prices …viva la recovery!) getting ready to spend a full Saturday perusing charts - for whatever reason - the Spirit is movin’ this fella to a lonely bray into the wilderness of the blogosphere yet again. Please excuse the indulgent and self-centered segue gentle reader but a recent article illuminating the consequence of the ‘manufacture of contempt’ oft-referenced here has left me scratching my curmudgeon keppe.

About a week ago a group called GlobeScan asked 12,884 folks nestled in 25 different countries whither they agreed or disagreed with the statement that ‘the free market is the best system on which to base the future of the world.’

In 2002, despite the tulip er dot-com crash, 80% of Americans stated that they either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that the free market was the best economic system for the future which, not surprisingly, was the highest percentage of any country.

That percentage is now down to 59%, less than Brazil (68%) and less than China(67%).

But that’s not all!

A majority of our youth, per the American Red Cross, approve of torturing or even killing captured enemies.

And to round out this trifecta of tyranny…

59% of adults, per McClatchy-Marist, believe that those who publish confidential or secret U.S. documents should be prosecuted. 22% think it is a ‘good thing’.

Oh shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere, you knew Daniel Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg was a friend of yours… Bradley E. Manning you’re no Daniel Ellsberg.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of justice…you’ve been punked.

How in the frak did we get here? Was it the ideological institualization of stupid… the crazy- hole, Big Lie, co-opting of regular folks’ inner monologues so that they would vote against their self-interests?

Was it the incessant worshipping of all things military? Fly-bys,and medals of honor,and colour presentations at every single sporting event of note, wars of choice with a roulette wheel supporting our ‘tribes with flags’ du jour … Eisenhower no doubt for many years has been convulsing in his tomb.

Was it the full-out psych-ops perpetrated by our solons to keep the shoppers happy? Employment improvement through division causing derision, retail improvement through survivor bias causing folks to contemplate their lyin’ eyes, magical deflators applying Potemkin lipstick to an economy of craters?

Perhaps all to some measure.

Eras have markers, signifying events, as it were, that although part of the scenery at the time become a sentence or two that future history texts are built on.

For my demographic -give or take a couple weeks am the very last of the boomer generation- the snippet of our times is best elucidated by the epigram of ‘ failure to liquidate the insolvent banksters, to apply the acid-bath of price discovery, to effect the principles of capitalism long espoused by the plutocracy, to rich folks’ bad speculative bets… has liquidated a large part of the productive economy.’

It is the wellspring of derision marking the inflection that, to be gentle, will for some future student be seen as the ‘transition’ of the American empire.

The solutions are quite simple hence the arguments made by the aristocracy are by necessity so complex. Failure to stand for, and embrace, the simple is why we fall for the complex.

As an example, if the markets are the dataset of humanity, then given the ridiculous complexity of the latter, theories on the former must be comparably so.

And yet the methodology that generates…

AUDJPY sell
AUDUSD buy
AUDCAD sell
AUDCHF buy/sell
CADCHF buy/sell
CADJPY buy/sell
EURAUD sell
EURGBP buy/sell
EURJPY sell
EURUSD buy/sell
EURCAD sell
EURCHF buy/sell
GBPCHF sell
GBPJPY sell
GBPUSD buy/sell
GBPAUD sell
GBPCAD buy/sell
NZDJPY buy/sell
NZDUSD buy
NZDCHF buy
USDCAD buy/sell
USDJPY buy/sell
ZC buy/sell
CL3 buy
GX buy/sell
YM buy
DX buy/sell
GC3 buy
ES buy
SI3 buy
ZS sell
ZB buy
ZW buy

… with proprietary linked entry stops and exit stops and limits (for next Sunday-Monday trading) works to the utter bafflement of the adherents of the failed-theory of randomwalking.

The Book of Books states that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like … children.

Indeed.

My eight year old has a better sense of things then the bloviating publicans and libs.

Unfortunately the simple children will become complex adults. And verily, complexity for complexity’s sake is most certainly the road to perdition.

Although the truths you hold to be most dear are lies told to you by liars, much like Rollins’ iron which never lies… neither do the charts.

So back to ‘em.

AM out.