Tilting at Windmills

Indeed, I believe you are quite right to abjure this delusory modern day jousting at windmills by the environauts. However, the solution to the current deleveraging of the multi-trillion dollar speculative derivatives bubble is neither neo-Keysnianism nor gold bug/Ron Paul phantasmagoria. Both of these mindsets hold that wealth is a material "thing." Either money for the Keynesian monetarist or some quantity of gold for the anti National Bank Jacksonian populists. These are just two sides of the same coin. The crisis we have now to overcome is due to the abandonment of the funding of our physical economy. It has broken down. Trying to save the bubble of speculation is like a doctor trying to save the cancer rather than the patient. We need to put the speculators through chapter 11 bankruptcy and set up a new credit creation mechanism not controlled by Wall Street ala the Federal Reserve. We need credit investments in infrastructure, rail, power grids, waterways, and power production, i.e. nuclear. It doesn't matter if we hoard all the gold in the world in our fallout shelters with our tinfoil hats. Investment in that which progressively improves the standard of living is what we must move into. If we don't then I'm afraid we will live to sorely regret it.

Fickle Fingers

This is a scream, although I'm exhibiting a longer middle finger for the financial traders.




"Abstract

Prenatal androgens have important organizing effects on brain development and future behavior. The second-to-fourth digit length ratio (2D:4D) has been proposed as a marker of these prenatal androgen effects, a relatively longer fourth finger indicating higher prenatal androgen exposure. 2D:4D has been shown to predict success in highly competitive sports. Yet, little is known about the effects of prenatal androgens on an economically influential class of competitive risk taking—trading in the financial world. Here, we report the findings of a study conducted in the City of London in which we sampled 2D:4D from a group of male traders engaged in what is variously called “noise” or “high-frequency” trading. We found that 2D:4D predicted the traders' long-term profitability as well as the number of years they remained in the business. 2D:4D also predicted the sensitivity of their profitability to increases both in circulating testosterone and in market volatility. Our results suggest that prenatal androgens increase risk preferences and promote more rapid visuomotor scanning and physical reflexes. The success and longevity of traders exposed to high levels of prenatal androgens further suggests that financial markets may select for biological traits rather than rational expectations."

Lucrezia Borgia: Epitome of an Historical Lesson

Diane Yvonne Ghirardo has taken a page for the method of historical investigation from Dupin's purloined letter of Poe's fable. Fiction: which is stranger and more real than the flatulent pedantry of empiricism. Ms. Ghirardo, society owes you an undying debt of gratitude (of historic proportions) for your detective work.

While history's dunces compliment one another on their oh so profound erudition like Goya's educated donkeys. Their deviltry having even pulled the wool over Shakespeare's eyes anent republican Machiavelli, they have scoured the sewers of Rome with their poison pens. But Lucrezia has cleared herself by draining the stinking fens and doing what no mere diabolic female was meant to do: the work of Ben Franklin's Mrs Dogood.

Hail to thee - most divine ladies all. Your ethereal irony has thwarted the pestilent lackeys of the creeping Hoggian ilk.

Leibniz' prophetic method

If Newton had even reformulated Kepler's laws by inversion to produce the gravity inverse square formula, it would at least be somewhat of an accomplishment. But he did not. He stole this from the Royal Society "gopher" Robert Hooke. This, of course, is in keeping with his nonsensical claim to be the inventor of the calculus.

Now, here we have arrived at the denouement of applying a wretched philosophy to our economy fully in keeping with Newton's avatar John Locke. It is quite lawful that he (Newton)wound up as the chief bean counter in Britain. For what else monetarism but an alchemical belief in the magic of the market place, fit for a predecessor of Aleister Crowley?

However, as Leibniz informs us, the world is so constructed that we can be rescued from the economic pendulum in the pit, as if by a miracle, so long as we apply our native ingenuity to do the good and throw off the mental shackles which bind us, lo these many years.

The Fed's Insane Madhatter Gambit

The problem here is the simple inability to fess up by Mr. Krugman, et al. that we have been living in a chimerical, nightmarish fairyland of post industrial/information age/consumer driven false economy for lo these many years since the 1960s. It is now come tumbling down. Alas, wheelbarrows full of greenbacks won’t put us back to the direction of a technologically vectored producer oriented economy. This sad nostrum is as old as mud and a lot more toxic. Weimar, anyone?

What went wrong?

Well, since the economics blogs are on the subject of what was done to quell speculative excess in the 1930s, the "800 lb gorilla in the room" happens to be Bretton Woods. Why? What led to derivatives (recently rightly referred to in Congressional testimony as the latest incarnation of Bucket Shop practices) engulfing the world monetary system? It was none other than the end of the system of settling imbalance of trade among nations in gold. After the Nixon administration pulled the plug on this in 1971 the scene was set for a global casino of currency speculation. One bubble after another was created and blown out. Now we are at the point of either attempting insanely to further hypothecate our economies or to return to the Bretton Woods system of stability.

Question for Paul Krugman

Mr. Krugman, would you have advocated during the collapses of the South Sea Island, the Tulip, the Mississippi Land, et al. speculative bubbles that governments should have simply printed up more such promissory notes to give the speculators proper government backing? What does this do but promote a more vicious hypothecation of the self same bubble? By the way, it is wrong to characterize this crisis as resulting from merely the latest incarnation of monetarist speculation, i.e. the housing bubble. The credit default swap derivatives the are undergoing de-leveraging are but a small proportion of the cancerous multi hundred trillion derivatives "markets." Until this insane gambling casino mentality is extirpated and replaced any attempt to prop it up is foredoomed. You can bet on that.

Honorable men ?

If you recall the congressional testimony during Oliver North Iran Contra hearings, one thing that conspicuously stood out was so many Republican "character witnesses" incessantly referring to North as an "honorable man." Yesterday it was widely reported that John McCain stood up for Barrack Obama in like manner when some woman at one of his rallies assailed Obama as an "Arab." McCain, pulling the microphone from her hands, declaimed that Obama was an honorable man, or some words to that effect. Well now, it seems that the old saw "it takes one to know one" perfectly applies in this case. McCain, after all, dumped his ailing crippled wife for a young beer heiress and then went on to choose a ex-beauty pageant Governor as his running mate. Why wouldn't such a man admire how Obama parlayed his many years long connections with the Ayers family into a successful run for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, all the while keeping it at arms length. What was it that Roosevelt said about Joe Kennedy?

Prediction from Thingumbobesquadamus

Today, Messer George Bush will regale the nation with this needful admonition: "Remember, my fellow Americans prosperity is just around the corner." ... or words to that effect.

Dance with a corpse, anyone?

I'm afraid it is much worse than merely losing one's spectacles. The bankers' ball has admitted a number of putrefying corpses onto the dance floor. They tell us, imploringly, they are just now oh so sure that if only we will believe. Yet I'm afraid all the perfume they have applied so far hasn't done the trick. Why, the erstwhile bon-vivant suitors are perspiring off the dance floor holding their sides and retching. Such a scene is unheard of. Lack-a-day.

Way too little, way too late

While today's NY Times article exposing the SEC does a service after the fact in uncovering some of the chicanery unleashed by the pro deregulation crowd, the economic problem that has been posed from the beginning of the creation of exotic and esoteric derivative instruments of speculation goes unchallenged. However, it is the mindset that created these speculative instruments that are now "deleveraging" on a gargantuan scale that is threatening us all with a financial collapse of historic proportions. Until and unless that mindset that created this disaster is effectively exposed and replaced by a return to sound credit policies instead of attempts to bailout the malefactors at the expense of the real economy, all such analyses, however enlightening are merely the proverbial whistling past the graveyard.

As those that refuse to see

Well now, do you really think that printing up billions of dollars in bailouts will do anything other than cause a hyperinflation like the prewar Weimar mefo bill or current Zimbabwe cases? You illiterate bloggers have lost your marbles (if you ever had any.) How moronic is the true rallying cry of the Fed and Treasury: "Save the bubble, blow it up bigger than ever, that's the ticket!" There are none so blind..

Who lost the debate?

We are facing a great depression in this nation again. Neither of these candidates have a clue. And yet all the political blogs and television commentators mindlessly carry on about debating style. Barack Obama and John McCain had absolutely nothing to say about what to do to get the nation out of this disaster. Who lost the debate? America.

Treason

For the Congress to vote for a bill which abrogates the constitutionally mandated separation of powers is prima fascie treason.

Night of the Living Debt

This bailout is like the night of the living dead. The feds are trying to make the bankrupt financial houses walk after they are dead. Pretty soon the stench of rotting flesh will force the populace to hold their noses, retch, and flee.

FLASH: Theorists spot Hidden Dimensions

It has come to my attention that the notorious blackboard photo of the PAMELA satellite's data does not merely further validate dark matter WIMP parameters. It seems that after a late night confabulation the two distinguished professors Drs. Kraus and Scherrer, to whom I have so lately delivered my heartfelt panegyrics, have lit upon a remarkable discovery. To wit, by a new technique of information neural network fuzzy logic coupled with a reversed cloaking superluminal device, they have retrieved the reverse side of said blackboard, where it turns out there is proof positive of the postulated hidden (until now) dimensions of string theory! The reason that this has remained under wraps for now is that given the current meltdown of the derivatives markets this could put the kibosh on any further funding for the Large Hadron Collider, since its raison d'etre is now in doubt. Therefore, don't expect to see a paper on the arXiv from our two illustrious protagonists, it has been embargoed indefinitely. Alas.

All that flesh is heir to...

Some concept in the body of art and science of a nested transfinite sequence of singularities that produce a necessary pathway for global redefinition of work function of the three domains of connative existence is evinced from time immemorial. All expression across all possible fields of endeavor that coheres in outlook with this perspective is truthful. Moreover, this is perfectly equivalent to what aesthetics designates the beautiful and the statecraft happiness.

In science, astrobiology is situated at the cusp of the transition that links the domain of the non living with the living. This arena will provide for the foreseeable future of humanity an unending and enduring orientation in mission. All physics and biophysics hinges on this transition. Likewise, the transition from the biosphere to the noosphere, which as yet is only defined negatively by the ill conceived failures of neuropsychology or worse information theory, will define a further such mission.

The soul sick plagues of positivism and its coordinate methodological absurdities will be relegated to history's garbage heap as sure as has been the mythological pantheon of the Olympian gods.

A Gorey Truth: A Deduction from Certain Premises

It is the case that the Internet is indisputably a major, if not the major cause of enormous amount of energy usage around the world. Furthermore, it is beyond dispute that former Senator Gore profoundly and publicly prides himself as a major player of promoting said Internet (if not its inventor.) It being the case that our global climate change is putting the fate of humanity, nay all living beings in peril (as averred and propounded most vociferously to widespread renown and accolades by the aforementioned Mr. Gore.) Furthermore, the headlong promotion of a perverse technology which so threatens us all being akin to a palpably criminal enterprise, it would seem that those purveyors of this poison, including DARPA (a.k.a. the military industrial complex) be summarily charged with crimes against humanity. This certainly may be brought up in a court of law commensurate under the provisions of hate crime. It is a crime which will destroy in its course perhaps everybody and every living thing. It is therefor beyond the promotion of simple genocide. In fact, it has been hypothesized by serious scientists that the very earth may be plunged off its orbit by climate change. Indeed there can be no greater degree of criminality ever contemplated. Q.E.D.

(I say: to the Hague with Mr. Gore and his ilk!)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: opportune forcing moments ? (Or more of the same balderdash?)

The problem here, ladies and gentlemen, is only to be situated from the standpoint of an Hamiltonian alternative to the nation's existential economic throes. For the remedy is to use debt as a means to grow those sectors that are in a ramshackle state of decay. This was the response of Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt to the enormity of like crises facing our nation in their day. A word to the wise: please educate yourselves, while we still have time and dump such silly palaver re bailouts vs. privatizations-- while we still have time...

Ireland saves civilization again

Hooray for the Irish! Jonathan Swift is smiling from above. How can a treaty that would be rejected by any nation's voters be disguised by "technocrats" as anything other than a naked power grab? These are the disgusting Malthusians who would oh so modestly propose the end to sovereignty. Let us send them all packing back to whatever oligarchical hell whence they came!