Congratulations, Goldmans

Reading your comments here, on the JQ link below when we first “locked horns” I now see that you display the classic symptoms of being too close to bankers – that symptom being blind arrogance, better known as “intellectual myopia”. I think you probably “get” around 2% of what I’m saying. No one I’ve actually met in real life “gets” more than 10% – even my Professors (at least in Australia) were shockingly stupid. There are some great Professors in the US, but again they are very very rare in the mainstream. It’s lonely out here. I probably “get” around 80% of Mises, which I am proud of. I “get” around “95%” of Rothbard (then again he was a better, clearer writer than Mises).

This incomprehension of basic principles (Sacks of Gold was given loot and now they’re getting interest on the loot, what’s to understand?) and search for complexity (they must have traded their way to success!) reminds me of when I was a lot younger and chose not to go into professional embezzlement (stockbroking or banking). My dumber friends would say to me: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

To which I would reply: “If you’re so smart, why don’t you have a sustainable civilization?”

They never got the joke.

I’m still laughing at that one.

No one else has ever laughed at that joke, because no one understands what the Hell I’m talking about.

Ha Ha Ha!

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/05/03/austrian-business-cycle-theory/comment-page-7/#comments

And I will try to keep it nice and clean and not extreme, but please don’t be so naive. I don’t know of anyone who has read Murray Rothbard and understands that FRB is embezzlement. Some people just hate bankers for “vague” reasons (usury, interest, credit cards etc etc).

Don’t “stereotype” all anti-FRBers. Some are dumb (Karl Marx). Some are not (Mises, Rothbard, Rowbotham, North, Daughty, Bonner, Brown, Supkis, Rockwell, Paul, Murphy, Woods, de Soto, Hulsmann, French….)

This is going to be fun. Macallan vs Laphroaig. Levy distribution vs Makian distribution. Gold Men are Gods vs Gold Men are simple-minded, amoral embezzlers and shysters. FRB is good vs. FRB is economic parasitism. Marx vs. Rothbard, North, Bonner, Fekete, de Soto, Hulsmann, Murphy, Woods, Rockwell, Paul….

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpma/0203005.htm

Beating you up in the playground of monetary theory is my guilty little pleasure.

I just hope the teachers (including Harper) aren’t looking!

I’m glad you enjoyed it. This one’s a bit of a laugh too:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12094.html

This one has some funny stuff on GS

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12088.html

Be my guest!

Pople? Pope.

Ahhhh……another glass of Macallan whilst I wait for the US bond market to collapse.

Happens on IE6, not Firefox. My paranoia is getting to me. Another glass of Macallan should fix that…

ABOM – give me a glass of MacAllen. Andy has driven me to it!

Thanks, Alice. I needed that sharp dose of female sanity late at night.

The Macallan was making me think that perhaps (perhaps!) Andrew had some “special” understanding of Gold Men’s business model that I didn’t understand.

You reassure me.

I’ve always loved the quality of your substantive arguments. “Adolescent” and “troll” are expressions often associated with high intelligence.

Banker shill.

ABOM

(and Andy – dont chuck the ball in and go home! We like you really – who else are we going to argue with? It will have to be Sean G!. I am not a troll…)

Now miraculously JP Morgan is announcing splendiforous profits a mere few months from when they were crying for bailouts….oh and Westpac admits it paid “investment salespeople” 150000 K plus 300000K in commissions… while ripping fees charges and interest rate premiums from ordinary people.

Double, double, toil and trouble….

In this pot the banks boil a bubble…

Andy

What part of ABOM’s post exactly dont you understand….??

“The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.

Add JP Morgan now…

and in 6 US states only one in every five has enough work…but not at Goldman Sachs it would seem

and Andy, you bet “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

ABOM – its us who should walk away from trolls that support these large bloodsucking financial institutions like Goldman but more importantly the best think investors can do is to make sure they vote with their hip pocket – dont give the sheisters a dime fo any reason.

That’s it. I’m really feeling ill.

One last gulp of Macallan and Im going to bed.

Sometimes when I go to bed at night I hope I don’t wake up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-keto/too-little-too-late-for-d_b_238035.html

Have you actually clicked on ANY of the links?

This one?

http://jsmineset.com/2009/07/18/in-the-news-today-254/

This one?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/we-dont-care-we-dont-have_b_236218.html

This one?

http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/meredith-whitney-and-the-buy-recommendation-on-goldman-sachs/2009/07/15/

Figures? How about this (again):

‘And yet again, the “black box” unit of “Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities” was the chief bread winner within the Trading group. It delivered $6.8 billion in net revenues, or 63% of the Trading group’s revenues and 50% of total net revenues for the entire firm.

Investment banking-what Goldman used to do-actually experienced a 15% decline in year-over-year quarterly revenues. And the “Asset Management” business also saw a 28% decline in quarterly revenues compared to the same time last year.’ Daily Reckoning (Aust)

The “black box” (note: a “black box” is IMPOSSIBLE to analyse mathematically because the details of the trades are not revealed) made the profit figures (63% of the revenues). The Fed’s support to GS (and other banks) is a state secret. There are articles in Huffington Post (not just “crazy conspiracy-theorist-looonie” ABOM) CLEARLY alleging that GS and JPM are govt-protected financial entities paying millions in bonuses essentially from govt-money.

“He made an accusation” (that GS’s profit is directly or indirectly govt-supported and sponsored and therefore simple graft/corruption, Mafia-style) “– I showed it was clearly ridiculous” (rubbish – you showed me interest differentials assuming govt support could only be free money deposited at the Fed – that was just one example I used, and we don’t know exactly how much money GS got indirectly via the AIG bailout etc on credit default swaps) “He ignores that” (BS – I gave MULTIPLE links showing a number of respected commentators alleging EXACTLY the same thing), “and anything else I have used to show how silly it was, and continues on” (continues on – simply to prove you are OBVIOUSLY WRONG – you are a banking zombie that will not shut up and accept defeat. Do I need garlic, a crucifix or a wooden stake to get you to shut up about GS’s profits being “deserved”??? This is INSANE that you continuing on when I’ve hit you so many times. The zombie bankers and their shills just keep on going, don’t they Alice?).

You are blind to something in front of your own nose – CLICK ON THE LINKS. I have OBJECTIVELY described the scathing reviews OF OTHER JOURNALISTS:

“The reason they can be so breathtakingly arrogant, so stunningly cavalier about not giving a damn about things that any other company’s PR and government relations department would advise them against, is that they know they have the power to do anything they want to do.” Huffington Post.

“The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand. And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.” Paul Krugman

“The main characteristic of a sociopathic corporate culture is a total disregard for the rights of others. Sociopaths are also unable to conform to what society defines as a normal personality. Antisocial tendencies are a big part of the sociopath’s personality. Sociopaths feels most comfortable when the circumstances surrounding them and their associates share the same attitudes. They are distrustful and disdain those who do not agree with their reality and will turn on each other at the slightest provocation.” Jim Sinclair DESCRIBING Goldman Sachs’ recently announced profit result.

Alice, is everyone in banking this insane?

I can’t help myself. I’m going to pound away until I get him to admit defeat:

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/16/on-goldmans-giganto-profits/

At some point this will get so bad, he’ll have to censor me. He can’t take this kind of beating in public.

I’m just waiting for him to break. When he stops allowing my comments through, I know I’ve got him.

Andrew,
You obviously never bother to click on links I provide, preferring to label as “trolls” anyone who disagrees with the view that bankers are Gods, GS are superhuman traders and FRB is legitimate commercial activity that would arise spontaneously and sustainably out of the free market.

So let me let me with a few juicy extracts from the Taibbi piece, linked above:

“So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not free-market earnings but an almost pure state subsidy…

“Now, the counter to this charge is, well, hey, they made that money fair and square, legally, how can you blame them? They’re just really smart!
Bullshit. One of the most hilarious lies that has been spread about Goldman of late is that, since it repaid its TARP money, it’s now free and clear of any obligation to the government – as if that was the only handout Goldman got in the last year. Goldman last year made your average AFDC mom on food stamps look like an entrepreneur…

“Taken altogether, what all of this means is that Goldman’s profit announcement is a giant “fuck you” to the rest of the country. It is a statement of supreme privilege, an announcement that it feels no shame in taking subsidies and funneling them directly into their pockets, and moreover feels no fear of any public response. It knows that it’s untouchable and it’s not going to change its behavior for anyone. And it doesn’t matter who knows it…

“It’s a self-fulfilling cycle — beautiful, in a way, but at the same time sort of uniquely disgusting. That they’re going to get away with it is bad enough — that they’re getting praised for it, for being such smart guys, is damn near intolerable.”

Go and find someone who cares, eh?

Spoken like a true sociopath.

Your time will come my friend, when the toilet paper the bankers print is worthless, when gold is money and when FRB embezzlers are jailed for the lying theiving scum they really are.

Come on, what smart*ass reponse have you got coming after the Taibbi piece? Relevant, spot on, hard hitting, detailed and totally damning.

Admit it. You’ve been punked yet again.

I own you.

Great riposte! And what an incredibly detailed analysis of GS’s revenue, trading and profits, Andrew! I would never have guessed such a complex trading system was even possible, but I give you credit – their business model is sound and their profits well-deserved. To have such talent in the great city of New York is a credit to the City and to the USA as a whole.

It’s great when an opponent stays on point and doesn’t flail about pathetically with irrelevant diversionary crap and accuse you of being a troll just because you disagree with his world-view. I accept defeat. Your financial analysis was impeccible and shows just what a keen mind you really have. No wonder you’re one of Australia’s best financial risk analysts!

Do you know if GS is still hiring? Do they have an office in Oz? Do you think I could apply for a position as an analyst there? Do you know anyone from GS personally? I hear they’re really well connected! Do you think I would be “good enough” for them? I scored in the top 1% in all my classes (even in US post-graduate studies and on the GRE), but I’ve never applied because I got sooo nervous even thinking about applying – I didn’t think I was good enough!

I don’t mind being a kind of sell-my-soul-whore-analyst. After all, whores and drug dealers and bankers seem to be making the best money these days. TV seems to glorify all of them! Sex in the City. Melbourne Mafia. Articles (like yours) praising GS’s financial genuis.

Look at the alternatives to employment in Oz. Holden is nearly bankrupt, manufacturing of real things is dying, agriculture is destroyed by drought and over-farming, the fishing industry is drying up because of over-fishing and domestic industries of all kinds are on the edge of financial ruin. Selling your soul to the bankers directly if you’re a cute young female (or male?) or indirectly if you’re a financial analyst is the way to go!

Do you know of the best way of sucking up to clever, rich, well-connected bankers?

I’m sure you specalise in it.

Make the effort. Click on all the links before you thiink about responding. Once you read them all I think you will remain silent, and quietly move on.

Im plagiarising a response to one of ABOMs links Andy

It seems related to your “Congratulations Goldman” comment…

“OK, so now that GS, JPMorgan and even BoA and Citi are back to profitability, Summers/Geithner cry vindication for their actions and ideologies, right?

Because, after all, big companies (as simple aggregates of many individuals working toward a common goal) are the greatest driver of our public good via big tax contributions and general employment, right?

This idea extends to the Bank lobbies too because what’s good for large aggregates of individuals is good for the country, right?

So, their success must necessarily mean that WE, The Public, are doing better – MUCH BETTER, if you believe the numbers and subscribe to the ideology.

So, how come one of the most wildly ’successful’ companies (GS), only managed to pay 1% tax last year?

How come everyone on Wall St. is still out of work and these firms are far from engaging in a hiring frenzy?

Why are the remaining mid-level Wall St. grunts required to work 100-hour work weeks as a condition of employment, put their jobs at risk for taking vacation, and largely pay for their own health insurance?

… and why are Bank lobbyists frantically twisting Washington’s arm to fight consumer protections?

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, why is Washington mortgaging our future to keep it that way?

The Right’s ‘Trickle Down’ ideology is nothing more than Summers/Geithner/Wall St. big shots pissing down the leg of Uncle Sam. Feels nice and warm, but in the end it’s just piss in your shoe.

I agree ABOM and I love you. What a strange marriage of ideas we make…a Keynesian falls for a Rothbardian Austrian but I tell you ABOM, you are not silly at all, and these banks are out of control.

I feel sorry for Andy too because he feels sorry for the banks…and do you know I think Andy honestly believes it?

There is something kind of innocent about Andy and as much as I think his synmpathies are misplaced (why on earth does Goldman need sympathy for its difficult trading conditions OR its comeback on taxpayers backs ABOM????)

You know, if Andy was sincere in his liberal beliefs he would be now, in this blog, be saying… “creative destruction should have been allowed to run its course…Goldman shouldnt be here. I object. The market should have decided their fate, not the taxpayers.”

But it seems liberalism can be easily swept under the carpet when you aspire to a job supporting the banks eh Andy?

Oh the hypocrisy..the hypocrisy ABOM.

Well ABOM
You may be interested in someome else that has been knoocking Andy’s lights out…some guy by the name of Chodorov…he thinks Andy is just a rent seeker in the company of other rent seekers.

No wonder he is in here congratulating rent seekers.

http://www.catallaxyfiles.com/blog/?p=5710

Im not letting it alone ABOM. Its these guys that think they can suck ordinary people and businesses into the hype of a malfuntioning financial system precisely to be coralled and robbed periodically (not all at once, although the GFC was the exception, just concentrations of people with systemic regularity. Herded and picked off – one company is ramped promted and shortly after fails completely, another company is ramped up and fails later completely – you get the picture – each time the bank takes all).

Rent seekers.

Take no prisoners ABOM.

Alice,

I’m begging you to stop!

I’ll give you a back massage (a long one!) if you just take a deep breath and walk away from this blog.

Andrew’s gone all quiet. I’m scared we’ve killed him.

Oops…I think you are right ABOM.

We’ve accidentally killed Andy..

Ill walk away now ABOM.

Make my sincere apolgies to his next of kin.

deal ABOM

You should buy arable land, canned food, ammo and gold. If you often get depressed about the number of money-crazed zealot-zombies that surround you, you can buy Macallan as well, just in case you occasionally become suicidal (I make no comment regarding my present state of mental health, or the number of 18 year old Macallans I have in storage).

All currencies are falling. Just at different rates.

http://news.goldseek.com/RichardDaughty/1192374060.php

Cross rates are completely controlled by the central bannks so it’s like asking me to pick a winner in a fixed race – I need to predict the level of corruption between horse trainers, when they’re all corrupt. It’s not an easy task, and certainly not based on fundamentals:

If you’re going overseas, keep up with the blogs and Market Oracle, to see what the trends are looking like.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/

I like the Euro way better than the US (which is an accident waiting to happen). But I don’t think the Aussie is overvalued, so the cross-rate between the Aussie and Euro is tricky.

The Swiss have still have the highest gold reserves backing their franc, so if was forced to bet longer term and I was going to Europe in 18 months I’d have some overseas cash in Swiss and exchange at the border. Follow the bankers – they are planning to hole up in mountains in Switzerland and some other places (that shall remain nameless) when Financial Armageddon comes so why not follow the rats? They always know when the ship is beginning to sink.

http://www.financialarmageddon.com/

Did I mention that I love you too? I think I may have missed the opportunity to mention it earlier.

Get out of here.

I’m not into threesomes (at least not this kind).

Could you please turn around and focus on me for a second? It doesn’t matter whether Andy’s dead or alive.

(I hate threesomes…)

And no it doesnt matter a bit whether Andy is dead or alive ABOM – I only have thoughts of you (and a bit of arable land in the country somewhere nice, some gold bricks and a stash of Macallens, and a sharp shooting self protection device for when the world as we know it, goes mad)…

but right this minute Andy…part of the misguided demise of humanity…is alive and well and posting in JQs blog.

Damn that Andy – we will have to kill him all over again ABOM! He has learnt nothing!

“ABIM” is ABOM in disguise, trying to hide from the banking zombies populating Wikipedia, academia and the blogsphere…

I try to keep a low profile, given their unrelenting compulsion to kill anyone with either gold or a brain.

Ahhh… yes Andrew… I agree – IF there is a “genuine” income stream.

But what if the alleged “genuine” income stream comes from interest that is itself only repayable through the issuance of more loans?

From WP:

“Some argue that since debt and the interest on the debt can only be paid in the same form of money, the total debt (principal plus interest) can never be paid in a debt-based monetary system unless more money is created through the same process. For example: if 100 credits are created and loaned into the economy at 10% per year, at the end of the year 110 credits will be needed to pay the loan and extinguish the debt. However, since the additional 10 credits does not yet exist, it too must be borrowed. To some, this implies that debt must grow exponentially in order for the monetary system to remain solvent.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_fractional-reserve_banking#Basic_debate

There are references if you want to look them up from Rowbotham, Brown, Fekete, Anielski, and Minsky. Please read all of these carefully before responding. If you haven’t the time to read them all, please don’t respond at all. You are beginning to bore me. It’s taken a long, long time, but there you go….

I rest my case.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/goldman-sachs-are-scum.html

Andrew, I’ve dealt with the “interest” issue multiple times before, from both the left and the right. Attacks come from both sides. The stupid lefties say interest is theft/ursury. The stupid right say “your Ponzi argument applies in a stable money environment, so why can’t we go the whole hog and go straight to insane exponential fiat?”. Both positions are…well…stupid.

With gold as money, interest would still be charged in a free banking environment (to provide returns on differing intertemporal preferences for money), but given the deflationary environment, it would (generally) be miniscule. Yes, borrowers paying the interest would need to “force” an increase in the velocity of money to generate sufficient “income” to pay back the interest. But most people wouldn’t have to borrow in a high equity, deflationary, gold standard economy. Bankers would be considered akin to shysters, used car salesmen or sharks (vampires?). A lot more investment would occur not be way of debt but by way of equity investment and other similar arrangements (see Islamic finance for interest ideas here).

Your arguments do not support or justify the current insane system. We have a genuine Ponzi scheme in banking today. With our level of debts, interest can only be paid off if everyone (excludes the bankers and their monied cronies) gets further into debt. This is unsustainable. Fekete predicts catastrophe. So does Mises. So does Landis.

So do I.

And “no new money is created by FRB”???????????????????????

Further evidence of your mainstream insanity. As I’ve already stated with you before, when the terrified bankers scream, mommy opens her ample (fiat currency) bosom and allows the vampires to suck on her teat for as long as they want, with debased paper currency. So money is not made initially but it is made eventually.

Even a Keynesian like Keen “gets it”:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/steve-keen-roving-cavaliers-of-credit.html

I’ve dealt with this issue before with you directly, and previously provided this reference to prove the point. Given this history, your comment only proves your disingenuousness.

Have. You. Taken. The. Time. To. Read. The. References? Keen? Fekete? Landis? Ellen Hodgson Brown? Rowbotham? Minsky?

You keep mindlessly banging away with mainstream stuff. I KNOW the mainstream arguments. I received a First Class Honours degree, majoring in Economics (specialising in finance). I received a scholarship in my Honours year. I could have gone on to do a PhD if I thought the Professors were human (they weren’t, so I didn’t).

I. Am. Asking. You. To. Slow. Down. And. Read. NON-mainstream stuff.

Prove to me that you’re not a mainstream robot and I’ll treat you seriously. Deal with each of these writers, in turn, showing me you’ve read what they’ve published and then we can talk. If you don’t want to do that, we will keep talking past each other.

You will keep talking at a level approximately 2 feet above the ground, standing on the shoulders of those who caused the crisis and don’t have a clue what do to except print more toilet paper and seek to indebt more governments/peoples in a pathetic desperate attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme. We all know where that is going to lead (see the WP entry “Bernie Madoff”).

Me with a slightly broader vision, standing on the shoulders of giants. Mises. Fekete. Minsky. Rothbard.

OK, now I understand. You’re too busy being stuck on the wrong path. You can’t go back. You can’t switch tracks at this stage in your career and your life.

We crossed paths briefly. It was mildly distracting for me, but ultimately a lonely, empty experience. I learnt nothing from you. It was like watching yet another lost soul running (running!) down the path towards monetary and fiscal hell.

I continue to stand aloof, held up by de Soto, Hulsmann, Mises, Rothbard, Fekete, Sinclair, Bonner, Daughty, Rowbotham, Brown, Paul, Schiff, Landis, Pento, Minsky, Schoon, Deepcaster, Mish, Quinn, Capt Hook and others….as I laugh watching the rats desperately scamper around trying to find an exit door that they cannot see.

They don’t get it. They never will. Sh*tting out more worthless paper promises and doubling up the debt is never going to clean up the malinvestments, which need to be discounted, liquidated and abandoned asap. Stimulus = atrophication/fossilisation of the economic life-blood of an economy (accurate price signals and the entrepeneurial spirit). The Bank of England took 300 years to kill a civilization built on Shakespeare, the Englightenment and the Magna Carta, but believe me the cancer has spread the to the brain and it’s dying. I can see it so clearly. There is no way out now. Killed by their own greed and the malinvestments lies and embezzlement and paper money have spawned. A nuclear bomb would have done less damage for the UK and US economies. Narrow-minded mainstream economics (of which you are merely a tiny, insignificant, obedient part) has killed these economies and is delivering the final death-blow through one final huge “heroin” shot of “stimulus”.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

You are right, in a way – you are too busy to understand. It’s too late for you to understand. It requires years of walking on the right path to climb this mountain.

You, like so many others, will never see the view.

It’s sooooo damn funny from up here!

J.S. Mills and Ricardo????????? You have got to be kidding. Hayek only just (just!) makes the grade, but his vulnerability to Keynes’ seduction still makes me sick.

You’re way past being saved.

I’ll throw you Mises’ Human Action and Rothbard’s For a New Liberty to get started. They’re available on-line in pdf. Start with FANL and end with HA HA HA.

ABIM – I agree Catallyx is a dead zone. They spend more time whinging about JQ and the Profs blog is interesting – and Ill warrant the prof gets more catallyx subscribers or at least their sockpuppets than catallyx actually does.

Check the precise, literal definition of “fascism” and you may be surprised by what you find.

Then again, you don’t seem to do any follow-up research on the links I’ve previously provided, so I’m not holding my breath that you will “get” the connection between corporatism/fascism and central banking/monopoly fiat currency.

Can someone make this guy shut the Hell up? Surely Goldman has enough filthy lucre to take a contract out on this guy?

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/matt-taibbi-goldman-would-have-gone-bust-but-for-tarp/

By the way, where’s your financial analysis of Goldman’s profit result, Andrew?

And Alice, regardless of our little tiff on JQ’s commit website, I still love you. You’re one of the few people that understands what’s in my heart and appreciates the seriousness of the problems we are in, and that we are currently ruled not by the wise but by the sociopathic.

Just please no more threesomes with Andrew. They’re emotionally very scarring to me.

Andrew,

Despite my heroic efforts to actually analyse GS’s financial statements and refute Taibbi’s “outrageous” (?) claims that their profits derive mainly from govt bailout money (AIG etc etc – please do make the enormous effort to click on the links and read a few articles) you have provided NOTHING, NADA, DIDDLY SQUAT, ZIPPO, except “snarky” comments about me linkspamming.

You are the one who is boring me, my friend.

Boy, the Macallan is really kicking in. I couldn’t see straight! After reading Fekete again, I really got soooooooooo depressed, and finished off half a bottle. I’ll give that one more go now that I’m not seeing double:

“Agree about the rent seeking.

So I hope to see you out there in streets with me, screaming in support of “eliminating” the RBA and central banks around the world, screaming about revoking legal tender laws and supporting me in my right to exchange in gold or silver if I choose to.

I can’t wait for you to join me in the streets in support of a REAL free market in money production.

I can’t wait.”

ABOM – all is forgiven over our little tiff at JQs. I cant give you up.

There is something about you that makes sense to me too (the sense of impending doom and hopelessness about the direction we are travelling as an economy ? with malfunctioning financial systems? with malfunctioning governments? as a global economy? Arrrgh – even worse.

Its so annoying when people (and governments and banks and economic policy) just cant see the forests for the trees.

Off the rails completely. Building for the next bigger crash and more becoming impoverished from the great capitalist hype machine and financial swindle by the day. The bezzle is here amongst us now – Galbraith was right.

And I love you a lot too!

Alice,

Andrew’s wriggling and squirming like a slippery eel, but I think you did get him with that one. Ha Ha!

And yes, I love the term “bezzle” too. One of the few things I agree with Galbraith was his eternal disdain for “financial innovation”, which he regarded as little more than repetitive cycles of financial fraud.

His famous phrase was that “finance does not lend itself to innovation”. How true, how true….

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/01/07/9947/the-dubious-worth-of-financial-innovation/

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TDNSRGGS

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3PbVs-g6VSsC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=Galbraith+finance+not+susceptible+to+innovation&source=bl&ots=qzBxx9zBe9&sig=9952s2dZChTPN4wc1Zm8XPmkYRo&hl=en&ei=GSF2SrfSKo36kAXC5rGjDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Why is Andrew being punished (by God?) like this? It’s like he’s in Hell, being beaten up even by the mainstream media.

When will this story die???????

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e84383dc-7f8c-11de-85dc-00144feabdc0.htm

This may just be the biggest beating I’ve given anyone in finance. I just keep launching lefts and rights and blood is everywhere, but I can’t stop. It’s so much fun! Die, central banker, die!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/opinion/03krugman.html

Andrew,
How many times have I told you not to denigrate “Nobel Prize” Winners? Krugman is like the Pope. Infallible!

Your career will end up looking like mine, the impertinent way you’re going…

Watch me skin an eel alive….

Andrew, did you or did you not write these words:

“If Goldmans’ has made a lot of money not, as you seem to believe, by freeloading on governments but out of educated market plays then, from my perspective at least, all power to them and well done.”

Did you or did you not just write these words:

” The government puts a trail of (wasted) dollars on the footpath. People are naturally attracted to the dollars and they profit. For some reason this is the fault of th epeople so attracted?”

Can you spot the inconsistency? Do you want to “clarify” your inconsistent bizarre reasoning? Are you arguing that GS should be “congratulated” for “educated market plays…” or are you admitting that they simply picked up a trail of (wasted) dollars the (corrupt and stupid) government put on the footpath?

Alice cut you up. I have publicly skinning you alive. I recall this review of Hazlitt’s hatchet job on “pretty boy” Keynes’ pathetic, meandering piece of literary and economic faeces (Keynes’ was very “anal” after all, so no wonder he wrote diarrhoea):

“Mr. Hazlitt takes up the General Theory line by line and paragraph by paragraph, discovering scores of errors on al­most every page. Not only does he kill Keynes; he cuts the corpse up into little pieces and stamps each little piece into the earth. The performance is awe-inspiring, masterly, irrefutable — and a little grisly. At times one almost feels sorry for the victim. But, since Keynesian doctrines have created so much misery in the world, any sympathy is misplaced. Hazlitt’s job had to be done.”

I’m not in the same league as the great Henry Hazlitt, but then I’m on a smaller stage, have serious mental heath issues and am p*ssed off my face, so I think I’ve done a reasonable job of cutting your sick soul (what’s left of it) into little pieces. Tiny. Little. Pieces.

I agree with your last paragraph in its entirety.

Uh oh…. now I think I’m falling for Andrew!

I think I’m turning bi. Either that, or Andrew, Alice and I ALL agree with the fundamental, common-sensical proposition that corrupt stupid govts should NOT be bailing out bad banks. They should be involved in petty corruption like approving environmentally damaging building or mining projects in virgin wetlands, or nature reserves, or on valuable farmland….but under no circumstances should they ever bail out bad banks.

When do you ever get agreement from a Rothbardian Austrian, a leftist global warming Keynesian and an sychophantic Establishment shill? Never!

I think this is a first!

Come on, let’s give ourselves a big hug. What a great threesome it’s been! Thanks everyone. I really enjoyed it!

(Now if only I can get Alice to turn around and focus on me more….)

My final comment, to cut you one more time….If the “big dumb” player is the central bank, and the central bank WANTS the banks to re-capitalise, the banks should NOT be congratulated for being spoonfed their profits and bonuses.

That is not “smart trading”, or outsmarting a big, dumb player. The game is fixed and the big dumb player is desperate for the private banks to “win” – all at the expense of the taxpayer and holders of fiat currency (you and me and Alice).

That is called CORRUPTION when we talk about China and Russia and Burma.

Or, more precisely, it is a criminal price fixing cartel in the market for monopoly fiat money, co-ordinated by the govt-sanctioned central banks in violation of the “normal” provisions of anti-trust law and the Trade Practices Act. If the central bank was not exempted, it would CLEARLY be a criminal organisation now facing criminal penalties under the revised Trade Practices Act.

Why am I so lucky at the moment? Karma is good to me!

http://mises.org/story/3597

Stop nibbling away at my ankles and get back to work. I take it you’ve never read FANL, WHGDTOM?, HA, Fekete, Bonner, Rowbotham, Brown, Zarlenga, Menger, Schoon or Daughty….

I yearn for your common sense, Alice. Where are you? I was being sarcastic when I said the proper role of govt is to approve environmentally destructive “development” – you know I was being flippant again, in my despair for the future of our children and the “environment” we are leaving them.

Could you please try to show Andrew how (1) the central bank was created and is OWNED by the private banks, so to attack the central bank alone is not sufficient (2) how at least some of Rothbard’s stuff makes sense even to a Keynesian (3) how Andrew has sucked up to bankers consistently on JQ’s blog (4) how I’m justified in my rage against Andrew and the low life shysters he’s protecting (5) how only gold is real money (6) how I love you and yearn for your soft feminine logic, morality and wisdom…

Please explain, without reference to the two economists you most respect….

Money is gold, unless an oppressive bunch of sociopathic bullies called “The Gay Freemason Collective, or Cambridge Apostles for short” gets together to take over world govts to force a monopoly fiat currency on the economies of the world, and through debt money issuance cruelly suck the vitality of that economy until it withers and dies…

Listen Andy

You dont fool me…the quick rato tells us NOTHING AT ALL about fraud. What it tells us is the ratio of current assets to current liabilities exlcuding inventories.

You tried to use the QUICK ratio as a measure of FRAUD????

Oh come on now – HOW Andy how??? The Quick measure measures fraudulent current assets against graudulent current liabilities and it will still give a good measure – go ask the Mafia and all the other shonks who manipulate their balance sheets.

lets take AXA as an examplem Andy. It once borrowed money from another international firm (Sun something). Now this is a loan…a liability..

but AXA in its wisdom decides that because this other international wanted to invest in AXA , this was actually an asset on AXAs balance sheet??>?????

Hello???? Anyone out there in accounting standards land watching? A liability…a debt..gets magically transformed into a asset (by fraud) and hey whoopee the quick ratio improves.

You are done on that one Andy. Done like a cooked, fried, shrivelled goose. Dont talk to me about accounting accidents (read deliberate misclassified scams). I know accounting …well.

It would have kept their debt ratio down nicely too so the banks stayed dumb and happy.

Love Alice

I knew Alice couldn’t keep it together with this threesome….

Just to clarify – a deep understanding of the current banking system would reveal that the whole banking system is technically insolvent, only saved by periodic injections of fiat money by the collusive criminal central bank.

If you’re short-sighted and stupid, a quick ratio of less than one does not in any way imply insolvency – you roll over your debt, what’s the bloody problem? Well, if you understand that, eventually, offshore funding MUST dry up, cost of funds will eventually increase and cause the roll-overs to become problematic – then you realise the sword of Damocles hangs over EVERY business not directly connected to the criminal central bank.

And that’s where we are today – a collusive oligopoly of criminal banks supported by the criminal collusive price fixing central bank in league with the corrupt govt.

A quick ratio of less than one means “vulnerability” leading eventually to crisis. Just. You. Wait.

Watch the cost of funds in Australia explode when the govt guarantee is lifted. Just you wait. Ha Ha Ha!

Andrew, please give up. I smashed you here:

http://ozrisk.net/2009/06/08/normal-curves-and-the-levy-distribution/

I smashed you here:

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/05/03/austrian-business-cycle-theory/#comments

I smashed the British Establishment bunnies here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Criticism_of_fractional-reserve_banking/Archive_1

Face it. You’re out of your depth. You never expected someone with my depth of understanding and Rothbardian Austrian academic background to come on to your little website and beat you up. Now you’re in denial.

You are a little, sycophantic Establishment shill. There’s no shame in that. 99% of the media fits that description.

I am not.

You are not very imaginative, nor very smart. You are parroting stuff you learnt at uni and in “mainstream” finance texts and cannot think independently for yourself.

I am just a little smarter than you. There’s nothing you can do about now. It’s genetic.

Deal with it. And now leave this issue alone and go back to your little sycophantic role trying to pick up scraps from the banker’s table.

Oh ABOM…the narco tentacles go everywhere now.

Everywhere. Ive looked at the stats from the international money laundering group. Its horrendous the white powder power trade. If you to the Cote D’Azure – or Monte Carlo or some such paradise, you dont have to wonder about the real estate paid for in pure hard cash. You dont need to wonder about the tax havens that have bred like cockroaches off the shores of those white powder producing South American countries and you dont have to wonder why the US govt lets the kingpins live in luxury in prisons (because they have taken over the businesses). You dont have to wonder why the quantities in some countries move in rarely less than brick sizes of compressed white powder and if you dont work for “the man” you dont work and why boats are manned by men with arms that float from island to island where the exchanges take place…and now submarines..and you dont have to wonder why the US with such a superior army / navy cant detect or prevent the transportations going on into its own shores, while it fights false wars in Iraq, and we dont have to wonder if the trade has extended right around the globe to as far away as Finland.

Look away ABOM, look away.

It will send us mad.

Listen Andy – the AXA stuff was real – dont trust AXA – they are complete bastards.
Let me tell you about AXA – it was previously called National Mutual. In the 1980s they sent teams of hot shot salesmen out to sell private super ton nurses and policemenn and people like that (how do I know? I was a nursing sister for eight years – I trained at North Shore and lived in the nurses accom which was called Vindin house and dont ask me to tell you what we got up to and who we hid in the closets between thesenior sisters night inspections! )

I signed up. They showed me these projection charts …in the late 1980s.
By the mid 1990s I had doubled my money. By the late 1990s in the middle of a boom I barely made a cent. I decided they were dubious and tried to get my money out.

Those bastards gave me the run around. I had to produce my original policy docs, I had to photocopy them and mail them, they said they “lost them in the mail”, they asked repeatedly for me to send the original docs. I said “get stuffed” – if I do I didnt have a leg to stand on.

I heard of other people who sent their “originals” and Nat Mut lost them in the mail. They then asked those people to advertise for 6 months!! for “lost policy documents” before they would consider their rollover request.

I knew what they were up to. I wrote. I rang. I bothered them no end. I reported them. I kept ringing. I kept copies of everything.

Eventually I got back exactly what I had given them in cold hard cash ten years before (exit fees and other bloody rip offs).

AXA – throw them in the dirt where they belong. They are (expletives).

Since then I put it in Unisuper and they made me money.

AXA are corporate criminals and theives – totally.

AND they did do that scam on their balance sheet as well. Its now an accounting “case study” in unis Andy.

They (AXA) are the pits (snake pit). Get involved with them? Caveat Emptor!

Alanna

Andy – I dont have a copy. It was used in an accounting class at uni. How numbers can be manipulated by firms using accounting standards misinterpretation….you know this stuff goes on…eg switching between inventory valuation methods etc.
This one is in my memory banks Andy and no I dont have a copy but it involved classifying what was essentially a large loan (I recall the firms name was Sun something) to AXA as an “asset” on the basis that AXA claimed “Suns?” willingness to invest in AXA was really an “asset” to AXA. It was complete Hogwash and I also recall it made the newspapers and you should also know that the ABC ran a television program on the unethical practices of “national mutual” shortly before it became AXA.

I cant actually remember how many years ago this was but I do know policemen and nurses and others who had been snowed by the team of hot shot salesmen in the 1980s, spent years working and contributing and had no super to show for it at the end after National Mutual robbed them blind year after year, and when they tried to get ther money out, the trailing fees and exorbitant exits fees slashed their money by more than fifty percent (what happened to me). This was blatant corporate theft Andy. Blatant.

Even their super statements could not be balanced from one statement to the next but the management fees were outlandish and they separated your super into two accounts – one only earned 1% or something pathetic for two years before it rolled into the other account where earnings were supposedly higher (but still you didnt get it). If you stopped constributing everything stopped rolling into the other account so effectively you were getting 1% if you were lucky on half of the super.

It was one huge snow job Andy.

Seriously that company (AXA) is rotten from the bottom to the top.

try doing a search Andy using both names (AXA and Nat Mut).

Ill see if I can find something as well.

Embezzling Gold Men and the Corrupt Collusive Price Fixing Cartel of Central Bankers: The Gift That Keeps on Giving:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12545.html

This is all too much. Alice is right – it’s all smoke and mirrors, even in little Oz. We are living in Wonderland, with commercial real estate still valued at ridiculous levels to keep bank asset valuations up whilst they desperately try to re-capitalise before having to acknowledge the losses. They are on the EDGE of complete insolvency – all of them!

http://business.smh.com.au/business/real-estates-day-of-reckoning-20090805-ea4o.html

We. Are. Freaking. Dooooooooommmmmmmmeeeeeeedddddddddd!

ABOM –

Andy must have stropped breathing by now after hearing the sorts of facts we have been laying out for him…

Poor Andy, (he must be a shiny new finance grad)…he has had a lesson in real life from you and me ABOM and it could send him mad.

He could end up sharing a room with Godwin Grech if we keep going…

Do you think we should ease up on him?

Even I laughed at your last comment Andy – but I was seriously wondering whether you already had been lobotomized?

Why get two lobotomies?

ABOM,

Today John Conde (a very senior public servant in the ABS) was quoted in todays paper – he put a submission to some review on executive salaries.
He made a valid point (we are being screwed by these bankers!!!). Senior – the most senior public servants earn under a mill. They have immense accountability, pressures, prestige, and power….consider judges also etc.

The supposedly most influential …..BUT bankers are earning a 10 times or 20 times or 30 times multiple of that.

In other words – what he was saying in very polite terms was… they are screwing us all and performance based market based claims for these sorts of remunerations in the finance sector is ALL BS.

I agree. If money is power ABOM then these bwanker …….(expletives) are running the whole damn show.

Screwing us ABOM – everyone. Shareholders, institutional investors, their own employees and the economy.

Andy – at the sound of my voice and at the count of three you will be wide awake, thinking clearly, and remember nothing at all of your total brainwashing by the financial bwankers…

ABOM – 18 year olds? Oh no…not that!! No wonder your second marriage is going down the gurgler. You better listen to me ABOM – I might be the only real friend you have (who will tell you like it is). Oh those glorious peacock feathers just cant help their biological destiny can they?

ABOM – you seriously need to get back on track and consider your financial destiiny or your wife will do it for you!

Tame ABOM, tame. Women tame men (not the other way around)….thats the natural order of things…

Best to get used to the idea as early as possible.

Besides ABOM,

sex wanes naturally…..its about having a good friend right next to you as you age (someone who is freaking funny is a distinct advantage here) so you can rail and whinge and complain and laugh about the injustice of growing new wrinkles every day or not being as beautiful in the mirror as you once were

Yet ABOM, the flip side of that coin – you feel the injustice of growing physical ugliness so much more….because your mind, your judgement, your insights into the world are sharper, clearer and what you see with your knowledge acquired over decades……is sadly more depressing than ever – as you get older you see the bad stuff more – when you are younger – its like, so simple – I grow up, I marry a wondeful person, I have children and live happily ever after….. the world is a simple map.

Until you see its real injustices and its real ugliness (far more ugly than you could ever be by growing the odd wrinkle here and there…)

Getting older, think about it, you need company on that journey. Good funny company ABOM!

No matter what ABOM – dont turn your mind off but remember you gotta laugh at life!

Andrew, why do you always interrupt Allice and me at the most intimate, inappropriate moments? It just proves you have no “human” sensitivity (then again, Reptilians are not known for their emotional sophistication – greed and fear are their only binary emotions apparently).

And Alice, “sex wanes…”? If only. I’m praying for the time when I have no sex drive and I can focus on my Buddhist meditation again. Just praying. In the meantime, I have a little “problem” than frequently, urgently, needs to be addressed. Help me Alice. Help me!

I never mix my 18 Year Old Macallan. I can only have it straight up. I prefer it slightly warm. Not even ice should dilute the subtle sherry flavour.

I love you Alice. I hope your partner makes you laugh and I hope he understands that he is very lucky to have such an intelligent, soulful, generous spirit as the mother of his children.

boys that is

Todays SMH Andy! The difference between a ponzi scheme and a ponzi scheme. One was the Wiki definition …the other was a particular MAC bank fund…no damn difference at all between the two – its has now collapsed or is collapsing (small side column somewhere….dont ask me to dig it out of the garabage bin Andy – if it wasnt SMH it was tele – only get two and Im not responsible for the tele – I wouldnt read it if it didnt get dropped on the lawn – thats you know who Doug Anthony country folk descendent partner…arrgghhhhhh).

It was todays news.

Wow, what a night! Sarah and Emma, thanks.

On to other matters, Andrew surely this breach is a possible sign of an endemic culture of pushing the regulatory envelope at Mac Bank?

Oh uh…

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1249678800.php

And a nice counterpoint to Ross Gittins’ stupidity:

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-true-victims-of-government-stupidity/

Now, back to Sarah….

Andy – the independence breach is a different one to the Macbank ponzi scheme. Two different articles…I dont think you got the right one (for the ponzi scheme).

oops wrong blog…help me ABOM, there is do much madness…Im losing it myself.

Alice,

I make no comment regarding the reasons for the scarcity of Misesian Austrian female economists. Then again, I have no idea why there are so few Misesian Austrian economists FULL STOP. Perhaps they are genetically identified and culled at birth by the govt?

And no need to be jealous. I spent most of the afternoon being dragged between the Jimmy Choo and Louis Vuitton stores in the city, with Sarah begging for a handbag from each. She was trying to explain that if we’re doomed, and we’ve just spent so many hours making sweet love (with her friend Emma occasionally taking a casual interest while smoking and watching tv in the hotel room), why am I so interested in saving my money? If there’s no future, why can’t she spend it all on handbags?

I had no ready response. She’s surprisingly canny (and funny!) for a tall leggy bimbo. I’m (almost) in love with her.

I said that spending $4000 on a white (easily marked) Jimmy Choo handbag was even more insane than Ross Gittins, Andrew, or the current worldwide fractional reserve-dominated banking practices.

She left the store in a huff, very angry and deeply unsatisfied with my lack of nihilistic hedonism. She’s left a message on my phone saying that she needs (needs!) the Louis Vuitton bag, and she’s being “reasonable” because that one costs only $1400. If I buy her the bag she’ll do “anything” for me. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm……….

She’s right that the world is ending and there’s no reason NOT to blow your cash on whatever you want. However, she’s wrong to think I’m going to blow all my cash on what SHE wants.

Oh well, another short-term relationship crashes and burns…

And if I see one more reference to “Ponzi Scheme” when referring to corrupt, brainless, zombie-walking dead Western govts debt-funding, I think I am going to puke:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12596.html

Ok ABOM

I can see Im going to have to rescue you from gold digging handbag hunters…Jimmy Choo or Louis Vuiton. And after you buy the damn handbag Abom –

Alice, I’ve already told Sarah all she does is yearn. The yearning never stops. If it’s not another ciggi at 3am, it’s a Gucci bag. If it’s not Gucci, it’s Louis Vuitton. If it’s not Louis Vuitton it’s a Tiffany’s diamond ring (damn that light blue box – what a bloody marketing coup from the absolutely evil blood diamond trade!).

But she’s so unrestrained and sizzling hot in bed I can’t help myself. Between the long episodes of whining and impulsiveness and yearning, there are milliseconds of sweet angelic satisfaction on her face and she can be sooooooooooo grateful…

I know it’s shallow and crazy and she’s completely destructive. She’s a classic narcissistic man-eater (in so many ways…).

But given my understanding of shyster-high finance and my disgust and dismay that our govts are totally corrupt and OWNED by GS, my nihilism draws me into her clutches. I screamed 20 years ago that the probability analysis underlying all of high finance was BS, and have slowly watched the bankers kill us. There’s nothing left but opium, wine and fast women…

Andy’s gone all quiet again. I think this time I’ve finally killed the zealot-zombie. Let me celebrate by calling Sarah and seeing what she’s up to…

Some women find me attractive, I have to admit. I can’t quite believe it myself – especially the models (they never seem to be able to meet nice guys and are often incredibly lonely!). I had really bad acne as a teenager and was very bookish and shy until well into adulthood (hence the academic record – I had no “distractions”).

Once the skin cleared up, I was left with very good marks, a body made out of triathlons at uni and a very sensitive, giving soul, tempered through many hours of rigorous, brutally painful Zen meditation. It makes for an unusually potent mix.

I also have a very unusual background and some chicks dig “alternative” backgrounds. And you can’t get a “stranger” background than me. I’m also unbelievably good in bed. That helps. When Sarah’s right foot starts cramping when she comes, it makes me laugh…I think that’s what’s meant by the phrase “toe curling orgasms”. I hate to be so brutally honest, but I’m brutally honest about everything.

I’m certainly not egostical about anything. I hate myself. I hate the fact that I couldn’t get published in economics journals. I hate the fact that I can’t seem to be faithful in my (many) relationships with women. I hate the fact that I still get bad skin occasionally. I hate the fact that we’re killing the planet and ourselves as a civilization. And I hate the fact that the shallow over-consuming arrogant embezzling Ponzi-Andy’s of the world haven’t been culled from the planet more often than they should have been.

Well, few Aussie guys seem to know what to do with their mouths. They’re not just for drinking beer you know….

And Andy, every advance in freedom in human history has been blocked by a dumb arrogant sociopathic white (gay?) freemason. Slavery – that was for the BENEFIT of the blacks in Africa – how could they possibly think slavery was a conspiracy against black people to keep them down (they were LUCKY to be purchased by the white man). De-segration was a mistake, caused by “uppity” blacks filling their heads with conspiracy theories about the US govt. American Indians were CRAZY to think white settlers would infect blankets with smallpox or give them syphillis. Abos are too dumb to be left to their own devices, and they’re all child rapists anyway (as if stuff like that doesn’t happen in Anglican college!). The idea that the COMPULSORY takeover of Aboriginal land by the Federal Government is nothing but altruism by the Anglican community is complete BS. There are NO mining opportunities on the Abos’ land – why do they think such absolute, conspiratorial RUBBISH? The opium trade was perfectly justified – in fact the British fought a war of “free trade” to push drugs onto the Chinese, creating the most profitable trade of the 19th century and being the leading drug cartel in the world. The Chinese had a “weakness” for opium and heroin! The British were providng a social service in giving it to them (funny how they have one of the lowest drug abuse rates in the world today if they were so prone to drug abuse in the 19th century…but let’s not go there). Gandi was full of BS about independence and full of conspiracies about the British being oppressive arrogant a**holes. East Timor is doing WAY better under Western-proxy control than under Indonesian control (isn’t it?). The Russians should be THANKFUL the West took them over in the mid-90s. Russian women WANTED to be prostitutes in the UK and in Amsterdam. They WANTED to be abused in porn films – they were just waiting to be “liberated” by the West Coast porn industry. Africans are CRAZY to think AIDS is being “encouraged” in black townships to wipe them out. CRAZY.

And I’m crazy to think Western govts are owned by GS, that FRB is embezzling destructive fraud and that a fiat monopoly currency enforced by the brutal legal tender laws of the central govt is suicidal madness.

Yeah, right. I’m the crazy sociopath.

Paranoid bloody Chinese commis. Don’t they know who’s in charge? Sooner we take them over the better…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/business/global/10riotinto.html?hpw

That’s true too! You’re more knowledgeable about “conspiracy” theories than I realised! Well done again, Andrew!

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1192819378.php

Shocked! !!!!!!! But cant stop laughing..

But ABOM – check out JQs – I just landed a king hit on Andy.

He is unconscious ABOM flailing his arms in the ropes. They are trying to revive him but its not looking good.

They have called the ambo..

Die banker fiat money scum.

Fiat Money Inflation in France – Prelude to Catastrophe:

Here is the untold and still largely unknown story of a major factor behind the French Revolution. As John Mackay writes in the introduction:

“It records the most gigantic attempt ever made in the history of the world by a government to create an inconvertible paper currency, and to maintain its circulation at various levels of value. It also records what is perhaps the greatest of all governmental efforts–with the possible exception of Diocletian’s–to enact and enforce a legal limit of commodity prices.

“Every fetter that could hinder the will or thwart the wisdom of democracy had been shattered, and in consequence every device and expedient that untrammelled power and unrepressed optimism could conceive were brought to bear. But the attempts failed. They left behind them a legacy of moral and material desolation and woe, from which one of the most intellectual and spirited races of Europe has suffered for a century and a quarter, and will continue to suffer until the end of time. There are limitations to the powers of governments and of peoples that inhere in the constitution of things, and that neither despotisms nor democracies can overcome.”

“Inflation brought, as we have seen, commerce and manufactures, the mercantile interest, the agricultural interest, to ruin. It brought on these the same destruction which would come to a Hollander opening the dykes of the sea to irrigate his garden in a dry summer. It ended in the complete financial, moral and political prostration of France-a prostration from which only a Napoleon could raise it.”

Ah so thats why Marie Antionette advised the starving to eat cake.

Marie was the equivalent of the modern day the wife of a GOLDMAN EXEC!!!!

His name was Louis X V I of France…

The country was deeply in debt when he ascended the throne and the people were fed up with the despots of the noble class who had run out of control, controlled the government and managed to avoid nearly all taxes…the nobles live their lives in conspicuous consumption… willing to tolerate a government steeped in mountainous debt, and turn a blind eye the malnutrition and mass starvations of the poor that had been going on for some months…

Jeez this sounds familiar…

Andy has no shame ABOM – after Macbank paid 53 mill for the airport – within one year those bastards increased landing fees and check in counter rentails and parking by between 30 and 140%. JH’s stupid productivity comminssion thought that would happen BECAUSE macbank would be scared of the govt (ha ha ha no way) re-introducing inflation capped airport price controls (capped top inflationary increases ABOM – more than reasonble).

Those banking bastards at Macbank laughed all the way to the bank…

stuff Andy – Im ready to king hit him again ABOM. He is begging for it.

sorry – above post – JH’s stupid productivity comminssion thought that would happen BECAUSE macbank

should read “thought that wouldnt happen”

Wait – get this JH’s productivity commission were actually SO STUPID they thought MACBANK would be SO SCARED of the givernment re introducing price caps on airline charges….THAT Macca wouldnt be extreme in lifting prices ha ha ha ha…so the WISE and STUPID productivity commission thought theyd lift the price caps..in the name of DEREGULATION..

You know Andy (your God).

Inflation linked price caps at that (more than reasonable).

The GOVT may as well have said “YOU BOYS AT MACBANK – GO FOR IT – RIP EVERYONE OFF – IN MACBANK WE TRUST – NOT IN GOD – OR THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE – ONLY IN BIG BANKS PROFITS”

Because thats what Macbank did. They ripped us off. In one year increasing landing fees, counter rentals and parking by 30 to 140% after 2002 – in one year after the dumb dumb JH govt lifted price controls. DOH.

In one year thats what Macbank got away with. Freaking idiots in government. They were damn lucky.

Andy,

its time you posted a new point…comment… of interest in your blog…
Congratulating Goldman Sachs has been demolished. In its place…brickbats.

Andy,

Theres nothing quite like a man who has been beaten to an absolute pulp in here by ABOM and I, claiming the referee made a bad call…..

as they carry him away on a stretcher..he is still protesting weakly.

Don’t think it’s over. Not until GS is dead.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/taibbi/taibbi11.1.html

I assume James Madison is also an “idiot” who also screamed a lot when he was alive?

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”- James Madison

Well then Olive Cushing Dwinell was a very perceptive writer/editor/notemaker.

By the way, the same “controversy” has taken place with William Paterson’s famous phrase. It seems any criticism of bankers or money changers gets clouded by history and obscured by academic historians (paid by the bankers?) distorting the truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:William_Paterson_(banker)

And just on the “ridiculous” “idiotic” suggestion of creating national banks owned and controlled by the government….

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/public_option.php

I hope the consulting fees adequately recompense you for your complete lack of conscience. It must take a lot work to be so morally blind…

Well China has the biggest banks by market cap in the world and they escapted the worst of the SIV, CDO, CDS, securitised toxic alphabet soup that the US/UK banks laughably engaged in.

And I keep bringing up the CBA example, but you keep ignoring it. But then, in order to keep your “free market” vision so narrow you need to keep your eyes half-closed.

Yes, but has post Glass-Steagall “de-regulated” US done better than pre-?

That is the key question. I assume, given your prejudice (sorry, perspective) you would say yes (ha ha ha!).

Like Keynesian socialist Alice, I would say yes (and use Q4, 2008 as my proof).

There is no hope ABOM when Andy comes out with nonsense like this….

“As for Glass-Stegall – if it had been part of a properly co-ordinated removal of regulation it would have been an outstanding success. As it is – it was helpful but not sufficient.”

I suggest we toss him to the wolves as fresh live meat…thats where he wants to be ABOM!!!

and I love you too ABOM – becaue you are honest.

ABOM

You hate shysters, liars, shills, Ponzi-schemers, parasites, losers, gay Cambridge Apostles, Freemasons, Illuminati, Reptilians, FRBers (when they are backed up by central bankers), corrupt money-grubbing materialists, British drug-peddling scum, and barbarians.

I hate of em too but I hate robots, central bankers and treasury modellers as well.

But Andy,

Just answer me this one question honestly….

If Goldman didnt get the bailout – would they have failed?

Are you congratulating a dead man walking?

It. Just. Keeps. Going. When will this story die?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/033101.html

I know we’re doomed with the curren insane system we have right now. I’m infinitely more stable than the current disaster prone financial system. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Oh ABOM

Im having a heart attack and Im going shopping today for tinned food….I just (from your link) realised why the US fed lent trillions (trillions) to banks across the globe in the GFC, including 3000 for every single person in NZ to the bank of NZ….to lower the price of money, to keep selling money, to keep the bubble inflated….

But there is nothing they can do ABOM because people like me are starting not to trust the banks anymore and no amount of cheap credit will make people borrow when they dont want to despite all the talk of recovery and green shoots and hype.

Ive just realised it ABOM. Im the sort of person banks are scared of, very very scared of ABOM.

Im the sort of person the US Fed is terrified of. Enough to make them lend trillions as cheaply as possible across the globe..

Oh I feel sick, but not sick enough to give them my money or borrow theirs ABOM.

Congratulations Goldmans!

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12761.html

From one of the more sober and respected financial commentators. He’s British Establishment, so he’s as “stable table” as they come.

Another “wacko” speaks…

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32385199

Listen its the first time Ive heard the “stable table” line….hmmm its not bad actually… but

Thats ABOM you are speaking to… and you know he comes out fighting. The whole world is not a stable table – its not even an able table and some people cant even make it from the cradle to the table.

Then when things CRASH we get told a whole lot of fables from the pharoahs sitting at the financial tables!

Its enough to make you unstable.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks we live in a free market:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/53287717.html

LOL ABOM

Andy has come out with two priceless gems this week…the “unstable table” line and he told me I clearly had a case of “survivor bias”.

Im not sure what that is ABOM – but Andy is getting wittier by the day. ..

When did I say I agree with survivor bias Andy???

Its just a catchy term.

Dont go twisting the facts (you twister!) or Ill by you a skipping rope for Xmas.

Its not really an acknowledgement of error Andy – I did qualify my original post by referring to units if you recall (check it)..and yes the fibro shacks did go up en masse before people knew the dangers of fibro but perhaps it did make housing more affordable (than now) for many back then.

Not all were thread brick and tile but not all were fibro shacks either Andy. I live on the beaches (and back to units)…strangely enough the red brick unit blocks of the sixties and before (the orangy sort of forties things – a bit box like but plenty of space inside and plenty of common property around) are infintely preferable now as a purchase – still basically sound than the seventies blond bricks that came later – concrete cancer afflicted many of these it seems to me – perhaps they used more concrete. But they are still better than the rendered cramped shoddy things that have sprouted in the 1990s boom. It just got worse and worse. They dug into sand dunes, poured some sort of plastic over it and rapidly they went up. Then later after the builders leave…the basement parking leaks, there is no common property, dryers turning even though we have lots of sun, cracking of walls and few good downpours and all that lovel render starts to stain…then there is the lovely sound of toilets flushing from the unit above (how did that happen), the developers conveniently running the body corporate at exhorbitant management fees (how did that happen), leaking pipes and showers and unsealed balconies flooding units below

Ive seen and heard of it all round here Andy. My friend is the local agent.
So go 60s red brick and forties and even before ie deco – small, solid, on land is my humble opinion. A lot of the new stuff is utter rubbish.

Andy – I will look but there is a typo in the post “construction”

Schoon hits it out of the park. Again. Note the liberal use of the term “Ponzi Scheme” in close proximity to the term “banker”.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article12792.html

ABOM. I dont care what Andy posts up there.

We.Are.All.Doomed.

Im with you. Andy do you seriously realise what is at stake here…..

What really really concerns me now is inflation . NO ONE can print that much money like they have in the US and escape unharmed. My poor hubby is not clueless but his small business is suffocating slowly by the day and I am now biting my nails (used cars). He is the last man still standing in his region (we are watching them hit the wall) and he is sitting at the dinner table tonight talking to his mate who owns a newsagents. Its been on the freaking market for two years (poor bastard and newspapers are dying and discretionary spening cuts kill magazines)…his wife is in China trying to open an english language teaching school (but thats passe – there are 500 of them in major cities – now what they need is some stimulus for the one child little toddler kids whos relatives arent there for them. Thats the vogue for guilty Chinese parents but the Chinese govt is quite unique to deal with and not easy.)

He has had two buyers for the newsagents but both have been afflicted with Keynes animal spirits gone missing and they reneged on deal even though he dropped the price.

He cant get anyone to commit to buy his business. Two years and no sex poor bastard! Its enough to send you mad (if you are a man of course!).

Keep laughing Andy. Keep laughing…

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bee-afraid-bee-very-afraid-09-08-14

Now everyone understands modern banking (especially in the US) is just a high class scam run by rats on the financial Titanic. I’m bored by it now everyone knows the game. Time to move on…

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-jp-morgan-effect/

You’re back! Hope the holiday was good for you. You’re attitude hasn’t changed, so I assume the holiday didn’t mellow you.

And why do I continually confuse your with you’re? Must be the knowledge that spelling doesn’t matter on the financial Titanic… I see icebergs ahead…and I’m distracted from my typing by trying to work out how a rejected, scorned low-life third class passenger like myself can scam a lifeboat from one of the first class passengers. How about I tell them I can fish for baby seals?

http://jsmineset.com/

I wonder if I have 22 carat gold. Is there a test I can run on this stuff? Have I been duped, just like the stupid Asian buyers of tungsten?

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1255885200.php

are pushing us all. To our deaths.

A “stable table” going after GS in the nicest way possible…

http://prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id=10298

Link to Matt Taibbi article is here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle/

‘But its business is different from the banks for which the discount window – the Fed facility that allows its regulated banks to borrow cash in exchange for securities in extremis – was invented. Until recently, no one would have suggested that Goldman deserved a place with them.

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, put it well this week. The “utility aspects of banking where we all have a common interest in ensuring continuity of service are quite different in nature from some of the riskier activities that banks undertake, such as proprietary trading”.’

The most stable of tables, going after Sacks of Gold, ever so discreetly, ever so nicely, ever so gently, ever so respectfully..,ever so limply, ever so weakly, ever so WIMPISHLY… is this guy a “full” male or some kind of transvestite?

I suspect he’s been “operated on” by the banks before writing this ever so genteel piece obliquely referring to the obscene “turd in the free market punchbowl” bonuses (bonus – for being corrupt?) on Counterfeiting Street…

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4098f426-be6d-11de-b4ab-00144feab49a,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F4098f426-be6d-11de-b4ab-00144feab49a.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fhome%2Fasia

“Fear not, as not all is lost. Goldman Sachs reported a $3 billion profit in three months just days ago. Is this a sign of recovery or massaging the truth? I am afraid to say the latter after reading various commentators and in particular the piece by Dylan Ratigan in the Huffington Post. Some $64 billion received through the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TRAP), AIG, the Fed and the FDIC was exponentially leveraged to buy distressed assets, which has led to their reflation.

The taxpayers, of course, have received precious little in return but the politicians did better. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, major banks and financial institutions in receipt of $295 billion in TARP money reciprocated with $114 million to Washington for lobbying and campaign contributions. As Andrew Cockburn puts it, “at 258,449 percent, it has been called the single best investment in history.”

The mutually parasitic relationship goes further, in that the major banks are also keen buyers of U.S. Treasurys sold at auction. And what they cannot lend out, they deposit with the Fed at interest. Generations of future economists, analysts and commentators will scratch their heads in disbelief at this fiasco which is so brazen that it defies any modicum of common sense.

Whether the assistance afforded by the Fed to banks can outrun the pace of foreclosures and rising unemployment remains to be seen, although the signs are not encouraging. Either the unfolding internal collapse or the external refusal to continue funding the United States while its dollar slides will inevitably bring on a resolution unlikely to be palatable to anyone. In the meantime, depositors are subjected to laughable rates of interest on their savings as well as the ignominy and insult of potentially having their bank closed by the FDIC on a Friday afternoon.”

http://prudentbear.com/index.php/featuredcommentaryview?art_id=10300

I can’t believe this guy lives in Sydney Australia. Can we find out where this guy lives and infect him with H1N1? Surely someone who insults GS and labels the nexus between banks and govt as “parasitic” deserves to die? Surely he’s just another of those crazy social credit anti-Semites who deserves a painful death?

Where the Hell can I get a “258,449 percent” return on my money? THAT’S quality investing – in corrupt, venal, stupid “sell my children down the river” politicians! 100% govt guaranteed returns. What a return on your investment!

Abom – THOSE BASTARDS AT GOLDMAN!!!
Give the profit back and help pay back the bloody government deficit in the US.

Its THEFT.

Andy – rotten eggs to Goldman and their mates Paulson and Geithner (scum – total scum – ABOM).

God’s message to GS execs when they knock on the Gates of Heaven:

“It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else has made it.”

http://news.goldseek.com/TacticalInvestor/1256451240.php

Your admiration is well-founded. If you believe in fascism.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/guest-post-capitalism-socialism-or-fascism.html

Unblock the comments awaiting moderation. There are several.

Please.

ABOM – is Andy playing with regulation here?? (Moderating?? You ABOM?? Andy is moderating you?? When he has had long long conversations with you??)

I think he is turning into a bureaucrat ABOM.

Modus operandi of all selfish gits – get the state to pay for the stuff I want, offload my losses on the state when I can, try to grab any profits or windfall gains and claim them as legitimate and a result of my own brilliance, talent, IQ, genius when they pass by my window.

The model every corrupt businessman (few women are really good at this – I wonder why?) looks up to and envies: Goldman Sachs, the Rothschilds and the owners of the Federal Reserve (whoever they may be…)

I’m glad you liked it.

Your stuff has given me a few hearty laughs in the past (removal of Glass Steagall was “helpful, but not sufficient.” Ha Ha Ha!). So I’m glad I could reciprocate.

She’s OK on a couple of issues. A weak currency can be a useful form of protectionism. A strong dollar can kill an economy, not improve it, if other major trading partners don’t follow suit (eg Aust $ right now). Bankers are thieving criminals underneath the suits. The current monetary system is doomed. America is doomed. China has a long term plan, the US does not. Gold is at the heart of the monetary system. Gold could “discipline” the bankers if unleashed. The current system is unsustainable. Red ink kills economies.

All of these are useful insights…

And no, she doesn’t understand derivatives. But then most bank boards don’t either. Ha Ha Ha!

1. No., Capital controls (similar to Brazil) would probably be best at the moment.
2. No. Just abolish the RBA/Fed/central banks of the world, after nationalisation and breaking up of all TBTF institutions, globally and simultaneously (like a worldwide mutual disarmament agreement).
3. Yes. The current one (a recent insane experiment started in Aug 1971) is unsustainable.
4. Discount? Err….how about “look realistically at”? Reference (one among many): http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14459.html
5. I’ve said before nationalisation is preferable to the current insane fascist system (privitize profits, socialize gains). China’s banking system is better than the US’s. China’s corruption problem is about the same (perhaps slightly better) than the US. China’s environment problems are probably worse (although it’s a closer contest than you think). I’d love to talk to Rothbard about whether he would prefer China over the US. Higher bank reserves, fewer regulations on starting and owning a business (some US firms have relocated to China just to get away from the US regulations). Govt not bending over to bankers. It would be a close call. Mao is dead by the way, and China is more capitalistic than the US. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gZuG-52js0
6. No. Just remove legal tender laws.
7. Many deserve it. They’re right on the edge of criminality (trading insolvently) most of the time. Q4, 2008 simply revealed the reality.
8. Change it by EITHER nationalization or removing legal tender laws and the RBA. Either way is OK with me.
9. Read Elaine and you will understand what she means. Then again your mind is so closed, so I doubt you’ll learn anything from her website.

You support central banking, the current system, whilst supposedly supporting “free market capitalism”. LOL!

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=ozrisk.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2009%2F10%2Fguest-post-capitalism-socialism-or-fascism.html

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=ozrisk.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketoracle.co.uk%2FArticle14123.html

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=ozrisk.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanityfair.com%2Fpolitics%2Ffeatures%2F2008%2F10%2Fhitchens200810

You can’t make this stuff up.

After bailing out every banker on earth to tune of trillions, now the NYTimes wants to bail out every sucker who got over their heads in debt. Presumably by pillaging the middle class (the money’s got to come from somewhere and all the govt does is rape and pillage one – non-prefered – group in order to provide that bounty to its favored group).

Does the NYTimes understand the concept of demand and supply? If you double the money supply through insane deficit spending eventually Weimar Republic awaits?

Redistribution to save the dumbest (bankers and gamblers) amongst us. Great.

We’re doomed with sh*t like this being written – and published – by “reputable” mainstream Establishment newspapers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/opinion/27tue1.html

Andrew, what do you think of Elaine’s latest effort? Any worthwhile insights? Or another laugh?

http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/etf-markets-shoot-upwards-driving-up-commodity-prices/#more-5353

I like her writing and her analysis myself. But then I have a soul…

I have never heard a more turgid, convoluted, constipated, pointless, useless description of the dynamics associated with the denouement of a SIMPLE Ponzi scheme.

http://www.ft.com/cms/668e074a-bf24-11de-a696-00144feab49a.html

This closet simple-minded socialist argues free markets don’t work because they don’t tend towards equilibrium. Free markets would be stable if the market in money was free. As discussed above, only an idiot would consider the “markets” today free.

He talks about the “free market” panics of 1982, 1987, 1989-1994, 1997-98, 2000 and 2008-09.

He NEVER refers to Aug 15, 1971. He NEVER talks about central bank policies. He NEVER talks about how the market in money is not free. He NEVER talks about the fact that his pathetic “non-theory” of reflexivity is just a cheap rip-off of ABCT. He NEVER talks about von Mises or Rothbard or Fekete or North. He NEVER talks about gold as money and paper as crap. He NEVER talks about John Law and paper money. He NEVER talks about the destructive quality of FRB. He NEVER talks about central banking AT ALL.

The guy is a “genteel” socialist zealot. Egotistical, raving about the “dangers” of “market fundamentalism” (where is the “free market” in this fascist central bank-dominated Hell Hole?!?). As stupid as Keynes, or Krugman.

http://blog.mises.org/archives/010922.asp

He wants MORE regulation (margin requirements and minimum capital requirements). Like we didn’t have too much regulation and central banking BEFORE?

He NEVER calls for a free market in money production and NEVER attacks the Fed as the heart of the madness. He talks about improving a failed model.

His heart is as black as Krugman’s. Or Andrew’s. If this is all he’s got after a lifetime of “study” then his intellectual horsepower is about as impressive as a little Vespa.

Put put put…grab a bit of von Mises without mentioning gold, put put put… grab a bit of Rothbard without mentioning central banking, put put put…. grab a bit of Minsky without mentioning the word “Ponzi” or “pyramid”, put put put….grab a bit of ABCT without referring to FRB.

Reflexivity is non-verifiable rubbish. “Positive feedback” can continue – but it can also be interrupted. Bubbles can be tested, sometimes they continue and sometimes they don’t. A dumber non-theory I have not found.

But given Andrew’s admiration of corporate front man Warren Buffett, I assume this guys is also one of his “free market” heros. You simply cannot save some people. They destroy themselves. And the economy.

We need a “new” paradigm alright. Austrian School revival anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_business_cycle_theory

I’m glad you like her. I’ve been reading her for 3 years. She has some absolutely BRILLIANT “outside the box” insights.

She also has a self-sufficient farm. Wise woman.

This piece was one of her best, written two years ago. How prescient!

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2007/10/elaine-meine-24.html

She can be a brilliant, eloquent writer on her own country’s madness and descent into corrupt fascistic despotism.

It’s coming. The next leg down.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14590.html

Watch out below…

Yep he is still alive over at JQs. Ive got a whole lot of “libos” tied up in there ABOM!!!! Ive got them all in one post. They are coming out of the woodwork.

Now in some post – I think its Monday Message Board – another anti govt interventionist called Sukrit has posted something on Rothbard and the Great Depression. Go take a look. Its up your street. Unfortunately it only focuses on the aftermath not the cause (malfinvestment etc) so its a bit narrow. Cures are one thing but prevention is better every time.

Hey ABOM did you hear Michael Milken is a contender to buy out some of Eddy Groves childcare centres.??

Per Alice “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change”.

Austrian Business Cycle Theory. I’ve already discussed the Great Depression at length on Steve Keen’s blog here:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/10/06/rba-gets-it-wrong-again/?cp=3

I don’t feel like arguing with idiots today.

Sober journalism on GS:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77791.html

Seriously, do you admire this kind of stuff as “smart trading” or is it simply misleading and deceptive conduct (at least under Aust law)?

I cannot understand how you can maintain that Goldmans should be “congratulated” for this kind of stuff.