Repost and Add-on : Destroy this invisible government ... dissolve the unholy alliance between business and corrupt politics ...wink

'Don't believe everything you breathe
Someone keeps sayin I'm insane to complain
Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate.'
-Beck

You see I may be a Christian but I am also a capitalist. And I will defend our capitalist system against all enemies unless there's a way to profit from its' demise.'
-Stephen Colbert

'Your motto is God,guns,guts,and American.'-CNN interviewer

'Actually its' God, guns,guts,and American pick-up trucks.' -Missouri car dealer that is giving away free AK-47s with purchase of a truck

'Some might wonder why God is included in a motto that also includes guns.'-CNN interviewer

'You don't have a problem with God do you?'-Missouri car dealer

Originally posted December 17, 2009 with brief add-on:


Populism is best defined as the juxtaposition of "the people" with "the elites". Its' flag has been hoisted by the left and the right, the irrational and the rational, and its manifestation per the prevailing zeitgeist is often appropriated by a demagogue.

For Ben Tillman, African Americans were the scourge of white society; for James Michael Curley, Anglo-Saxons were the bane of the browbeaten Irish; and for Joseph McCarthy, liberal elites(commies) were an evil upon America. They all fought on behalf of and for the protection of the 'good way of life.' - they all fought against that which stood in opposition to a presumed American norm.

To borrow liberally from Sigmund Neumann's, 'The Steadfast Rules of the Demagogue', and Douglas Walton's,'One-Sided Arguments: A Dialectical Analysis of Bias' : the most recognizable traits of a demagogue are the simplicity of message content and an entirely unilateral point-of-view presentation - summarized as unidimensionality.

The demagogue appeals to the crowd and commonly adds the logical fallacies of appeals to pity, appeals to reverence and appeals to personality as well as other rhetorical devices such as omission not for literary elegance or brevity but rather for gain, influence and deception. The demagogue is anti-Aristotelian, in that rhetoric is not seen as the counterpart of the dialectic -instead, there is no desire to reconcile using opposing views but rather the demagogue presents a view in opposition to some Other. The Other is responsible for cultural and social upheaval, the Other is to blame for all current adverse conditions and "we" the true Americans, in opposition, need to uphold all that is good.

The demagogue capitalizes on vulnerabilities due to ignorance and fear.

The first Populist party in America called itself the Greenback Party. It opposed the shift from greenbacks, paper money issued after the American Civil War, to a bullion based standard. Its platform supported an income tax, an eight hour day, and called for allowing women to vote. After 1884 it was no longer a force in American politics.

The Populist party in the United States came about in the 1892 election. Its' platform called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, civil service reform, direct election of Senators, a working day of eight hours, and the nationalization of telegraphs, telephones and railroads. This party was gestated for economic reasons namely the desire to repeal the gold standard to counter high deflation in agricultural prices. The party was co-opted by the Democratic Party of 1896 and never recovered from its' defeat.

The platform of the Progressive Party of 1912, formed by Theodore Roosevelt, was 'to destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between business and corrupt politics [it]... is the first task of statesmanship of the day.' The platform called for women's suffrage, recall of judicial decisions, easier amendment of the U.S. Constitution, social welfare legislation for women and children, workers' compensation, limited injunctions in strikes, farm relief, revision of banking to assure an elastic currency, required health insurance in industry, new inheritance taxes and income taxes, improvement of inland waterways, and limitation of naval armaments. The Progressive Party did poorly in the 1914 elections and faded away.

The United States Progressive Party of 1924 was a continuation of the Progressive Party of 1912, after gaining only 17% of the popular vote in the 1924 elections it disbanded.

The last true populist party was Huey Long's 'Share our Wealth' movement begun during the Great Depression. Its' platform was:

'No person would be allowed to accumulate a personal net worth of more than 100 to 300 times the average family fortune, which would limit personal assets to between $1.5 million and $5 million. Income taxes would be levied to ensure this. Annual capital levy taxes would be assessed on all persons with a net worth exceeding $1 million.

Every family was to be furnished with a homestead allowance of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country. Every family was to be guaranteed an annual family income of at least $2,000 to $2,500, or not less than one-third of the average annual family income in the United States. Yearly income, however, cannot exceed more than 100 to 300 times the size of the average family income.

An old-age pension would be made available for all persons over 60.

To balance agricultural production, the government will preserve/store surplus. This is made so no food is wasted.

Veterans are paid what they are owed.

Education and training for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions for training in the professions and vocations of life.

The raising of revenue and taxes for the support of this program was to come from the reduction of swollen fortunes from the top, as well as for the support of public works to give employment whenever there may be any slackening necessary in private enterprise.'

Huey Long's slogan was 'Every Man a King'. The movement died with his assassination.

Not every demagogue is a populist and not every populist is a demagogue, but when the two combine it is often combustible. The most salient example would be the conspiracist scapegoating in Germany promulgated as national socialist populism and articulated by a failed painter who did not become a German citizen until 1932.

Fast-forward to today( 12/17/09):

Rasmussen Reports : 'In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP. Among Republican voters, 39% say they’d vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.'

And what is the platform of this nascent political movement?

Limited government, fiscal restraint, opposition to further stimulus spending and a determination to push back against "a federal government that is too big, too intrusive and all-too-eager to seize power from the states." Repeal the death tax, implement a flat tax, keep the internet tax-free, control the border, support free trade, personal accounts instead of social security, school choice, medicare reform, healthcare reform etc...

A populist movement with 21st century characteristics. It will most probably be co-opted by one of the established parties.

It may even marry up with a demagogue.

LA Times : Obama's new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.

The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable.

Move along nothing to see here.

Wink.


Add-on (09/16/10)

Obviously the Manchurian Mountain Mama is continuing to gain steam. What seemed obvious to this fella is becoming more generally observed. Reading Heilemann and Halperin's 'Game Change' as well as other anecdotal accounts of Lady Palin suggest that we truly are about to live in even more 'interesting times'. At the risk of being cataloged at a future date let me add one final riposte to this once and future candidate, in the language that a regina pravus might understand:

'These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.'
- Proverbs 6:16-19

Electile dysfunction, Nancy Capitalists sans compunction, raconteuring with gumption...damn dirty apes.

Chris Whalen says that 'The income foregone by individual and corporate savers and transferred to the banks is something closer to $600 billion annually or nearly $1 trillion in total.'

You mean that the failure to liquidate the insolvent banksters, to dip rich folks' bad speculative bets into the acid bath of price discovery, has liquidated a large part of the productive economy?

Seriously hoocoodanode?

Just for the heck of it asked Senor Google how many hits on the intertubes come up for say QSPE and Wells Fargo over the last three months... answer? ... 7! And one was from me per ZH blog on 04/09/2010! My oh my Alice. If 1.7 trillion or so worth less than 50 cents on the dollar can vanish down the randomwalkers' rabbithole without even a gasp verily anything is possible.

Mark Pittman is convulsing in his tomb.

At no time do their hands leave their arms folks; the middle class for their next trick as the 'vanishing bird' smashed at the bottom of the now empty cage.

Just for chuckles, prithee what are the comics saying today?

Deutsche dilutes itself 30% cause Basel might make 'em not count the secret capital?

Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän preparing for River Styx!

SEC reignites that 'investigation' into Lehman's fraudulent conveyance mimicry cause Dickie Fuld won't stop griping?

'The lights are growing dim Otto. I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.'
- Duke (Repo Man)

Motorcycle Cop: Whatcha got in the trunk?
J. Frank Parnell: Oh... You don't wanna look in there.
(Repo Man)

In the GM IPO the carservatorship's (patent still pending) total equity of $23.9 billion includes $30.2 billion of goodwill? From Government Motors to Goodwill Motors?

My God...it's full of cars.

Equities drift up 'cause, after levering, the Federales hedge fund at Eccles spins about 50 billion from straw to maw this past week?

I couldn't do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who are those guys?

BLS pulls a number out of their tailbone (why even fabricate an effort eh? gosh just one hour a week constitutes part-time employment dontchaknow), half of all youngsters are unemployed, deceleration widespread, plutocracy warns that the arsonists may burn again if the waterfall (tax cuts) are turned off, the repubs who chortled that when Obama was coming in that the subpoenas will fly (what? did somebody do something wrong?) are now threatening that, vuja de, if they get in the subpoenas will fly and Feddie Mac is introducing ... wait for it... minimal down payments, lower minimum credit stores, no appraisals and no mortgage insurance!!!

Have you left no sense of decency?

Electile dysfunction, Nancy Capitalists sans compunction, raconteuring with gumption.

Damn dirty apes...

The hardest button to button, meatballs for nuttin, fiscal mcguffins versus a contrarian somethin'

When Timmy G went to Euroland to pitch stress tests for what ailed 'em was it a set-up? After all, it is not so much a race to the bottom as it is a pace to a bottom. QE2 can't sail until Euroland hits the rocks again. We can't let their upcoming crisis go to waste.

If the U.S. stress tests were I.Q. tests, the EU tests were, in comparison, measuring sanity... as in over the long term only the insane would believe them.

For example did you know that part of most all big German banks balance sheets' consists of 'secret capital' (seriously that is what it is called) - loans from the state with non-disclosed terms. You didn't? Why, cause it's secret folks!

An example of German efficiency , they don't have to fight transparency all the way to the Supremes.

Sniffing down the banksters' rathole has already started on the Continent and believe you me, our national security apparatus, scratch that, the rating agencies, will step in whenever the planners and thinkers cast the 'appropriate' runes.

Ha! Mr .Money, one might say, the Federales could never plan so well. Certainly though they do plan, everyone does, as they paint themselves into the corner of the round-roomed recovery, fervently they beseech the Rhyming Gods to let the second easing mouse get the cheese. 'Tis but the matter of timing the trap.

Be that as it may ...let me interrupt this rant for something completely different.

It seems all the rage now to talk about depression, exhort the birth death model, and parse the cornucopia of fraudulence conveyance that is government statistics, with the only positive spin imaginable being some version of ' I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe. but at least I'm enjoying the ride.'

Yes, surprise, surprise, the demand restoration project is not working yet. And?

Let me spin a contrarian tale, the silver in the clouds of this approaching storm.

If you're going through hell, verily 'tis only one option, keep going.

When change is afoot you have two choices, you can either grab the surfboard and ride the wave or you can let it crash over you.

Do not count on government to save you, look in the mirror for your salvation.

I assure you that the majority of citizens on this planet do not have such an advantage.

As horrible as this will feel, in hindsight something wonderful is about to happen.

America needs to get its' mojo back, one citizen at a time.

Don't be afraid.

Let's face it, as Americans we collectively think history does not apply to us or at least we have mastered it- we have grown up as the dominant power, we have basked in the fruits of that glory.

As such we, the citizenry, although troubled still ache to believe that this is temporary, a transient blip, happy days soon will be here again...policies flowing from on high will mimic that optimism and in doing so will underestimate (at least 'officially') the dilemma and prolong the process.

My entire life have always rallied against the tyranny of petty knowledge. Folks that wield their 'secrets' like a club have always generated intense vitriol from this fella. Knowledge is nothing more than an acquired thing. You can learn anything if you put your mind to it. How? Just do it. Why? Because you can.

Now, more than ever in my generation's lifetime,a broad intelligence is critical. We have stuffed the pig on the scales of fate. Through our desire to be prophets we have ceased to be makers of our own fate. On a macro level but not for the individual.

Despite all the digital ink spent on the failings of America, especially in light of the ‘I Can’t Believe it’s not Capitalism’ Plan generated in response to the ‘What Just Happened Crisis’… hope is not dead, progress has not been outlawed, justice is not forbidden, and evolution is not off the table.

The fire of liberty exists, the embers of truth still glow. As long as one voice stands to speak truth to power,the dream of this country lives and can be expressed by each and every one of us.

We are Americans dammit, and that word, yes, still has noble meaning.

There is one blessing fostered upon Americans that can't be denied. We can reinvent ourselves. We are not beholden to anything other than our imagination, we can make out of clay what our minds and our hands desire. They can only take from us what we abrogate; they can only lie to us if we refuse to put in the work to know the truth.

It is not a question of being part of the solution or part of the problem. Change does not have to be consistent with someone else’s plan. Change comes from within. To make a difference outwardly one must first find that difference within.

Get off your ass America, over the long-term if you will it to be, your future is so bright, we'll all be shorting shades.

The hardest button to button, meatballs for nuttin, fiscal mcguffins versus a contrarian somethin'

Believe it and you will be it.

At Fed's End. Hoist with their own petar; and 't shall go hard. The world as bard, as they play their last card.

The boomer generation has born witness to the greatest private misallocation of capital in the modern era, dot-com, followed by the greatest public misallocation of capital in the modern era, blutarsky interest rates and banksters too bankrupt to go broke.

As we continue our walk through the fiscal wilderness it is fitting that 40 days and 40 nights (80 years) brings us 1932-2012. (1929-2009 being just a coincidence, of course.)

What shall we call the next generation? The busted?

The rhyming of the greatest separation of wealth since 1928 brings the spectre of the first full-blown deflationary episode post-WW2 to the forefront once again. The prevailing chestnut that deflation will result in depression is for the most part, per the historical record, nonsense. Worldwide, over the last couple centuries, there were 65 episodes of deflation without depression and 21 of depression without deflation, 65 of 73 deflation episodes had no depression, and 8 of 29 depression episodes had no deflation. Nearly 90% of the episodes with deflation did not have depression. (Atkeson&Kehoe, 2004)

Of course back then we had sound money not found money.

Deflation and depression were interlinked in GD1 of course, but not quite the way most folks believe it was. Inflation expectations were well anchored in GD1 and the black diamond in CPI to mark the onset of that crisis was symmetrical to the pop in CPI in the late 30s. Hyperinflation did not ensue because the 'deflation' more rightly should have been called disinflation, and of course deflation is the midwife of hyperinflation (caught you cribbin' Mr. Edwards.) The disinflation of the 30s was reversed with a 40% currency devaluation, the belief in wizards was strong and well met.

The empirical point to consider though is that this Great Depression is occurring in a sovereign that has the world's reserve currency with a national security apparatus that includes the rating agencies. A volatile mix of mischief that allows folks to not only dispel the administration of medicine but promote the advocacy of alchemy while bloviating on how deflation is truly the hemlock of the people, well at least some of the people.

How does this end? To the sound of great applause, folly's denouement ... and then a long period of silence.

In many ways it is the age old story of Emperors and Pirates, deflation being the Jolly Roger, and a headlong drive into oblivion with the argument that forcing the issue will resolve it. Rummy's chestnut of "If you can't solve a problem, make it bigger."

Methinks the Federales have one 'futile and stupid gesture' brewing to can-kick the ebbing empire, guns and butter redux, although this time perhaps more appropriately phrased as buns and gutter. Ultimately regaled, for those of more modest deportment, as Financial Pornography 101 : Gangbanging a String.

The Fed will end, 2016 is circled on my calendar, hoist with their own petar; and 't shall go hard. The world as bard, as they play their last card.

Financial Pulchritude, Ringfence the Multitude, Federales with Attitude, Brother can you spare a Rhyme?

"The worst is over without a doubt."
"American labor may now look to the future with confidence"
"We have hit bottom and are on the upswing"
- James J. Davis Secretary of Labor. (June,Aug,Sept 1930 respectively)

"In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope-nothing of man."
- Former President Calvin Coolidge, (1933)

'He that trusteth in his riches shall fall; but the righteous shall flourish as a branch.'
- Proverbs 11:28

In 1929 the top 0.1% of Americans had a combined income equal to the bottom 42%.

In 2004, the top 0.1% of Americans had a combined pre-tax income of the poorest 120 million people (approximately 40%.)

In 1929 the top 1% of households represented 44.2% of wealth and in 1933 they represented 33.3%. On the second data point hangs the prophetic sword with horsehair splintering over the Oracle at Eccles.

As of 2007, the top 1% of households owned 42.7% of all financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home.) The bottom 80% percent? Just 7%.

As of 2007, income inequality in the United States was at an all-time high for the past 95 years, with the top .01% (yes, that is one-hundredth of one percent) receiving 6% of all U.S. wages.

In 1928, the top 10 percent of earners received 49.29 percent of total income. In 2007, the top 10 percent of earners garnered 49.74 percent.

In 1928, the top 1 percent of earners received 23.94 percent of income. In 2007, the top 1 percent took home 23.5 percent.

And the lessons learned by our blessed leaders concerning this Great Depression? Prices cannot go down and wealth inequality needs to tick up. An assemblage of price-distorting wizards locked arm-in-arm struggling to defeat the creative destruction blizzard. The insouciance of elites and the Antoinette economy. Exhibit thyself to a public that may hiss thee, bemoan the solons. Let them eat debt!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? said the Roman poet Juvenal. Who will guard the guards themselves?

Why, pronounce our modern day guards, we will. Trust us but don't task us lest you see trust in us lost to your peril.

'Don't Task Don't Smell', the central plank of the 'I Can't Believe it's Not Capitalism Plan' has given us Sugar Mountain, where stupidity is cupidity.

The cold hard fact of our age is that the bankrupt ideology of the rich that had greatly succeeded in drafting the inner monologue of regular folks so that they would vote against their self-interests is colliding head-on with a Mr. Market that is a bit pissed off that we've inflated it out of the business cycle for the last quarter century. (AM Rule #6)

After World War 2, our blessed leaders, impressed by German 'organizational' skills crafted a policy of manufacture of consent.Over time these techniques moved to the economic realm in an attempt to manufacture content.Federales now risk the manufacture of contempt, for it is only a Great Depression if they say it is. (AM Rule #1)

Truly we need a hero or it is generation zero.

Financial Pulchritude, Ringfence the Multitude, Federales with Attitude, Brother can you spare a Rhyme?

Phat, Plummed and Cupid is no way to go through strife son.

The splinter of our disconnect. Fade to back.

Scene 1:

6 year old daughter had been misbehaving during the course of a day. Wife did the old 'wait until your father comes home.' When I arrived home just as the wife was about to regale me with the little one's transgressions, my daughter 'waved her off' and walked towards me with arms extended to support her point; 'Daddy I am still just a little girl, I am going to make mistakes.'

Scene 2:

Driving home from my wife's parents the other night.
She notices that our son (4yrs) was playing with a toy...

Mom: Is that your toy?

Son: No Mama, Grandpa and Nana said I could have it for a week.

AM: I think he is making that up.

Son : (Pause) I changed my mind.

Son: Its' craziness Mama.

Wife: What's craziness ?

Son: Its' craziness when you take a toy that doesn't belong to you.

Son : (Pause)

Son : And I'm a crazy man Mama.

Scene 3:

'Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.'
- William Shakespeare (Richard III),

Fade to Back:

'There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth -- not going all the way, and not starting."
-Buddha

The first two above are from my children but it is a fractal of the Federales for most certainly crazy men do make mistakes.

The crystallizing mistake of our age, the crime of the century writ large, the splinter of our disconnect... is this epigram: failure to liquidate the insolvent banksters, to dip rich folks' bad speculative bets into the acid bath of price discovery, has liquidated a large part of the productive economy. And so the blast beat of the cyclic drum plays on as we fade to back.

The American Empire came to a fork in the road and instead of taking it we morphed it into a can.

A quarter century of being prophets of our fate, of the Great Moderation, scratch that the Great Modification, of deficits not mattering, of models over history, is serving up the middle class as a burnt offering and may result in our not being masters of our intermediate future as we black diamond towards the denouement of the trusted.

Just got back from a Colorado Springs conference and had the 'same conversation' once again this time with the cab driver. A decade out from California, the fella was a luxury real estate developer, and he shared two stories which characterizes our zeitgeist.

The first is that of a former client who has a 25 million dollar home (well that was what they paid for it) with several million in equity. They would like to refinance with the bank but they can't because the bank has absolutely no idea how to value it, couldn't even give 'em a number or a range.

The second is that this cabdriving victim of the misallocation of productive capital plans to stock up on guns and ammo and, offering the caveat of 'don't laugh with what I'm going to tell you Mr. Stranger in the back seat', has plans to go to Alaska with a portable home (I forget the indigenous term) to live of the land.

Being a contrarian, I suggested to him that his conversation was one that had been oft-repeated as of late (he agreed his associates were all chortling the same) and suggested that if we do get shaked and baked either through gravity dislocations (astro stuff), history relocations (war following financial crisis), or popular sniping (the manufacture of contempt for it is only a Great Depression if they say it is) the big cities will probably be the safest place to be...

After all, if the s$&% comes down do you really want to be out in the hinterlands with every other fella loaded to bare? Sounds like Mad Max to me.

If I knew the way would most probably share it, but he who has a crystal ball most certainly ends up with a mouthful of broken glass.

This I feel to be true... it is a Great Depression but with different characteristics than our First. You can read the intro to this blog as well as the inception date, your humble blogger dropped the tagline of the Great Depression of 2007 prior to the Noblesse Oblige even calling the recession.

In GD1 what was a fella to do? Collect cigarette butts on the street, sit on the porch, listen to the radio, or mayhaps go down to the Bowery and get in trouble?

Now the choices are a cornucopia of low-cost to no-cost diversion. Juvenal would be proud. Watch a movie , read a book, read a paper, or listen to music all for free via the intertubes and collect the government check. All until that zombie movie comes to your local cineplex entitled 99 Weeks Later.

Among the empirical evidence of our current dilemma are current unemployment levels being empirically worse than the worse levels of the Great Depression Volume 1 - if we apply the same measurement metric. Seriously, you can look it up!

Another nugget is the comparable extremes met in the separation of wealth in 1928 and 2007, which has actually upticked through 2010. B.S. Bernanke certainly did learn the 'lessons' of GD1, did he not?

My trading sensei berated me a few days ago in my commenting that this is GD2, with the bromide 'look at all the affluence around us!' My reply was have you ever read newspapers from 1930 and 1931? - Internally I verbalized Hemingway's chestnut...'{there are two ways a man goes broke}, slowly,and then all at once.' Once upon a rhyme is a'comin.

Here in Cook County homes over $500,000 are not to be foreclosed on (add-on : >$500K foreclosures represent about 1% of total per The King Report), the banks don't want to take the hit, the overextended upper middle class with horsehair splintering probably choosing to go to Disneyland (or Nordstrom's?) as they squat in their hut and dream of... I don't know... joining the cab driver in Alaska?

With the upper echelons of America contributing a disproportionate share of consumer spending, and their primary asset frozen in the ember of a 13-16 year downtrend where the buyers are lower and the sellers are higher (most probably chemically since the securitization market for jumbo has gone dumbo) the cyclic clock is ticking, the alarm anticipated, that will start wholesale regurgitation to flippers who will counterintuititively drag the 'cancer clearing' out as the fast money waits for the the Groundhog Day bounce back of the ever-imminent recovery right around the corner of a round room.

A generational circle smirk as it were.

And with trillions of meatballs thrown at the problem, the reserves at the Fed being nothing more than a dip financing for a generational workout, private demand is down ticking for the first time since 1928? Viva la V-shaped scratch that seeds abounding scratch that nascent scratch that unusually uncertain recovery!

If the inflection point between inflation and deflation is believing in wizards or believing your lying eyes the Oracle at Eccles better fire up the jets prior to meeting with the Jackholios cause people are squinting at the eye chart and rubbing sus ojos.

Now is the splinter of our disconnect
Made glorious summer by this sun of Ben;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of our equity buried.

Fade to Back.

All good things must come to an end ... or perhaps a new beginning.

Fractal-based theories of market behavior explain discontinuous movements such as the May Trix Flash Crash.

As opposed to supposing that the bubbles in your portfolio are as random as the bubbles in your soda pop, a fractal approach concedes that bubbles are a certainty.

'Fundamentals' most certainly do matter although the use of the term is not what the conventional wisdom perceives.

Even a cursory examination of modern financial history would seem to consign the squawk of randomwalk to the febrile dustbin of history and yet the arrogance of unlimited self-determinism and the mastery of man above all motivates adherence to the ex-theory.

Like lemmings herded to discontinuous chasm after chasm, markets move in memoriam much to the prevailing wisdom's opprobrium.

For your humble blogger Mandelbrot was an eye-opener, but John Needham was the closer.

Over the last week I have automated a spreadsheet based on a 'fractal' theory where upon entering high, low, open, and close as well as ONE other indicator (proprietary from Needham), buy and sell orders can be triggered in ALL liquid markets, and quite successfully I might add.

Applying what Mr. Needham has taught in 'face-to-face' sessions and postulating as to what he will unveil in his foreshadowed 'next stages', have on this fella's spreadsheet clearly, and empirically, separated the winners from the 'sinners'.

Stunning, brilliant, simple, elegant, and in direct opposition to most every financial model known to man.

Now, gentle reader, you might ask why not publicise it Mr. Money, become rich and famous, dye your eyebrows and hair black, and become a billionaire, or at least write a book?

Well, the humble reply is as follows: 1) the entries in this blog do publicize it and have directed folks to Mr. Needham's website thedanielcode.com, however to truly appreciate his teachings one must attend a tutorial and he is coming to the States this summer ; 2) fame is way, way, overrated and I've already made enough coin for both myself and my children to be comfortable; 3) I've earned my grey hair thank you very much; 4) money is the root of all evil and should be treated with respect much like a weapon and a drug, it is so very hard to make abundance in in this world and not at the end of the day be a complete a&$%ole and 5) all I care about is feeding the kids, and from time to time the extended family, feeding a book would be torture.

And yet this is damn entertaining, and sharing, albeit anonymously, is caring.

The purpose of this blog was in part to figure it 'out', believing' it' to be 'it', with the understanding that it was much easier to make 'it' than to invest 'it'.

Now that I'm firmly ensconced into a future where I'm in 'it' to mint 'it' , the purpose of this blog is called into question.

So...will ponder that. Thoughts for now are that future entries may be limited, if any, and that the future focus will, predominantly, be on the premise that according to fractal theory 'self-similarity occurs on all scales' as well as an exploration of the more subtle concept of self-affinity which refers to a fractal whose pieces are scaled by different amounts in the x- and y-directions.

All good things must come to an end ...or perhaps a new beginning.

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

To be mindful is a discontinuous process, our senses allow us a glimpse at the perfect form (truth) but that view can often be distorted by the flickering fire of perception that illuminates the shapes we perceive to believe.

Peace.