When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? -- John Maynard Keynes

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Obama, Democrats, Delusion and Denial

Washinton Post 1-col. lead, "Obama approval rating at new low: POLL POINTS TO PERIL FOR DEMOCRATS -- Most favor GOP-held Congress to check president," by Dan Balz and Peyton M. Craighill: "Obama's approval rating fell to 41 percent, down from 46 percent through the first three months of the year and the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC News polls. Just 42 percent approve of his handling of the economy, 37 percent approve of how he is handling the implementation of the [ACA a/k/a Obamacare] and 34 percent approve of his handling of the situation involving Ukraine and Russia." http://goo.gl/LrlGIA Graphic of Obama approval/disapproval over six years http://goo.gl/b4kTBQ
(tip to: Politico Playbook)

Waiting for the Democrats and their sycophants in the media to spin this! LOL! Although, they will probably just ignore and deny reality -- just like they have been doing in the Obama White House for a long time. It must be nice to be able to live in a bubble of denial and delusion.

   

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Glenn Greenwald Wins Pulitzer Prize for NSA Spying coverage

"Glen Greenwald and Edward Snowden are heroes. Those looking for cowardly disgrace can find it in the reactions of President Obama, Senator John McCain, Congressman Peter King, and numerous other legislators who have no idea what the constitution even says....Congratulations to Greenwald, the Guardian, and the Washington Post." - Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/04/glen-greenwald-wins-pulitzer-prize-for.html

    

Monday, April 28, 2014

The Obama Effect: Will It Defeat Hillary in 2016?

Obama ended up not being hope and change but instead, more of the same. The irony is that Obama may not only have defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008, but poisoned her chances to win in 2016:

Obama Effect Inspiring Few to Seek Office - NYTimes.com: "...“If you were to call it an Obama generation, there was a window,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. “That opportunity has been lost.” He said the youth who came of voting age around the time of the 2008 election have since lost interest in electoral politics, and pointed to a survey he conducted last year among 18- to 29-year-olds....“We’re seeing the younger cohort is even less connected with him generally, with his policies, as well as politics generally,” Mr. Della Volpe added, referring to Mr. Obama...."

    

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Prison, Torture, Mass Incarceration in the US (video)



Mass Incarceration in the US -"(Published on Apr 4, 2014) Thanks to Visually (http://Visual.ly) for facilitating the creation of this video, to http://youtube.com/kurzgesagt for the animation, and to The Prison Policy Initiative for research help and fact checking. (http://www.prisonpolicy.org). It wasn't easy to pick this topic, but I believe that America's 40-year policy of mass incarceration is deeply unethical, not very effective, and promotes the security of the few at the expense of the many. It's hard for me, as a person who was born into privilege, to imagine the challenges convicted criminals face, often for crimes that are utterly non-violent. If you're feeling like you want to do something about this, I'm mostly just making this video as an informational resource and to encourage people to think of felons not as bad, scary people but just as people. The people at The Prison Policy Initiative were very helpful in the creation of this video and if you want to learn more about their work and how to get involved go to http://www.prisonpolicy.org"

    

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Three Legal Ways to NOT Pay Taxes (video)


(Allow video to load after clicking play)

Three Ways to NOT Pay Taxes... Legally: Video - Bloomberg: "April 14 (Bloomberg) –- The wealthy and shrewd have ways around pesky financial obligations, like paying taxes. With a little planning they can reduce their tax exposure to, sometimes, zero. And the best part? What they're doing is completely legal. Bloomberg Businessweek's Brendan Greeley explains how clever, law-abiding citizens have managed to give the taxman the slip. (Source: Bloomberg)"

    

Friday, April 25, 2014

Walgreens, Corporate Inversion, Tax Avoidance

It is called "corporate inversion" which is another term for changing a corporation's domicile for purposes of tax avoidance -- maybe every corporation in the US will leave --

Walgreens urged to leave US to gain tax benefit - FT.com: "...The move, known as an inversion, would dramatically reduce Walgreens’ taxable income in the US, ... The investor group, which included Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and hedge funds Jana Partners, Corvex and Och-Ziff, requested the meeting after becoming frustrated by Walgreens’ refusal to consider relocating, according to people familiar with the matter. In a note last month, analysts at UBS said Walgreens’ tax rate was expected to be 37.5 per cent compared with 20 per cent for Boots, and that an inversion could increase earnings per share by 75 per cent. They added, however, that “Walgreens’ management seems more hesitant to pull the trigger near-term due to perceived political risks....”

Lots of corporations have already made the move --
Aon, from Chicago to London, (United Kingdom): "Aon's tax rate should decline, boosting earnings"
Others noted in Wikipedia:
McDermott to Panama, 1982
Helen of Troy to Bermuda, 1994
Tyco International to Bermuda, 1997
Fruit of the Loom to the Cayman Islands, 1998
Ingersoll-Rand to Bermuda, 2001
Ensco to the United Kingdom, 2009
Actavis to Ireland, 2013
Chiquita to Ireland, 2014


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Our Broken Tax System, Here is a Fix

Everyone In America Is Even More Broke Than You Think: "....more than half of U.S. wage earners made less than $30,000 [in 2012]..... according to an analysis released by the Social Security Administration...That's not far above the $27,010 that marked the federal poverty line for a family of five in 2012...."

The Nation has a good article about our broken tax system in the US (excerpt below):

"1. We don’t have a progressive tax system. A truly progressive tax system would ask those who are the most well-off in America to contribute the largest share of their income in taxes....but when you account for state, local and sales taxes, top-line taxation rate isn’t really progressive at all...Not many companies pay the corporate tax rate—and some don’t pay any corporate taxes at all....Some of your tax dollars are given to hugely profitable companies... Meanwhile, some people are actually taxed into poverty....A childless adult earning poverty-line wages ($12,119 in 2013) would have a combined payroll and income tax liability of $1,139, but receive only a $169 EITC. This person would be below the poverty line once he or she pays taxes....Much more revenue is out there....In order to raise more tax revenue, corporations paying negative tax rates are a logical place to start, as are the very wealthy. They are the only ones seeing their income increase, rather than decrease..." source: The Nation--7 Facts About Our Broken Tax System
Suggested fix: eliminate federal income tax on the first $30,000 of annual income per person. Eliminate all personal deductions and individual tax credits. Impose a flat tax of 20% on all income (including capital gains, dividends, interest, etc.) above $30,000. Corporations would not be entitled to the $30,000 exclusion, and would pay 20% tax on all income. Remove all income caps on social security (FICA) taxes and include all employee compensation (stock option gains, etc.) as subject to the FICA tax, and include everyone in the social security program, with "means testing" for benefits. Self-employed individuals should pay only an amount equal to the employee portion of FICA as "self-employment tax." Simple, fair, equitable. And if the above were adopted and you are an employee making less than $30,000 per year, you would not even have to file a federal tax return. (That's more than half of US wage earners!)

2 final points: 
1. Congress should get out of the "tax expenditure--loophole syndrome" of giving away tax breaks to the wealthy and influential--it should be against the law!
2. Raise federal minimum wage to $10.00 per hour ASAP (currently $7.25 per hour).

   

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Which US too-big-to-fail bank are you using?

Chart of Assets of largest US Banks




U.S. banks enjoy 'too-big-to-fail' advantage: Fed study | Reuters: "A landmark study by Federal Reserve economists found that large U.S. banks enjoy a "too-big-to-fail" advantage in financial markets, joining a heated debate that could influence regulators that are implementing tough new rules for Wall Street. The series of research papers, published on Tuesday by the U.S. central bank's influential New York branch, suggests the biggest banks benefited even after the financial crisis from lower funding and operating costs compared with smaller ones . . . ."

Too big to fail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "....The number of U.S. commercial and savings bank institutions reached a peak of 14,495 in 1984; this fell to 6,532 by the end of 2010. The ten largest U.S. banks held nearly 50% of U.S. deposits as of 2011. Implicit guarantee subsidy...."
Chart of 5 US Banks Asset Concentration





















Nothing like having a government sponsored, government guaranteed business!

    

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Five Biggest Scams of the Year (video)


Five Biggest Scams of the Year: Ever had someone posing as the police say they have a warrant for your arrest unless you pay a fine? It’s one of the top five scams of 2013 listed by The Council of Better Business Bureaus. MarketWatch’s Jim Jelter reports.

   

Monday, April 21, 2014

Unemployment Still Terrible, How to Fix

The unemployment rate does not count workers who have given up and are not actively seeking work. A better measure is the labor participation rate -- and it still looks very bad:

chart of U.S. Labor Participation Rate (source: BLS, US Dept of Labor, 4/5/14)
U.S. Labor Participation Rate (source: BLS, US Dept of Labor, 4/5/14)

















The Unemployment Puzzle: Where Have All the Workers Gone? - WSJ.com: "... Baby boomers can't be the whole story, though, since the participation rate has declined for younger workers too. This part of the drop is a function of various factors, including simple discouragement, poor work incentives created by public policies, inadequate schooling and training, and a greater propensity to seek disability insurance. Globalization and technological change have also reduced employment and wage growth for low-skilled workers—which raises questions about whether current policy is focused enough on helping workers to achieve the skills necessary to work productively and earn decent incomes...."

You want to increase employment? Increase self-employment. How?

1. Repeal the self-employment tax or at least reduce it to the same rate paid by regular employed workers (payroll tax): 7.65%.

2. Comprehensive income tax reform: a flat tax of 17.35% on all income, of whatever kind, from whatever source -- corporations, individuals, capital gains, etc., wages, dividends, interest, pensions, etc. -- with the first $30,000 in income exempt from income tax. No personal deductions -- tell Congress to quit playing games with the tax code. The present tax code, thanks to Congress, is FUBAR.

3. Comprehensive entitlements reforms: get the US off welfare -- including corporations, farmers, et al, and stop incentivizing government dependency -- if you do not know what I am talking about, go here.

4.  Remove all caps on the payroll tax in order to pay for our out-of-control health, disability, social security, and public pension welfare state. Everyone should pay the same rate: 7.65% for employee, 7.65% for employer on ALL compensation (including, e.g., CEO stock options etc.).

5. Abolish all public pensions for those not within 15 years of retirement -- the private sector has, for the most part, already abandoned pensions. Include everyone on Social Security. In addition, allow all individuals to self-fund, if they so choose, up to 15% of their annual income into a tax sheltered retirement account (exempt from creditors), administered by a US government regulated financial institution and guaranteed by the US government (this would replace 401Ks, IRAs, etc.). For police, military, and others qualifying for early retirement (before eligible for social security retirement), each responsible governmental entity would have to fund severance pay, in the interim, for those so qualifying, until they became eligible for social security.

6. Pass real health care reform: the Affordable Care Act [sic] is FUBAR. Remove all employer provided health insurance. Merge Medicare and Medicaid and provide 3 coverage levels: 1) comprehensive coverage for children and youth until age 18; 2) basic/catastrophic coverage for those between the ages of 18 and 65;  3) Comprehensive coverage for those 65 and older. Individuals could supplement government-provided health coverages with their own private health insurance. All health providers would have to publish their fee schedules--full transparency. Take employers and the states out of the health insurance scheme--they cannot afford it.

    

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Obamacare Unsustainable

Remember when one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act a/k/a Obamacare was to control costs of healthcare spending which has been out of control for years?

Well there is nothing affordable about Obamacare, the so-called Affordable Care Act -- cost goals were thrown out when the Democrats passed the most lobby-controlled government health plan in modern history. Everybody in the health care industry got into the public trough--health insurance companies especially. Do not expect your health insurance premiums to do anything but keep going up and up! And if you cannot afford those premiums? Well good old Uncle Sugar will ante up (courtesy of deficit spending and the taxpayers) --

Income And Spending Are Up — Thanks, Obamacare | FiveThirtyEight: "Here’s what’s going on: The government’s definition of income includes not just salaries and other cash payments but also non-cash benefits such as employer-paid health insurance premiums and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The health law has a particularly big impact on that last category because it made millions more people eligible for Medicaid. As a result, Medicaid payments increased $11.4 billion in February, representing 24 percent of the total increase in income. In January, Medicaid benefits represented an even bigger 47 percent of the increase in income."

You think those kind of wild increases in government spending, just for healthcare, are sustainable? You better think again. But no one in the mainstream media, or Washington is talking about that now--just sit back and enjoy the party! Just remember, at some point, it is all going to come crashing down just like Detroit.

    

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Destruction of American Boys

What psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors have done is criminal -- and I do not care how much in perks or money they have been paid by unethical pharmaceutical companies --

The Drugging of the American Boy - Esquire: "Imagine you have a six-year-old son. A little boy for whom you are responsible. A little boy you would take a bullet for, a little boy in whom you search for glimpses of yourself, and hope every day that he will turn out just like you, only better. A little boy who would do anything to make you happy. Now imagine that little boy—your little boy—alone in his bed in the night, eyes wide with fear, afraid to move, a frightening and unfamiliar voice echoing in his head, afraid to call for you. Imagine him shivering because he hasn't eaten all day because he isn't hungry. His head is pounding. He doesn't know why any of this is happening. Now imagine that he is suffering like this because of a mistake. Because a doctor examined him for twelve minutes, looked at a questionnaire on which you had checked some boxes, listened to your brief and vague report that he seemed to have trouble sitting still in kindergarten, made a diagnosis for a disorder the boy doesn't have, and wrote a prescription for a powerful drug he doesn't need. If you have a son in America, there is an alarming probability that this has happened or will happen to you." (read the entire article at the link above)

    

Friday, April 18, 2014

NSA abuses, Google Search

NSA abuses - Google Search (March 24, 2014, screenshot):

NSA abuses - Google search screenshot March 24, 2014
































Note the time progression, and the lies. Historians will have a field day with the Snowden revelations on all the NSA abuses. Screenshot above shows that probably the two biggest liars will prove to be Obama and Mike Rogers. Unbelievable that nobody in the White House had the sense to advise the President to come clean on this early and reform, or at least stop this--but no, they just compounded their problems, and lying, and history will be the judge.

    

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Larry Page, Google CEO, says NSA 'Tremendously Disappointing' (video)


Google's Page: NSA 'Tremendously Disappointing': Video - Bloomberg:
Google Co-Founder and CEO Larry Page talks about the NSA, privacy, Google's ambitions, Elon Musk, and improving the world with Charlie Rose. (Source: Bloomberg, March 24)

    

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Base Jumper Leaps Off 1 World Trade Center video


(Allow video to load after clicking play)
Base Jumper Leaps Off 1 World Trade Center: Video - Bloomberg:
Three base jumpers who leaped off NYC's 1 World Trade Center in September -- here is video of their stunt. (Source: Bloomberg, March 25)

    

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Snowden's Five Biggest NSA Bombshells (video)



The Five Biggest NSA Bombshells Dropped by Snowden: Video - Bloomberg: Nine months and counting... NSA fugitive Edward Snowden is still making waves. And he warns that more secrets will be revealed. Here are some of the biggest bombshells he's exposed so far. (Source: Bloomberg, March 25) (go to link above if video does not show or play after 4 seconds)

    

Monday, April 14, 2014

Secret Service Misconduct, Systemic Problems, Leadership Issue

Most people would say Senator Tom Coburn is a responsible, sober-minded judge of these kinds of situations, and he hardly has good things to say about the Secret Service:

Secret Service incident in Netherlands was on heels of car wreck during Obama’s Miami trip - The Washington Post: "... At home, the news sparked fresh outrage from members of Congress. Some cited the incident as evidence contrary to the findings of a December report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, which asserted that the Secret Service does not have an agency-wide cultural problem that encourages and tolerates personal misconduct. “It shows that the report was a cover-up and a whitewash,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “There are significant cultural problems there that need to be addressed, systemic problems.”..."

Too bad the Chief Executive is unwilling to exercise leadership or take action, or maybe he just doesn't understand how to be a leader.

    

Sunday, April 13, 2014

US Intelligence, Desperate Lies, Huge Incompetence

Watch Stephen Colbert lambast the NSA and Snowden at security conference | The Verge: "We can trust the NSA," explains Colbert, "because without a doubt it is history's most powerful, pervasive, sophisticated surveillance agency ever to be totally pwned by a 29-year-old with a thumb drive.""

The Crimea Blame Game Turns To Edward Snowden: "U.S. intelligence officials — in leaks to news organizations and quiet conversations in Washington — have begun to blame Edward Snowden for their failure to anticipate Russian aggression in Crimea. But several current and former intelligence officials said that the U.S. failure to see into Vladimir Putin’s plans is profound and long-running, and that there is little evidence that Snowden’s leaks allowed Russia to evade U.S. intelligence more effectively than it had already been doing...."

Oh yes, everything from hereon out is poor Edward's fault. Overnight the NSA and CIA and the rest of the US national intelligence [sic] bureaucracies became impotent and inept, full of intelligence failures, all due to (as Steven Colbert put it) being pwned by a 29-year-old with a thumb drive!

Better explanation of NSA, CIA, et al failures: extraordinary incompetence (see Peter Thiel say this of  the NSA here).

    

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Attention Obama Suckers, The JOBS Act Scam

With Facebook acquiring virtual-reality company Oculus, one of the all time great sucker plays -- the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,” signed by President Barack Obama on April 1, 2012 -- has been revealed as the massive bait-and-switch it is. (The JOBS Act? How's that for a misleading title?)(source infra)

Attention Suckers: Please Send Us Your Money - Bloomberg View: " . . . . In the case of Oculus, where you weren’t even promised equity, you simply revealed yourself as clueless naifs. What did you really expect to happen when you sell Democracy to the highest bidder? Yay, crowdfunding! The sheep have been shorn." (read more at the link above about Obama's latest scam--the JOBS Act)

    

Friday, April 11, 2014

US Economy, Contracts to buy homes fall for 8th straight month

Contracts to buy homes fall for 8th straight month: "The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes fell for the eighth straight month in February, a sign of slow real estate sales over the next few months. The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted pending home sales index dropped 0.8% to 93.9. The index has fallen 10.5% over the past 12 months...."

What recovery?

    

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Governments as Customers, Corruption, Crony Capitalism

Governments as Customers, Corruption, and Crony Capitalism -- they all go together.

     

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Obama government: inept, incompetent, bureaucratic

Security theater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaSecurity theater is the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually achieve it.[1] Some experts such as Edward Felten have described the airport security repercussions due to the September 11 attacks as security theater.[2]....

Even if you are still an Obama true believer -- hope and change and all that -- I challenge you to read the following and not grimace at the Obama government: inept, incompetent, bureaucratic:

The Parable of the Mashed Potato Police - Jason Edward Harrington - POLITICO Magazine: "I personally experienced the absurdity of the TSA’s certification bureaucracy when I was informed one day—more than two years after I’d been hired, and after having checked thousands of driver’s licenses and passports—that I was not on-record as having ever received travel-document training from the TSA. Apparently, my certification papers had been lost, so I was pulled off the travel-document checking position on the spot and de-certified until I took the training class again. “So does this mean,” I asked my supervisor, “that all the passports and driver’s licenses that I’ve cleared through security over the past two years have been security breaches?” “Let’s not think about that,” my supervisor said."

They call it security theater -- what a waste of time, money, and resources!

    

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Governments That Block Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

MAP: Here Are the Countries That Block Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube | Mother Jones: "... the Turkish government blocked the country's access to YouTube, after banning Twitter earlier this month, in an effort to quell anti-government sentiment prior to local elections on March 30. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that social networks are facilitating the spread of wiretapped recordings that have been politically damaging. The YouTube block reportedly came about after a video surfaced of government officials discussing the possibility of going to war with Syria. The government officially banned Twitter after the network refused to take down an account accusing a former minister of corruption. Twitter is challenging the ban and a Turkish court overturned it on Wednesday, but it's not yet clear how an appeal might play out...."(read more at link above)

When it comes to internet freedom, it is either yes or no.

    

Monday, April 7, 2014

Mike Rogers, Goodbye and good riddance!

Mike Rogers to retire, heading to radio? Goodbye and good riddance to a national disgrace, traitor to the US Constitution, and now he is going to spew his ignorance on radio? Good place for that hack -- radio is a dying medium. He never did his job of oversight of the NSA and look what a debacle and mess he has made! And all he has been doing is run around making stupid and groundless attacks on the one guy who exposed the Constitutional abuses going on at the NSA, that massively incompetent agency (Peter Thiel's words, not mine) --

Mike Rogers to retire, heading to radio - John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com: "He has been a harsh critic of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, suggesting — without offering additional proof — that Snowden was working with foreign intelligence agencies."

    

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Peter Thiel says NSA Showed Huge Incompetence on Data Collection (video)



NSA Showed Huge `Incompetence' on Data Collection: Video - Bloomberg: "March 20 (Bloomberg) -- *Peter Thiel, co-founder of EBay Inc's PayPal, talks about the data collection program at the U.S. National Security Agency and the outlook for technology startups in Berlin. He spoke yesterday with Bloomberg Television's Hans Nichols in Berlin. (Source: Bloomberg)" (if video above does not show or play after a few seconds, go to the link above)

"Huge Incompetence" -- NSA kind of like healthcare.org -- what is it about Washington, D.C., and tech? Massively wasteful, incompetent, and inept. I guess this is what you get when you have too much money in the hands of political hacks, crony capitalist government contractors, special interests, and people with small, bureaucratic minds.

*Peter Thiel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Peter Andreas Thiel ... is a German-born American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. Thiel cofounded PayPal with Max Levchin, and later, Elon Musk, and served as its CEO. He also cofounded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets under management; and cofounder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% stake acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the company's board of directors. Thiel was ranked #293 on the Forbes 400 in 2011, with a net worth of $1.5 billion as of March 2012...."

    

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Academic Research, Scholarship-for-hire, Conflicted Science

Washington, D.C., is rampant with conflicts of interest, researchers and academics who have been "bought off," bureaucrats and politicians looking to move (and make more money) on K Street . . . .

The Republican Street Fight over Transparency in Government - The Daily Beast: "...No one better understands the dangers in conflicted science than the chief administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, David Michaels. Michaels is an epidemiologist and a professor (on leave) from George Washington University. In 2008, he published a terrifyingly depressing account of the consequences of conflicted science, Doubt is Their Product. That title was drawn from the famous 1969 Brown & Williamson memo declaring “doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with cancer] that exists in the mind of the general public.” The strategy of the tobacco industry was to use “science” to attack science, so as to generate skepticism about whether smoking cigarettes caused cancer..." (read more at link above)

    

Friday, April 4, 2014

Fort Knox of Copper (video)



Hidden Riches: Inside the Fort Knox of Copper: Video - Bloomberg: "March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg’s Alix Steel takes you past the barbed wire fence and guard dogs and inside the highly secure Southwest Commodity Storage in Tucson, AZ to see why millions of dollars of copper is sitting in this CME approved storage warehouse."

    

Thursday, April 3, 2014

$19 Billion, Whatscrap, Whatscrack, Whatsthat?

“A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends.”- Barton Biggs

Here Comes the Climax | The Reformed Broker: "This ... $19 billion Facebook binge felt like the beginning of a climaxing of sorts – the type of deal that usually comes to punctuate the end of a great bull market (think AOL-Time Warner, the LBO of Equity Office Properties) or at least speeds up the gallop into the end."

    

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Why the Dollar Endures

The Least Dirty Shirt Syndrome --

Why the Dollar Endures - NYTimes.com: "The dollar’s continued prominence is ultimately less a parable about American exceptionalism than about weaknesses in the rest of the world and deep problems in the structure of the global monetary system. In international finance, it turns out, everything is relative." (read more at link above)

In other words, the shirt may not be clean, but it doesn't stink (yet).

    

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Financial Crisis - The Telegraph

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