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POPSWall Street Derivatives: So complex as to be "Computationall intractable" MORE: In principle, an alert buyer can detect tampering even if he doesn't know which asset classes are the lemons: he simply examines all 1000 CDOs and looks for a suspicious overrepresentation of some of the asset classes in some of the CDOs. What Arora et al. show is that is an NP-complete problem ("densest subgraph"). This problem is believed to be computationally intractable; thus, even the most alert buyer can't have enough computational power to do the analysis. Arora et al. show it's even worse than that: even after the buyer has lost a lot of money (because enough mortgages defaulted to devalue his "senior tranche"), he can't prove that that tampering occurred: he can't prove that the distribution of lemons wasn't random. This makes it hard to get recourse in court; it also makes it hard to regulate CDOs. Everyone on Wall Street... UP AGAINST THE WALL, THE LOT OF YOU BASTARDS!
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POPSThe commuting paradox I figured out a long time ago that I hate (hate hate HATE) commuting. A 40% raise would not be nearly enough to compensate me for adding an hour to my commute. (As it is, we live two miles from my work. I can take the bus, ride a bike, or walk. It's great.)
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POPSApril 15? Pay your dues, appreciate the benefits, and stop whining It's time to start pushing back against the bogus "tax reform" arguments. If you live in society you benefit from society, and you should pay your dues. More: In hunting and foraging cultures, the proportional tax rate is so high, said Dr. Bowles, that “even the Swedes would be impressed.” Take the case of the Ache tribe of Paraguay. Hunters bring their bounty back to a common pot. “The majority of calories are redistributed,” he said. “It ends up being something like a 60 percent income tax.” Pastoral and herding societies tend to be less egalitarian than foraging cultures, and yet, here, too, taxing is often used to help rectify extreme inequities. When a rich cattle farmer dies among the Tandroy of southern Madagascar, Dr. Bowles said, “The rich person’s stock is killed and eaten by everyone,” often down to the last head of cattle. “That’s a 100 percent inheritance tax.”
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POPSCapitalism is Not Your Friend <<<Unregulated, gluttonous capitalism didn't just "appear" when Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers started to cry "Uncle!". The signs were there long before that. This time when we finally realize that anything too big to fail should be nationalized, when we understand that government regulation should be mandatory when dealing with predators, let's not take a giant step backwards and slide back into "free enterprise capitalism", giving the reigns of financial power back to the people that only care about themselves.>>>
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POPSLET IT DIE: Douglas Rushkoff on the economy More: Now that the scheme we have mistaken for the real economy is collapsing under its own weight, however, it’s a whole lot easier to make these arguments. And, if anything, it’s even more important for us to come to grips with the fact that the system in peril is not a natural one, or even one that we should be attempting to revive and restore. The thing that is dying—the corporatized model of commerce—has not, nor has it ever been, supportive of the real economy. It wasn’t meant to be. And before we start lamenting its demise or, worse, spending good money after bad to resuscitate it, we had better understand what it was for, how it nearly sucked us all dry, and why we should put it out of our misery.
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POPSSuper Rich: The Greed Game An excellent explanation of both how the global financial markets collapsed, and how those at the top made a killing in the process, and why the rest of us are left to pay the bill . But we're supposed to look at them as virtuous capitalists, working hard and getting rewarded for it. What a crock. Parts 2 thru 7 are available on YouTube, The entire video is available via Google Vid, but the available version's audio track gets out of synch around halfway through. See also: - In Debt We Trust - Money as Debt
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POPSAtlas Shrugged (Apdated for the current financial crisis) Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand. Yes, Hank ... claim me ... If we're to win the battle against the leeches, we must get it on ... right now ... Don't let them torture us for our happiness ... or our billions. He tore his eyes away. "I can't. Sex is base and vile!" "No, it's an expression of our highest values and our admiration for each other's minds." "Your mind gives me the biggest boner, Dagny Taggart." He fell upon her like a savage, wielding his mouth like a machete, and in the pleasure she took from him her body became an extension of her quarterly earnings report—proof of her worthiness as a lover. His hard-on was sanction enough. "Scream your secret passions, Hank Rearden!" "Derivatives!" "Yes!" "Credit-default swaps!" "Oh, yes! Yes!" "Collateralized debt obligation." "YES! YES! YES!"
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POPSThe Dirty Secret of the Financial Crisis: Our Banking System's Broken
The Levy institute suggests that some banks are "too big to save." … "Time to Bail Out: Alternatives to the Bush-Paulson Plan," by Dimitri Papadimitriou and Randall Wray. Their perspective is Keynesian, not market worship. They argue … that the bailout is proceeding backward. Instead of saving Wall Street first, government should devote its heavy firepower to reviving jobs, incomes and business enterprises. The banks will not get well or begin normal lending until there is overall economic recovery. The financial system, meanwhile, can be managed much as it was during the Depression, with regulators weeding out doomed banks and closing them, putting troubled banks under conservatorship and supervising healthy ones closely to prevent excesses. "If we are going to leave insolvent institutions open, it is critically important to replace or at least control management," the Levy paper explains. "Business as usual would be a disaster."
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POPSThe Perils of Cheap Oil CONT'D: "When economic growth resumes across the globe, demand for oil will surge once again. Only this time around, given the constraints presented by declining oil fields and the current apparent freeze in investment in new oil production capacity, the supply-demand equation will likely send oil prices shooting back up, perhaps even further than before. "Which is why now is the time, more than ever, for government leadership that promotes conservation, energy efficiency, fuel economy, and increased production of renewable energy. Waiting until the economy recovers before tackling energy would be a huge, huge mistake."
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POPSLoan officers @ WaMu pressured to approve loans "No matter what" This is what people mean by "predatory lending". The whole industry went out looking for people who didn't qualify to give loans to. At the same time, they helped rewrite the bankruptcy laws to make it harder for people to get out from under crushing debt. See also: - In Debt We Trust - Where Does Money Come From?
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POPSThe Long Road Ahead -- Are You Ready for the Worst the Economy Has to Offer? The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle. So, that's what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean. There's no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction. And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games.
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POPSJim Cramer: Abandon the market immedieately, no matter the losses you take "Whatever money you may need for the next five years , PLEASE take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe you should risk those assets in the stock market." See also: Wall Street's Racket Has Gone Too Far, and We're Going to Pay the Heavy Price When Jim "Mad Money" Cramer says sell immediately, no matter the loss you take... If America goes bankrupt, I hope we at least have enough cash on hand to get our troops a cab ride home from our far-flung (and expensive) empire.
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POPSChalmers Johnson on the "Pentagon Bailout" "There has been much moaning, air-sucking, and outrage about the $700 billion that the U.S. government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon. "
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POPSThe Oil Factor: Behind The War on Terror Peak Oil is a reality that will change almost everything about how we live our lives. The so-called War on Terror is just an excuse for the US to seize by force the remaining stocks of oil in the Middle East. And 9/11 was they excuse they needed to rally support and quash dissent. Convenient that it happened that way, no?
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POPSMoney As Debt (or "Where does money come from?") "Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere -- so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive -- that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." -Woodrow Wilson Where does money come from? Why doesn't your government own it's own money? Why does your government borrow all it's money from private banks at interest? What is "fractional reserve banking?" Our money system is a big fucking ponzi scheme, based on debt. IOUs. And IOUs taken out against IOUs. This is how the housing market collapsed , massive numbers of people unable (or too fucking smart) to continue paying the debt on houses that ad less value than the debt itself. If you use money and carry any kind of debt, you need to watch this video.
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POPS2016, No more oil. What might that look like... Worldwide instability, economic recession & depression, endless gas-station lines, VIOLENCE at those long, temper-straining gas-lines... We need to start taking stock of our lives and start making other plans. Life as we have known it in America IS NO LONGER AN OPTION.
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