The writings of Reinko Venema. 


 Click the pic for the history of this main page... (The archives)

 

Just some WarArt files
The (short) Story index
Index to the BigStory

 The most important deed done by me lately is a second activation of the NigthmareOnWallStreet. Goal is to guide down the DOW Jones to the 7000 level (the previous time I almost made it and now so many years later I have plenty of ammo).
Latest updates:
24 Nov 2009 The USA gross domestic product grew 2.8%, what does it mean?
08 July 2009: The IMF still does not have a clue about the US housing market. 
18 June 2009: Finally a new update, reposting & stuff like that.

23 Feb 2009:
DOW below 7500 and declining fast...
08 Feb 2009:
Nice unemployment chart from the office of the Speaker.

Title: From the Iraqis, with love.

-Dring dring, there the door bell goes. Reinko opens the door and it is Arty! Hey come on in Reinko says. 

Arty: Long time yo see man! Hey I need some hot coffee because it is damn cold in your country and what do we have to do with this surge in USA born soldiers?

-Reinko: I don't know, the surge in Afghanistan is very weird because only next year in 2011 these USA born soldiers are supposed to get back to their trailer parks.

We must also take into account that even the throwing of dumb bombs is good for the US economy because of the replacement demand. 

Arty (looking difficult): So what do we need to do?

-Reinko: For Afghanistan it is important to keep attacks up, after all Afghanistan is not for nothing the graveyard of empires.

On the other hand the Pakistanis should put their act together and avoid being the next Colombia or Mexico.

 Arty (smiling): Ok ok, I have to go back to Afghanistan so bye bye 

 

recent      links

     

(09 Jan 2010) One item:

Item 1) The USA jobs report from yesterday. 

 Item 1) The USA jobs report from yesterday. 

With utter amazement the entire week I have been watching folks on the financial news channels expressing hope for the job situation to show improvement. 

This was utterly weird because a lot of financial news channel folks have done some 'academic study' like economy. Why would the idiots from CNN, CNBC, the local RTL7 think that jobs can improve? I don't have a clue!

All in all, if you throw the economy in a big blender, it is more or less like this:  

GDP growth minus labor productivity growth = Employment growth.

This is only a rule of thumb because not all sectors of the economy are born equal.

Suppose the economy expands only via barber shops, tattoo shops and whorehouse services, there are a lot of jobs created because there labor costs are a huge fraction of the turnover in that part of the economy.
In economies like those in Europe and the USA, expansion of jobs in the industry always needs a few millions in expansion of the GDP (because in the industry job costs are small compared to turnover and added value). 

As the idiots from the financial news channels can see for themselves: my easy to understand rule of thumb holds on nice:

 

Picture source (I modified the picture a little bit):

Employment Charts 
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/01/employment-charts/   

Since real USA GDP growth over the last decade has been below 2% a year (that's also unknown for these financial news weirdo's) it is not that hard to understand why job numbers don't grow.

Ok ok financial news outlets are also mass media things and as such they cannot make it 'too difficult', why not include a five minute item every hour with "What did Paris Hilton do the last 60 minutes?"  

Further reading (from Econompic):  

Hours Worked per Civilian (per Week) 
http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2010/01/hours-worked-per-civilian-per-week.html 

ADP Jobs Down 84,000; Services Jobs Grow  

The overpaid bankers and financial news folks doing their homework? Come on, since when do these easy going folks read simple to understand stuff like this:

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea1.txt   

Of course the usual 'Table A' from the USA Bureau of Labor Statistics is a must see (where dumb financial news folks always think the Non Farm Payrolls is the hot thing, table A is always much more funny):

Employment Situation Summary 
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm 

And in case you are interested:
One year ago weekly US unemployment (seasonally not adjusted) stood at 768,858.
This week it was 645,571.    

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT (17 Jan 2009)
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20090066.htm 

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT (02 Jan 2010)
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20100002.htm 

Lets end the update once more with this very easy to understand macro economical stuff:

GDP growth minus labor productivity growth = Employment growth.

Till updates.

 

(06 Jan 2010) Two items:

Item 1) Pakistan: the number of attacks needs to go down.
Item 2) Having fun with the Americans part III + a few links. 

 Item 1) Pakistan: the number of attacks needs to go down.

I know I almost write nothing about Pakistan, but beside other folks I too have been looking with amazement to all those bombings on weird places like markets or lately at some volleyball match. 

The reason I almost never mention Pakistan is very simple: I don't understand Pakistan enough. Pakistan is a horrible difficult country to understand; a huge and very diverse population.
Pakistan is also an artificial product from the colonial times, I can only make meaningful contributions if I would understand all the ins & outs on the colonial detail only... (Something I lack!)

About a month ago al Qaida International came out with a video message stating more or less that so much attacks were completely un-Islamic.

After having giving it a few weeks of thought, I have decided to side with aQI in this detail for the full 100%.
After all, that is the old al Qaida I know. May be you have some other mental construct in your head my dear reader, in that case the propaganda has worked.

I didn't save the links, but here is a simple and short description of the video (from 13 Dec 2009, Daily Times dot pk, source):

CAIRO: Al Qaeda issued a new English-language video on Saturday denying it was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic.

US-born Al Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, who commonly delivers the organisation’s English messages, said the network was being framed for the bloodshed by the US and Pakistani intelligence services.

Real culprits: “The mercenaries of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Intelligence Agency or Blackwater are the real culprits behind these senseless and un-Islamic bombings,” he said. In a transcript of the video released by the SITE Intelligence Group, Gadahn told Pakistanis their real enemies were secular regimes, corrupt police, judges and tribal nationalists. 

Comment: Nice to read this back one month later after the CIA & Blackwater fun from Afghanistan...
But serious: This interpretation of 'real culprits' is correct. To understand that you only need to skip your usual view from a fight between 'good and evil' but to the distribution of military power in the population.
The CIA folks don't actually pay for bombings at Pakistan food markets, they do the 'avalanche rocket' that multiplies national internal instability.
Standard example: Colombia (with very high killing rates year in year out.)
Another example: Russia invading Afghanistan.
Present example: Pakistan?  

__________ 

But free speech has many entries, if you write the best stuff it will propagate and as such it is propaganda (propaganda = that what propagates). 

Here is a guy that has a different take on al Qaida:   

Azzam the American explains that Al Qaeda are NICE people. Ha ha ha ha! 

Have mercy on Chris W, the writer of the above NICE words. 

Item 2) Having fun with the Americans part III + a few links. 

Having fun with the Americans has far larger impact than I would have thought after only one or two minutes of work! 

Lets not do difficult: Americans are there for the killing (until they seek dialog) and in the meantime I am only sunbathing with a fresh 1000+ growth of Americans that hate me day in day out.

 

Source: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/wtkr/TPG88AE1R7S3NC7GR  

__________

And a few links:  

After the war stuff a highly interesting article that tries to put a bit of blame to the use of math in the global financial crises. The author argues that economists don't understand math if indeed their matrices are of the wrong kind: 

Was the Global Financial Crises a mathematical error? 

Also funny, from the Telegraph:

US military chief brands Afghan intelligence mission 'clueless' 

When it comes to future US healthcare, suddenly the USA folks understand what is ahead. If only the weirdo's from the financial markets would understood the value of fresh USA AAA rated government debt. (It's trash already, why buy fresh trash?) 

Healthcare Spending Growth Slows, but Not as Much for Physician Services 
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/714623 

Till updates.  

 

(04 Jan 2010) Sorry, only old stuff like the good old so called 'trigger hypothesis' to the 11 Sept 2001 attacks. Sorry I am boring you with this.
Only one item: 

Item 1) More old stuff: The trigger hypothesis to the 911 stuff in 2001. 

 Item 1) More old stuff: The trigger hypothesis to the 911 stuff in 2001. 

Here in Holland we have a saying that goes like this:

Je moet geen oude koeien uit de sloot halen. 

Translated it says you should not dig up old cows from the canal. (Otherwise some skeletons will fall from some closets.)

Let in this fresh new decade only concentrate upon the killing of US soldiers, but a small deviation is allowed:

The original trigger hypothesis states that without my accidental trigger thing, it would not have been this great success.  

The trigger hypothesis has many roots, for example how can you succeed in people reacting without thinking?  

Well lets make a long story short by saying I only needed one or two minutes of labor to arrive at the next results of making about 2000 Americans mad at me in just a few days: 

Just a few minutes of labor while on the pre 911 stuff (against the Muslims) I labored a few hours...  

It's only a small deviation now we have a fresh year number like 2010, why not look again at one of the best pieces of propaganda from the previous decade?

I wrote it myself:

The provocative pages.   

But lets not dig old cows from old canals, we have a new fresh year with killing Americans so why enjoy the smell of old cows? 

Till updates. 

 

(02 Jan 2010) To start the year on the funny side of life this funny item.

Item 1) Having fun with the Americans.
Item 2) Start of the Russian Afghanistan war (old stuff). 

  Item 1) Having fun with the Americans.

A few times a year I feel like insulting American via comments on news files (via the reader comment section). 

So I posted a nice comment on this news file:

Former Navy SEAL from Virginia Beach killed in suicide bombing
http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-former-seal-killed,0,962420.story   

At this moment (about 7 hours later) I have collected 83 'angry faces'.
Click on the picture for the readers comments section:

 

I also reacted on a guy named Quagmire, but his comments are removed (that explains the Quagmire in my second comment).

Item 2) Start of the Russian Afghanistan war (old stuff). 

A lot of people don't know it, but if there is one organization that has no right whatsoever on the thing known as revenge, it is the CIA. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan  

It clearly says the USA tactics from those long lost years were indeed sowing war in Afghanistan. Long quote:

The anti-communist rebels garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the US intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.

Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."
 

Comment: These days former US prez Jimmie Carter always hangs out the peace dove but this old CIA stuff happened right under his nose... Did Jimmie understand what was happening and if so, did the USA not wholeheartly deserve the 09 Sept 2001 attacks?

Further reading: 

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

__________  

Before we close: 

Is it really true that Americans handcuffed and shot dead Afghan schoolkids?
At first I did not believe it, but the story keeps on hanging in the air and does not go away... 

Hamid Karzai demands US hand over gunmen who killed children
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6973001.ece  

__________

That's it, let me in this first update in the year 2010 wish the Afghanis a lot of creativity this year with killing Americans.
(If dialog would be possible, that would be better but the Americans listen only to the argument of filled coffins.)

Till updates.  

 

(31 Dec 2009, updated 01 Jan 2010 with CIA vows revenge) The last day of this year is about Afghanistan.

Item 1) Afghanistan update. 

According to the Geneva Convention war rules, when you are captured by the enemy (as a prisoner of war) all information you have to tell is your name, your number and what unit you belong to. Interrogation of prisoners is forbidden, in fact it's a crime.

So the Americans declared both in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Geneva rules were not valid because the enemy did not wear a uniform (as if those 7 killed CIA folks wear a uniform...). All these years all prisoners were interrogated, tortured & so on & so on.

On Christmas day a video of US infantryman Bowe Bergdahl popped up, even to me this was a big surprise because I have asked for his execution after the previous video...
So the Afghanis decided different, I have to smile because the new vid was a nice surprise...   

Anyway, last Summer a lot of US military slime complained that showing captured soldiers was against international law... (Talking about a bunch of hypocrites.)

Source http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE5BO00R.htm  
Quote:

In July, Bergdahl appeared in a video urging the U.S. government to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The Pentagon denounced those images as Taliban propaganda that they said violated international law. 

Comment: Sorry USA folks, you did put out international war laws by yourself. Why constantly this nonsense? Why should the Taliban follow international law and NATO not?

__________ 

At present day suddenly that weird 'international law' is withdrawn and we have, quote: 

"This is a horrible act which exploits a young soldier, who was clearly compelled to read a prepared statement. It reflects nothing more than the violent, deceitful tactics of the Taliban insurgency," said U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, director of communication, with NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

"To release this video on Christmas Day is an affront to the deeply-concerned family and friends of Bowe Bergdahl, demonstrating contempt for religious traditions and the teachings of Islam. We will continue our search for Bowe Bergdahl," he said in a written statement. 

Comment: Now suddenly the religious experts from NATO know this video is against religion. Well I was raised a Christian but I know of no part in the bible that says you cannot publish videos like this on Christmas day...
But serious: Rather likely Bowe his family is glad he is still alive. 

Source: Taliban issue video of captive U.S. soldier  
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BO0F820091226

__________ 

Here is a link where you can see the entire 36 minutes video: 

http://www.archive.org/details/taliban-war-prison  

The video is very good made, my compliments.
(At the end you see the reason for the release of this video, the Afghans want some prisoner exchange.) 

__________ 

Yesterday it was reported that 8 CIA agents were killed in Afghanistan via the method of suicide bomber. Today this was downgraded to 7 CIA agents: 

Associated Press:
CIA Director: 7 CIA workers killed in Afghanistan 

So we have 7 new stars in the marble at CIA headquarters, anyway a book says there is a star for every dead CIA agent:

The Book of Honor
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385495417   

Quote: 

In the entrance of the CIA headquarters looms a huge marble wall into which seventy-one stars are carved-each representing an agent who has died in the line of duty. 

__________ 

Lets end the year on a funny note:

This year total Western coalition death toll in Afghanistan reached 1500 for the entire war since end 2001 and reached 500 for this year number 2009.  

As usual, if I act fast enough, I only have to throw in a picture like:

 

And you never hear from it again in the Western media.  

It also works the other way around, I skipped the next one and with high speed the next lovely file was found: 

Number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan doubles in 2009   

So now, included the 7 CIA folks, this years tally stands at 519 total dead coalition heroes. 

Have a happy new year, till updates.

UPDATE from 01 Jan 2010:

The sickmaking creatures known as CIA vow revenge:

CIA vows revenge for seven agents killed by bomb 
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2010/01/01/1247eb648b1f  

These CIA assholes have some guts! Decades ago it were secret weapon deliveries done by the CIA to Afghanistan that lured Russia into war in Afghanistan. CIA officers were very pleased because 'now Russia has her own Vietnam'.
So the CIA plays an important role in decades of killing in Afghanistan and now these weasels vow revenge for only seven killed!

This is just unbelievable, just sheer unbelievable!

Better kill Americans, civilians or military everywhere on this globe. Why differentiate between hard and soft targets if that CIA slime reacts in such a childish way? Why?

Till updates.  

 

(26 Dec 2009, updated 29 Dec 2009) It has been a nice yet strange Christmas; the Bergdahl prisoner is still alive (in Afghanistan) while in the USA an airflight to Detroit was attacked with firecrackers!

It's tempting to comment on fun like that but does it bring much wisdom at the scene?
No, therefore we take another look at the at (a small part of) the math behind the fun from the last years. 

Suddenly some USA folks blame a guy named David X. Li for the wreckdown in fun like derivatives on financial products. With the work of David in their hands, bankers no longer needed to look at the underlying values in portfolio's but the correlation with other stuff was enough to estimate the default risk...

I never heard from David before but I hope this is more or less the original source:  

On Default Correlation (a pdf at defaultrisk dot com) 

Since all kinds of idiots blame David X. let me only attack the first 3 paragraphs with a better math thing known as the 'Product Integral'.

So this is my Christmas gift to the USA hedge funds: A Product Integral. (Not one of those boring additive integrals, now you must multiply it on a continual basis.) 

My dear hedge funds, study the product integral until you understand portfolio survival and hazard risk. This can easily be done: understand the logarithm and survive, die if you don't.  

 

 

 

So dear hedge funds, good luck with your Christmas present, try a few different functions to get a feel for this (and relate it to hazard functions and survival rates).

Further reading (from 24 Feb 2009):
How Credit Default Swaps Brought Down the World Economy 

Lets call it a day. Till updates.

UPDATE from 29 Dec:

Later I considered it a bit unsatisfactory that I didn't write down the way you need to differentiate functions in a multiplicative way.
It's utterly simple: Just like you can relate the (additive) Riemann integral with ordinary differentiation (by writing it as a telescoping sum) you can write the product integral as a telescoping product. Hence: 

 

The product integral was more or less the first serious math that I found, if memory serves it was in 1987. The oldest definition of a product integral was a so called Peano series (end 19-th century) that was so difficult to understand that I had to go into detail to explain it to my professors. 

It is always rewarding that if you find something, a math guy from the past has also thought on that. For example, in the same time (that's 1987 or so) I constructed the 'e to the power of the complex plane'. Only to find a few years later it was known by long as the Riemann surface associated with the logarithm.
If you try to use the product integral in the complex plane you run into an array of problems because the log is multi valued there, on 'e to the power complex plane' you don't have these kind of problems because you cannot go around zero and arrive at the same point...  

Here is how the Riemann surface looks like (the vertical axis represents the zero, you cannot find a closed curve around zero there).
(I don't know why all those strange curves are drawn in this picture; better look at it as straight lines from the vertical zero going horizontal and spirals if you move up and keep your distance constant to the vertical zero):

 

Source of the picture:

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

At last a pdf file that covers all the basics for product integrals for real valued functions on the real line. The author is Michael Coco, his proof for the above way of differentiation is horrible (see page seven of the pdf, the 'Simplifying Formula') but later it was found Michael even found a 'sum rule'.
My compliments Michael, I never found it! 

pdfs/multiplicative calculus.pdf

Till updates. 

 

(24 Dec 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Who needs sound banks anyway? Paul Kedrosky doesn't need them...
Item 2) A few links. 

Item 1) Who needs sound banks anyway? Paul Kedrosky doesn't need them...

What do you do if you are a proud American and you realize your banks are in fact a few trillions under water? Well you rationalize it all away, you are trying to make the best of the situation and suddenly it is logical that having sound banks is just so costly and needs so much money that it really isn't worth it. 

On the website Seeking Alpha Paul has 620 followers, that means a lot of Americans understand what Paul writes and they follow his insights.

The next article from Paul's pen is very interesting from a psychology point of view, for all kinds of reasons Paul thinks you can do without sound banks.
In other developing nations prone to earthquakes you often observe a similar kind of reasoning: earth quake proof houses are so expensive we don't do that because every body needs a house... Link:

What's So Great About Having Really Sound Banks, Anyway?    

Oh oh Paul, stop hanging out the weenie weenie man and realize the banking hole only is in the order of 3 to 4 entire Pentagon year budgets... Carry it like a man Paul and not as some average USA weenie weenie person. 

(In the comments in the above article, on place number 9 you can read what I think of Paul the weenie man.)

Item 2) A few links. 

It seems that on average every day 18 USA veterans commit suicide. That looks like a lot (over six thousand a year) but it is an all wars combined statistic:
WWII, Korean & Vietnam wars, Ronald Reagan short adventures in Lebanon & so on & so on.

Although very satisfying, 18 a day pales compared to so called 'normal murders' that run on average about 50 a day. (From abcnews.)

The Many Faces of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder   

And from the same source from 6 May 2008:

Veterans Suicide Rates Questioned  
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4799021&page=1 

From the mathematical viewpoint I had a frustrating day, I only tried to solve a simple 3 dimensional so called 'Poisson equation' within some algebras. I found the stuff could only be solved by going complex and thus basically 6 dimensions.
I scratched my head and vaguely remembered I tried the same thing about 15 years ago.
So on that small detail I made zero progress in 15 years...

Poisson's equation 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson's_equation  

In the Greece downgrading it was also frustrating; I remember clearly a list I once found at the website of Standard & Poors (one of those commercial ratings companies in the USA).
In the list were all these rating codes like A or BBB minus.
Associated with the codes was a simple percentage giving the default likelihood. 

In the meantime no one explains how only present day 1.4 trillion $ in fresh US Federal debt will be paid back via future profits that can be taxed to pay for the fun.
The USA doesn't get a downgrade, Greece does...

(Again I am against help for Greece, in the limit we can always swap Greece for Poland and live happily ever after. [And also have some sledgehammer power against China for lets say over five decades.]) 

To make a long story short, here is the S&P homepage and at present day they use multi dimensional multi layered models to arrive at their commercial country rating codes: 

On The Use Of Models By Standard & Poor's Ratings Services
http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245200144067  

If only the 1.4 trillion was thrown into one of those 'quantitative models' (so not quality models that are allowed to reason along percentages of GDP and so) but a feed on the sheer 1.4 trillion size of fresh Federal debt... 

 

Till updates.  

(22 Dec 2009) Again only one item: 

Item 1) Finally in Afghanistan coffin number 500 clocked in... 

 Item 1) Finally in Afghanistan coffin number 500 clocked in... 

It was a long wait but finally on 22 Dec of this year we can clock in number 500 of killed coalition military slime in Afghanistan. 

Where are the good old days? Vietnam war = about 60 thousand US military slime dead. World War numero Deux? If memory serves, about 10% of American soldiers died...  

But that was back in 1945, I will never deny that the Americans cannot be heroic. But in the present year 2009 they are so obese that all heroic stuff will fade into insignificance.

Here is the 500 fun:  

 

In the meantime I don't know what to think of Media files like this:

How NATO hopes to undercut the Afghan Taliban   

Are the military doctrines cracking a little bit? If this quote is true they are: 

If it can claim more successes on the battlefield, the thinking goes, it can convince more low- and mid-level insurgents to quit under a new NATO program created to win them over. And if it can hollow out this base of fighters and commanders on which Taliban leaders rely, it can improve its bargaining position against them in high-level negotiations. 

Comment: I don't know what to think of it, I think the USA will always get horny if they have the technological upperhand... 

 

Till updates. 

 

(20 Dec 2009) Sorry, only one item:

Item 1) War diagrams, who makes weird stuff like this?

 Item 1) War diagrams, who makes weird stuff like this?

War diagrams? Yet I found another one today at:

A Picture Is Worth Total Confusion 
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20091217.aspx 

Click on the picture to understand how difficult the Americans always make it for themselves: 

 

 

Oh oh, the USA think tanks come up with weird diagrams like the above while in the meantime only recently US forces in Afghanistan have stopped calling in air power because that always made sure they were back in time for the evening meal... 

To make sure drawing a lot of arrows between a lot of things doesn't bring much wisdom at the scene, I made one of those nonsense things for myself.

Click on the picture for the 1200 pixel wide version:  

 

Ok end of the update beside the next detail:

I don't know if it's true but in the US Army Times they are reporting that the US drone encryption problems will be solved in 2014 (that means five years only before everything is updated from the hardware point of view). 

Army: Working to encrypt UAV video feeds 
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/army_uav_hack_122009w/ 

Lets call it a day, till updates. 

 

(18 Dec 2009) Only two links + the usual bla bla from me.

Link 1) On the US investment bank Goldman Sucks was lately a little row because Lloyd Blankfield said they were doing God's work.
I never felt like diving into the story because Dubya also did God's work eight years on a row, to be honest a lot of Americans are doing God's work every day. 

Yet what to think of this nonsense, quote:

“We’re very important,” Blankfein is quoted as saying in The Times of London. “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle.”  

Comment: Wow man! At Goldman Sucks they think that if debt growth is always a multiple of profit growth, they have touched a virtuous cycle?
Well mister Lloyd has been downgraded enough by other folks, for myself I would like to compare him to Rumsfeld (looks and talks smart and 'in control' while using outdated insights). 

http://www.businessinsider.com/lloyd-blankfein-says-he-is-doing-gods-work-2009-11  

Link 2) The hacked drones could point to a broader problem in the US military. If I only knew most communications were not encrypted in lets say 2004 or 2005... 

I know that on more than one occasion I stressed out the importance of bringing the remains of shot down Predator drones to the technicians...

What can I say? How stupid I have been... Not seeing the obvious under your nose...  

Via Barry:

Officers Warned of Flaw in U.S. Drones in 2004   

Lets call it a day; till updates.

  

(17 Dec 2009) Only a few links:

Oh oh, USA banks seem to have real estate valued at about one 1000 billions to high and it's anybodies guess how far they are behind with family housing yet the economy seems to be recovering. And the banks are profitable again...
Well keep on dreaming. Nice laugh, John Steward on banks: 

Jon Stewart: Clusterf#@k to the Poor House – Fat cat flight delay  

With US house prices you have that same weird stuff; people say month in month out housing is recovering. Why do they say that?
The annual average speed is still minus 8% a year, simply look at the second graph in the next link:

Case-Shiller Home Price Index up for 5th time, but cracks showing   

Barry has a nice graph about so called M3 money, I don't have a clue about how reliable this graph is but it is important to remark the blue curve seems to be the yearly change in the green curve (the M3 monies).
Makes me wonder: how would this have looked without all that so called liquidity? 

Have you seen M3 lately? 
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/12/have-you-seen-m3-lately/ 

Everybody is making a big thing about Greece because their deficit is so big...
Some European leaders want to come to the help of Greece but I am not much in favor of that. Greece isn't Poland, this is not the first time we had jokes like that from Greece (they managed to climb aboard the Euro but later it was found the statistics weren't right). 

I don't know what all the Greek fuss is about, I don't know if it's accurate but suppose the Greek government has about 300 billion € in debt that is only at most 3 months of US Federal borrowing...

So what's the big fuss & why a sharply stronger dollar?

If the average US citizen or investor would understand a bit more of the thing called 'math' (but it is not for nothing they are that obese as a population) they would not do fuzzy logic with Greece but look at:

Treasury Debt to Receipts Spiking  
http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/12/treasury-debt-to-receipts-spiking.html 

On a larger timescale this Treasury debt to tax receipts ratio is only comparable to the situation after the US civil war and the great depression:

Treasury Debt to Receipts over the LONG Term 
http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/12/treasury-debt-to-receipts-over-long.html   

More on the Greek item with those weird US based commercial ratings companies like Standard & Poors in the spotlight:
Can anyone of those weirdo's at S&P, Fitch or whatever commercial ratings company there is over there in the USA explain the next to me:

Why downgrade a small nation like Greece and not the USA government?

(Again: I am not very much in favor of 'helping' Greece. But why a downgrade while it is known Greece can be saved but the USA not?)  

Greek Woes Hit Euro, Bank Stocks 

If only I knew a few years back communication to drones would not be encrypted... 

I remember advices to my beloved Iraqis like that it was very important to bring the parts of shot down drones to the proper technical folks. That was years back...

And, if memory serves, I never wrote on the radio communications drones have because I always worked from the assumption it was encrypted...

You know, sometimes I am a very very dumb asshole myself. Link:

US drones hacked by Iraqi insurgents 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/17/skygrabber-american-drones-hacked 

End of the links, today after a long wait I installed some software that can produce math texts. Here is a part of a screenshot:

 

May be this is a perfect time to split; till updates. 

 

(14 Dec 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts; nothing for the USA...
Item 2) New Federal Reserve Z1 release out, the usual analysis. 

 Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts; nothing for the USA...

The poor USA folks got nothing in return for their war investments (beside the relatively small contract from last month). So that's good thing: the war costs won't be paid back via oil that basically belongs to Iraq...

Remember Paul Wolfowitz (the deputy of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld)? Paul was one of the architects of the Iraqi invasion and one of his advertisements was that after only a few months the Iraqi war would pay for itself because of all that oil.

Just a few quotes to get into the mood (WP source):

The analysts said it is ironic that U.S. companies do not appear poised to cash in on the aftermath of a war that many in the United States and the Middle East argued was motivated by a desire to tap into Iraq's oil reserves. 

After the invasion, the United States paid oil executives to advise Iraq's Oil Ministry and set up large military and civilian task forces to boost the country's ailing energy sector.  

Also a funny read is this Reuters report:

No boon for U.S. firms in Iraq oil deal auction 
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BB18Q20091212 

Quote from that source: 

"For us in Iraq, it shows the government is fully free from outside influence. Neither Russia nor America could put pressure on anyone in Iraq -- it is a pure commercial, transparent competition," said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

"No one, even the United States, can steal the oil, whatever people think." 

Comment: Since in, lets say the last 5000 years, it was always standard practice to loot invaded countries, this is a turn for the good.

At the end of this item I would like to raise the spirits from all the US oil execs that worked so hard to worship war against weak countries, in case you feel a little bit depressed I have selected a wonderful piece of music to cheer you up:

Linkin Park In The End Chipmunk Version 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SFshDyvn1Q  

In case the US oil execs only get more depressed from that, as an antidote you can look at a guy with two arms playing two guitars at the same time:

Fur Elise 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-B4sjUve3E 

Item 2) New Federal Reserve Z1 release out, the usual analysis. 

Like the previous two times we conducted analysis like this, the source file is a small part of the entire Z1 release: 

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm  

In the first column you can find most direct debt excluded the US financial institutions. Based on the last 19 Quarters you can still say debt growth in the USA is still linear and has nothing to do with positive or negative economical growth.

On average the non financial parts of the USA still need over 2.2 trillion more debt a year to produce their giant profits. At the US Federal tax revenues you can see these profits have shrunk a little bit while the debt hunger still tries to follow a linear path.  

R square for the linear model comes in at about 0.994 so according to the rules of statistics only a lousy 0.6% of the variance is explained by dumb things like recessions.

This is how the linear growth model looks:

 

Just like the previous times we look at the differences between the actual reported numbers and the simple linear model. As usual the cubic still wins it (to be honest I did not expect to survive the cubic model for so long six months ago). 

If you don't understand why this is of interest anyway:

If the cubic model stays valid, the USA will get killed by deflation.
If the cubic model breaks down, the USA will get killed by inflation.  

(Anyway that's true for 2009, economical conditions can change of course.)   

Here are the differences, the cubic model for the residues still has R square above 0.90 and that is amazing: 

 

Lets end the day on a funny note with two cartoons (I found them on Slate but I don't know who made them):

 

And what to think of this, joke or real? 

 

Till updates. 

 

(10 Dec 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Ok, one more for the road: Iraqi oil contracts.
Item 2) War through peace or vice versa; why do we need war? 

 Item 1) Ok, one more for the road: Iraqi oil contracts. 

Ok may be I named the Iraqi oil ministry folks yesterday the 'most sleazy balls in this entire war'. 

Ok, I was a bit over the top and I think my strong emotional reaction has some roots in the fact I never wrote that much on the first round of oil contracts.

Well, lets set emotion aside and zoom in that as far as I can see it, these are perfect contracts for a country like Iraq. The best thing is they are more or less 'servicing contracts' where oil companies get a 'fixed' amount of money for every barrel pumped up. 

I have to say: Not bad! 

So lets hope these 20 year contracts are kept in the next two decades, regardless of what happens else in Iraq the next 20 years...  

Quote:

Interest is high despite terms that the majors would balk at in other circumstances. Iraq is offering 20-year technical-service contracts, under which companies are effectively employed by the government and propose a fee they will be awarded for every barrel of oil they extract. The Oil Ministry also pays the companies' production costs. Oil companies tend to prefer production-sharing agreements, which give them a share of the oil produced.  

Comment: No comment, it's perfect in itself... 

Big Oil Jumps for Licenses in Iraq (From the WSJ)

 Item 2) War through peace or vice versa; why do we need war? 

Is it true that beside boring business cycles of economical growth and recession, there are also war cycles? Who knows?  

Today US prez Obama got his Nobel peace prize and therefore I only post a peace full photo of one of those peace bringers: 

 

Nice photo, or not? Might it be altered?

(By the way, the clouds have light from above while the sun is just below the heli.) 

Till updates.

   

(09 Dec 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts out this week.
Item 2) Update: Iraqi biological sniper bullet results.
Item 3) Rapper Appa raps Geert Wilders and now Appa is prosecuted...
Item 4) A 50% tax on UK bank bonuses; will the bonuses double?
Item 5) The empty item. 

 Item 1) Iraqi oil contracts out this week.

Yesterday there was a hefty bombing in Baghdad, five so called coordinated bombs went off. Do I have to condemn this kind of bombing just like the school bombing from the last update?

No, on 25 Oct I wrote that I hoped that both the Iraqi Shia and Sunnis understood the importance of keeping the USA oil companies out...

So why did Exxon Mobile got an oil contract last month?
(One of the sources, Motley Fool: Will Big Oil Take Over Iraq?)  

My dear reader, in this 8+ year long war I have seen a lot of sleaze balls, but at the Iraqi oil ministry they wear a giant crown in being king of the sleaze balls...

You know I shake my head in disbelief: What does the Iraqi government want?

Do they want lower violence or high levels of violence?   

If you want lower levels of violence you should implement policies working in that direction, this can never ever include US oil companies getting long term contracts... 

It's as simple as it is my dear Iraqis, I can only come to the conclusion you deserved the attacks from yesterday because you worked so hard to deserve attacks like that!

End of this item, new oil contracts out later this week, Reuters reports:

FACTBOX-Iraqi oilfield deals in the pipeline   

Item 2) Update: Iraqi biological sniper bullet results.

Ok back in time about 2.5 years, during one of the last Military Bloody Days I pushed or brought forward the concept of the biological sniper bullet.
That is a hollow tip (or hollowed out) bullet filled with nasty bacteria (or viruses or whatever what) so that even a shot in the leg would be lethal...

(Of course there were more goals like more amputations, longer and more severe sickness in other patients in the particular medical unit, bringing morale down and so on.)  

As far as I know the laws of war, this is not forbidden in any kind of way.
That might sound strange but the military powers that be don't like detailed stuff on what is allowed or not... So with all legal rights in my hand I can advice to develop and use this kind of ammo... 

Anyway to make a long story short: 

It took about one year before a reliable report popped up, conclusion was that this biological detail has been a great success. Medical problems spiked and the problems were severe.

So, although a bit late, may I thank all the Iraqis who participated in this legal biological sniper thingeling? And, oh yeah now I scratch my head, didn't I very often ask for the help of the doctors that were left in Iraq?

As some side wind we also observed the next in the UK (Sky news):

Five Doctors Held Over Terror Attacks 

And if you need a good laugh about 'doctors stuff' you should read the next writing of the Church of Scientology:   

THE TERROR DOCTORS 

Item 3) Rapper Appa raps Geert Wilders and now Appa is prosecuted...

This item is in Dutch because rapper Appa is a Dutch Muslim rapper.

Ok watjes & mietjes, waarom kan ik simpelweg zaken als de biologische scherschutter kogel introduceren (en na een jaartje rijpen het succes oogsten) terwijl Appa iets nietigs doet?

Dit is toch belachelijk? Waar gaat het om? Kwootje van nu.nl (Bron):

"Als ik Wilders ooit tegenkom, is 'ie van mij. Ik zweer je, ik pak hem aan. En er zijn meer mensen bij wie die behoefte groeit. Men moet niet raar opkijken als Mohammed C. binnenkort opstaat. Als iemand een kogel door zijn fokking kop schiet, vind ik dat niet erg."

Wilders voelt zich bedreigd door de uitlatingen van de rapper.  

Commentaar: Ach mietje watje Wilders voelt zich bedreigd...
En met al die lijfwachten 24/7 hoe vaak is onze dappere Geert echt aangevallen?
Maar weet je wat het belachelijke aan deze vervolging is: de officier van justitie zegt dat er eventueel sprake is van het 'aanzetten tot geweld'.  

Nou ja mijn geliefde lezer: Ieder zijn of haar eigen denkwereld toch? 

Item 4) A 50% tax on UK bank bonuses; will the bonuses double?

Bloomberg reports a healthy 50% taxes on banker bonuses above some threshold, quote:  

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling imposed a 50 percent levy on banker bonuses and said he will increase income taxes after elections next year as the worst recession on record drives up U.K. government borrowing. 

Comment: So now bankers have to double their bonuses to 'break even', not the worst idea observed to attack government deficits...

Source:

Darling Raises Taxes on Income to Curb Deficit  

Item 5) The empty item. 

Empty... Sorry! 

 

 

 

Till updates. 

 

(07 Dec 2009) Five items:

Item 1) School bombed in Sadr City, Baghdad.
Item 2) Cherry picking in the Ben Bernanke grilling.
Item 3) US jobs report: another second derivate at zero? Or...
Item 4) Mr. Taleb technical notes.
Item 5) The empty item. 

 Item 1) School bombed in Sadr City, Baghdad.

Today it was reported a school in Sadr City was bombed, link:

Deadly bombing kills eight at Baghdad school 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8399262.stm    

Needless to say that kind of news never falls on good grounds over here, may I ask my dear Sunnis to try and find the folks who did this?
If found guilty, after my humble opinion execution is advised. 

Ok one thing was positive: The Western media did not crawl over each other to tell the populace that evil al Qaida was at work again... (For example in Afghanistan a lot of CNN females but also US Senators think that throwing acid in faces of kids that go to school is official stated Taliban policy. And when in the USA a kid is kidnapped and used as a sex slave you never hear those weirdo's state that this is official US government policy...)

Next item: 

Item 2) Cherry picking in the Ben Bernanke grilling.

Finally a central banker is getting a bit of what they deserve; Ben got a little grilling and if you haven't seen the video by now: shame on you! 

The news is already four days old so lot of other writers have commented on it, I too would like to do a bit of cherry picking. After 12 minutes Bernanke can respond, that is where it becomes highly interesting because at about 14.05 minutes he says:

The counter parties would have declared us bankrupt. (This is important to understand because at that point in time AIG was owned by about 80% by the US government, so basically the US government was bankrupt at that point in time but they still could print money and since then they keep on printing the stuff like crazy in order to avoid bankruptcy...)

One of the video feeds is at business insider dot com:  

Senator Jim Bunning Rips Bernanke A New One 

That was my cherry picking, a whole different kind of cherry picking is found at Calculated Risk where the writer seems to think the US Federal Reserve should be independent. 

Hello USA folks; wasn't Lehman Brothers chairman Dick Fuld a proud member of the NY Fed? For some strange reason the Americans think that guys like Fuld being a member of the NY Fed is 'independence' while in most other nations this is regarded as institutional corruption. 

No, it was not the best post from Calculated Risk: 

Fed Chairmen Never Learn 
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/12/fed-chairman-never-learn.html?
utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Calculated
Risk+(Calculated+Risk)

Come on my dear USA debt huggers: In the USA debt growth is always a multiple of GDP growth and profit growth. It is not much of a miracle how Americans became that obese... 

The biggest exponent always wins it and the days of the American dream might be over for some time.  

Item 3) US jobs report: another second derivate at zero? Or...

I still don't know what to say after I was utterly bombed out by the latest US jobs report: 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm  

Non farm payrolls only down 11 thousand! To make my life miserable as hell the household survey said:

Civilian labor force down only 98 thousand,
Employment up a staggering 227 thousand,
Number of unemployed down a staggering 325 thousand!
While those Not in the labor force only climbed 291 thousand. 

Can anyone explain to me how I can destroy America's military might with labor reports like this???  

That's unfair! How can I win if reports like this are in fact correct??? 

So I had to think a little bit, Barry already reported that job reports could be positively wrong because of the seasonal adjustment.
That might be true because dinosaur institutions like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics often use the last five or ten years to measure and estimate the seasonal correction, so it's logical every now and than the time basis is adjusted and that could perfectly explain a lot of what we were seeing in the BLS report.

I don't have a clue about how they work over there at the BLS, the technical notes are only full of the usual garbage and doesn't even tell if some additive or a multiplicative model was used. Only garbage:

Employment Situation Technical Note 
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm  

I really don't want to make it more difficult on the technical front, lets only look at a very nice graph. If the BLS report is more than a statistical blip related to the adjustment of the time basis, it could be the red curve is flattening out and not only the first derivate but also the second will go to zero... 

Click on the picture for a larger version: 

 

Source of the picture:

http://www.businessinsider.com/weve-still-got-a-long-way-to-go-on-jobs-2009-12   

Barry has a nice employment chart round up:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/12/employment-chart-round-up/#more-45353   

And last but not least, the USA also has a Department of Labor. They publish those weekly jobless insurance numbers that come out every Thursday.
Weirdly enough they publish seasonal adjusted stuff but also the weekly not adjusted number. Here is one of those:

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT 
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/eta20091476.htm  

Item 4) Mr. Taleb technical notes.

It was a pleasant read because it has been so many years since I thought upon the
N times convoluted same distribution. 

But why all this fuss on fourth momentum? 

Ok ok even the beloved Variance (= average squared distance from the mean) has some Variance in itself. But we math folks like it to live the easy life so we come up with stuff like:

If X and Y are independent we have:

Var (X + Y) = Var(X) + Var(Y). 

My dear Taleb, beside lazy math loving folks there is a species much more lazy. These are the bankers because once they understood the money hidden in the 'independent thing' they sold risk like crazy to counter parties that were far more able with dealing with it...  

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/EDGE/index.html  

Item 5) The empty item. 

Empty, as usual it is utterly empty: 

 

Building peace without Obama's interference 

 

 

 

I told you: This item is empty! The Israelis don't want a viable Palestine state, can Mr. Tom Gross give me only one bone on this... ? 

Till updates. 

(06 Dec 2009, temporary update) It's past midnight so only some funny links:

Barry has a nice problem today: RSS Feed Subscriptions Explode to 130k   

Of course I have nothing to do with it, but a few days back Barry had a nice so called 'ping speed link'.

To be honest, many years ago I stopped looking at stuff like 'ping speed' or analyzing website traffic. Most of the time statistics like that bring no wisdom at the scene. And beside that it is not polite to sneak on visitors...  

So it's past midnight but it is nice to compare ping speed between Barry and me (the numbers are in milliseconds so a reading of 117 means 0.117 second: 

http://just-ping.com/index.php?vh=http://www.ritholtz.com/&c=&s=ping   

http://just-ping.com/index.php?vh=kinkytshirts.nl&c=&s=ping!  

Not bad, the minimum ping for me, moi, myself & I was 0.5 milliseconds! 

 

Lets call it a day, till updates. 

(02 Dec 2009) Five items:

Item 1) New USA strategy for Afghanistan.
Item 2) Some videos from YouTube + Generation Kill.
Item 3) Bizarre DOW graphs from Yahoo finance.
Item 4) Links.
Item 5) The empty item. 

 Item 1) New USA strategy for Afghanistan.

My dear Afghanis, the new strategy for your country is in.

In short it goes like this:

Thirty thousand more US military slime, building up from this month to Summer next year, and about five thousand NATO slime from other countries.
The amazing thing is: Already from half 2011 a draw down of troops!   

At this point in time it is hard to say if indeed there will be withdrawal from half 2011 on; much of it will depend on the level of fighting in the first six months of 2011... 

And even if there will be large scale military withdrawal 18 months from now, very likely there still will be plenty of Western soldiers to 'protect' Kabul and the Karzai puppet regime.

Only 18 months, how to react?

Since this month of December is the first month of the surge, the old advice as trying to kill at least 54 Western military slime simply stays valid.

After the Winter and as soon as weather conditions (and preparations) allow; three months on a row triple digit losses. Thus 3 months on a row above one hundred dead military slime (that will activate the desire to draw down in the NATO forces and into their home countries).

And after that attacks on a low level so that just like in Iraq the USA folks think they have won...     

It's all pretty simple, but never forget there is a war going on and as such anything can happen! For the time being this looks like a cakewalk (I never trust cakewalks but that's another story.) 

Item 2) Some videos from YouTube & CNN + Generation Kill.

A 33 minute video from YouTube with Obama explaining the stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZLVqhsLgIw    

In the video Obama explains that right makes might! That made me smile because what else have I been doing the last 8 years? Ha, I still don't need bodyguards & as long as there keeps on dripping enough of  the thing known as 'military power' I won't need bodyguards in the future...;)

__________________________

The CNN video link does not work but US Senator McCain thinks they should break the enemy... (NYTimes source), quote:

“The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving.” 

Comment: That is not only dumb but also dangerous to say my dear McCain.
But indeed a 'broken will' can lead to a loss of the war, why don't you fly over to Afghanistan so that under the umbrella of your security footprint you can try and break some Afghan mountain rocks with your plastic teeth? 

And is 'breaking the will' the way you explain away all the stuff that happened in Iraq?
Stupid policies leads to stupid war and that always gives plenty of overkill; so McCain didn't you vote in favor of killing 1+ million Iraqis? Now McCain?
Wanna bet you still wash your hands in innocence? 

__________________________

Have you ever seen one of those Generation Kill vids?
If not, they are a must see.
If for every grandiose speech you hear from whatever USA president ever, it is always funny to look at the actual military implementation of those freedom loving words...

 

Click on the above picture to get Generation kill - the music 
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UpK_uAPwI 

Also very good (with only 3596 views) is:

Generation Kill Music Video ( Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7oLn27--pA ) 

Item 3) Bizarre DOW graphs from Yahoo finance.

With my browser I can choose 'refresh image' and the Wall Street based Dow Jones index did wild things. 

Within a few minutes I got the next four different DOW pictures:

 

And are on a wider scale the different DOW index feeds falling apart?
Just yesterday the CNBC channel was removed from my television cable feed and for weeks they had a completely faulty DOW index feed in the left upper corner... 

What the vuk is going on? 

Item 4) Links.

Now we are approaching this years end it is nice to observe the S&P 500 is still down on the decade. Ten years back it was about 1400 and now with a full decade of that lovely stuff known as inflation it is about 1100... 

Might be the link does not work, in that case start at the Yahoo finance home page and find your own way. Link:

S&P 500 decade settings 

In case you need a financial joke, Bloomberg reports: 

Fed Says Economic Conditions Improved ‘Modestly’ (Update2) 

I don't know via what I found it, but credit corrosion seems to be continuing (holy Moses, who would have thought that!). 

Credit Corrosion Continues - Delinquencies At Record

Item 5) The empty item. 

Empty empty empty, sorry... 

 

Till updates. 

(01 Dec 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) [Wilmot on AV] False idols: are US consumers really over leveraged? 

 Item 1) [Wilmot on AV] False idols: are US consumers really over leveraged?

Jonathan Wilmot? I never heard of the guy but he has a nice ring of small articles on the Financial Times alphaville:

[Wilmot on AV] False idols: are US consumers really over leveraged? 
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/12/01/86186/false-idols-are-us-
consumers-really-over-leveraged/
  

This Jonathan guy is a smart guy but don't forget he works for a bank...

Yet I have to admit the article is a perfect advertisement, it is so good it borders on propaganda... And once you know that he works for a bank, often it is easy to blow a few holes in a perfect sounding story.

And yes, it is easily found: The second graph (with the decile income distribution stuff) is from before the recession. Now two years further down the road, how is the present stuff?

A bit more fundamental (please remark I never ever wrote simplistic stuff like 'over leveraged consumers', when was the last time credit card debt was mentioned by me?). 

Dear Jonathan, comparing US consumer debt to disposable income is interesting but far from convincing. Problem is that on all levels of US society there is only debt and nowhere any realistic reserves seen.

It is not only the US consumer Jonathan, on all levels of US society this nice process takes place. You never see Credit Suisse advertisements telling that to the European people... No no, never will bank people take up stuff like that. 

To understand the 'autistic nature' (pardon: the advertisement), lets quote a bit of nonsense from Jonathan:

The debt story is really about the cyclical vulnerability of consumer spending, not a structural obstacle to future spending that matters even when income grows. The distinction is critical. Full recovery of consumer spending can occur with house price stabilisation and a return of income growth. It has little to do with getting the savings rate or debt-income ratio to certain levels.  

Comment: Oh the debt story really is about cyclical vulnerability?
Once more: this is so stupid I cannot comment on it but we have to repeat:

A perfect advertisement!  

 

Till updates. 

(30 Nov 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Afghanistan update.
Item 2) Bizarre links, Krugman versus the Nightmare, etc.

 Item 1) Afghanistan update.

Tomorrow US prez Barack Obama will announce the Afghanistan strategy, rumors say about 30 thousand extra US military troops but for the time being these are only rumors

In the table below you observe I splitted the killed slime in two rows: the 21 Nov was the date 24 was clocked in. (Scroll down to 21 Nov or go the lazy click 21 Nov 2009). 

NATO troops killed in Afghanistan, Nov 2009. Source
Observed US Rest of NATO Total
01-21 Nov 12 12 24
22-30 Nov 5 2 7
Total 17 14 31

So for the psyops thing from lately everything goes perfect, let me thank the Afghanis from the bottom of my heart! Thanks!

Yet the next month of December will be hard, so my tough Afghanis I wish you luck... 

 __________________________

Regardless of what we will hear tomorrow from Obama, my sober estimation is that the war in Afghanistan will last at least 7 more years (that is the US Obama presidency + 4 more years).  

The local commanders & the Afghanis have to make up their own mind, but the zero-one project in Iraq was in the spring of 2007.
Now two and a half year later, the US is leaving Iraq... 

We'll see what tomorrow brings and what next Summer in Afghanistan will bring. 

Item 2) Bizarre links, Krugman versus the Nightmare, etc.

The Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman seems to have a severe case of 'debt huggers disease'. In a strange piece known as:  

Deficits: the causes matter 

You can find weird stuff like, quote:

Broadly speaking, there are two ways you can get into severe deficits: fundamental irresponsibility, or temporary emergencies. There’s a world of difference between the two. 

Comment: Poor Paul seems to think this is a sudden temporary emergency?
I don't know what to say, there is so much evidence that total debt growth in the USA has nothing to do with economical growth...
Lets stop commenting on this weird stuff.

 __________________________

As an antidote to the weird Krugman stuff I would like to advertise my latest update in the Nightmare On Wall Street series: 

  24 Nov 2009 The USA gross domestic product grew 2.8%, what does it mean?

Isn't it nice to know that if the USA GDP grows z% Year on Year than the total profits of the real US economy climb only z billion Quarter on Quarter? 

 __________________________

With amazement I am looking at the Dubai debt problems from the last days, it is only a double digit billion problem like 69 billion US$ or so. That is only the debt intake of the US government of just 2 or 3 weeks. 

Since it is obvious the USA won't pay back why do difficult on Dubai?

Worries that Dubai washing its hands of debt woes  

 __________________________

I also found something of interest for the Israeli whiners: 

The man who smuggled himself into Auschwitz or:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8382457.stm   

The guy steals my heart when he says:

"When you think about it in today's environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous," he says. 

"You wouldn't think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me.
  

Comment: Indeed it is ludicrous, in todays kind of warfare school books can only be delivered in Afghanistan if you have air or artillery cover... 

 __________________________

Also funny from the FT Alphaville:  

What next for Nakheel? or:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/11/30/86006/what-next-for-nakheel/  

 

That's it, till updates. 

(25 Nov 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Joke of the day: Israel halts settlement growth for 10 months!
Item 2) Fort Hood updater.
Item 3) US weekly jobless claims only 466 thousand, good or bad news?
Item 4) Psyops update... (It's nasty, it's psyops & not for the faint hearted.)
Item 5) The empty item. 

 Item 1) Joke of the day: Israel halts settlement growth for 10 months!

Oh oh, Israeli pm Netanyahu held a speech today and he offered peace and declared that the peace loving Israelis will unilateral stop settlement growth. 

Of course in East Jerusalem there was no settlement activity so there was 'no problemo' observed. And so called 'natural growth' would also not be halted.
What exactly was halted was 100% unclear, mr. Netanyahu did not elaborate...   

In case you don't know what 'natural growth' is: 
That is getting kids and invite family members to live there and they need more schools, shops, roads and houses.

Since these settlement folks are mostly religious zealots, they breed like rabbits so every 2 or 3 decades they will expand about 4-fold. So the landgrab continues year in year out...

I expect the European leaders accept a full 100% of the Netanyahu speech from today, it is obvious that most European politicians still think Israel wants a viable Palestinian state...

For myself speaking I don't believe this Netanyahu guy, he is far to calculated and knows very well how to play the international diplomacy game. Words like that are not relevant to me Netanyahu, lets quote a bit of your nonsense (LA Times source):

"It enables us to present the world with a simple truth: The Israeli government wants to enter into negotiations and it is very serious about its intentions to advance peace," Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. 

Comment: Just looking at the Israeli behavior from lets say only the last five years, this is so stupid I cannot comment on it.

More to the point is (Herald Sun), link:

Palestinians slam settlement offer  

Come on, Israel is an apartheid state so for Arabs living inside Israel it is 'Kick an Arab day' every day from every year. So why is this USA news so funny? Link:

10 North Naples Middle students suspended for taking part in “kick a Jew day”  

Before we go to the next item, history question of the day:

Lets say on a time scale from WWII till now, so from 1945 till now, where were the first religious zealots found:  

1) In Israel?
2) In some Muslim country? 

Item 2) Fort Hood updater.

Not much new (or unknown) news observed, just like expected no psyops from evil Dutch guys observed so it's still plain sailing.

But did you know major Hasan had a military medal for fighting in the war on terror?
Wiki source:

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

The military medal looks like this:

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

USA Republican party folks try to turn the Fort Hood shootout into a so called 'terrorist attack' (so family members of the killed can get extra benefits).
The Christian Science Monitor reports:  

Did Fort Hood shooting spree turn base into a ‘combat zone’? 

Item 3) US weekly jobless claims only 466 thousand, good or bad news?

Without links, today US weekly jobless claims nosedived to 466 thousand. 

I was not expecting it this week but a sudden decline in weekly reported jobless claims could point at a higher NFP later in the month. 

For the time being it is still a wild hypothesis but as far as I know reality the ratio between job openings and job seekers is still climbing, that means the total pool of new jobs is still shrinking... 

May be not this month but one way or the other weekly jobless claims will bite the non-farm-payroll (NFP) numbers. 

Item 4) Psyops update... (It's nasty, it's psyops & not for the faint hearted.)

If you haven't read the 02 Nov update, scroll down or take this shortcut.

Here you see a screenshot from US killed military slime only from 21 Nov (the previous update). I 'forgot' to include this nice screenshot:  

 

So now NATO officers can (just like me) ponder the question if the number 12 has anything to do with it?

But this item is supposed to be used as a nice psyops in itself so lets look again at this guy:

 

Scroll down to 10 August or take this shortcut to find out what likely happened to Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl...   

Lets end this update with wishing the Afghanis luck in this month and the next month (and of course the next millennium). 

Item 5) The empty item. 

The empty item is almost empty beside a very old looking Mandelbrot fractal application. Well it might look old, you can still zoom in over 30 times.  

Kids love it: 

http://home.zonnet.nl/LeonardEuler/mandelbrot5.htm  

 

 

Till updates. 

(21 Nov 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Afghanistan desired psyops threshold reached today.
Item 2) Fort Hood updater.
Item 3) USA Federal debt: Only 4.8 trillion US$ for interest obligations.
Item 4) Boring links.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Afghanistan desired psyops threshold reached today.

If you haven't read the 02 Nov update, scroll down or take this shortcut.

For Afghanistan it was advised at least 24 killed military slime for the month of November and at least 54 for the month of December (that means at least double compared to last year, this is some form of 'psyops' or psychological operations).

Today total death toll for the entire war in Afghanistan arrived at 1524 so that's 24 for this month because the 1500 threshold was taken on the last day of the previous month. So that's about 50% down this month compared to the four months July through Oct. 

Both the 50% decline as the 1500 threshold is completely not in the news to be found, in the past when stuff like that happened in Iraq the US Media always sung their praise to the US military commanders. This time they don't...

Ha, what a difference one Fort Hood shooting makes.  

Most close comes the LA Times (they say 'nearly' 1500 deaths for Afghanistan):

What's real price tag on war in Afghanistan? 

Lets quote:

The casualties are sobering -- nearly 1,500 deaths to date among U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.   

Comment: When years back total US death toll in Iraq climbed over the total from 9 Sept 2001 there was a similar ignoring of reality, both in the US Media and at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon assholes even thought that the 911 threshold still was not taken, but weeks before during one of the Military Bloody Days episodes in Iraq the desired threshold was taken...
War and psychology, it is important to understand!

 

Item 2) Fort Hood updater.

The investigations into the Fort Hood shootout by major Nasan go smooth, I still don't have a clue if the major was a regular visitor of this website (although that looks reasonable, I don't have any kind of proof).

It was interesting to observe the White House trying to block all kinds of investigations by the US Congress and Senate, but later the kids from Congress and Senate were allowed to 'investigate' on their own.

The Washington Post is reporting:

An opaque transparency (transparency seems to be missing at the White house).

And an editorial from the WP:    

Understanding Fort Hood (the editorial bla bla writer thinks Congress has some role in understanding the Fort Hood fun).

Also funny:

Fort Hood-style attack threatened at Georgia base 

And Sarah Palin (you know the female with the slutty flight attendant look) is also going to Fort Hood: 

Palin's book tour to include stop at Fort Hood 

More: 

http://www.forthoodausa.org/  

Item 3) USA Federal debt: Only 4.8 trillion US$ for interest obligations.

CNN Money is reporting that in the next decade roughly 50% of all Federal borrowed money is for paying interest only.

A few quotes abundantly demonstrating the USA is just another Ponzi financial unit (interest can only be paid by borrowing more):

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Here's a new way to think about the U.S. government's epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest. 

More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion. 
  

And: 

In other words, when a Treasury bond or note matures, the government must pay the investor the face value on that debt. In order to do that, the Treasury borrows money to pay back the investor, which means the debt would be refinanced at whatever the going interest rates are at the time. 

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/economy/debt_interest/index.htm  

Item 4) Boring links.

What to think of the latest Call of Duty video game?

You-Be-The-Terrorist Videogame Sales Reach $600 Million In 5 Days  

Direct link to the YouTube vid in the article:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa5d3UhTmAg&feature=player_embedded   

Better for the brain is some simple math:

The Jacobian  

And if you like stuff like that:

Evaluating a Triple Integral in Spherical Coordinates  

Item 5) The empty item.  

Empty empty empty... 

 

 

 

 

Till updates my dear reader. 

(15 Nov 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Spiritual guidance found at the National Rifle Association.
Item 2) Why is the USA always soft on crime?
Item 3) Goldman Sucks adopts kittens.
Item 4) The Lehmanization of global debt issuances.
Item 5) Links & The empty item. 

 Item 1) Spiritual guidance found at the National Rifle Association.

You know, the shootout at Fort Hood by major Nadal has made me thinking:

Am I really enjoying it when my fellow human beings die?

Suddenly I understood how much of a monster I have become and I started crying and crying and crying. I felt just so miserable...
So I went out and tried to find a bit of spiritual guidance and guess what?
The US based National Rifle Association members often remark:

Guns don't kill people!    

You understand I felt a giant relief! USA made guns don't kill people, so if the 13 killed military slime are not humans, if they are not people, what kind of animals are they? 

Are they slimy worms that live in the slimy mud?
Are they dogs? Are they pigs?
Are they bacteria or lethal viruses?
Or what about kangaroos?

Yes that would be nice: 13 kangaroos killed at Fort Hood, Texas USA...  

In that case major Hasan could go on trial in Australia because that's where the kangaroo courts are. (Remark no other animal species has courts, have you ever heard of worm courts or yeast courts or tiger courts?) 

Man oh man what lucky I was in receiving this perfect spiritual guidance:
Guns don't kill people...  

Item 2) Why is the USA always soft on crime?

Five days ago we looked at murder rates in the USA compared to a few European nations and remarked that for a lot of years in the USA murder rates are about five times as high as in normal democracies.

But violence in a society mostly comes in clusters, not only the murder rates are elevated. It's a whole package that is elevated:

Toddler anal rape,
Toddler pussy rape,
Beating toddler with a broomstick,

Child anal rape,
Child pussy rape,
Beating child with a baseball bat.

Elderly robbed at their home,
Elderly robbed on the street,
And so on & so on.

Since this is going on for a long long time we must ponder the question:

Why is the USA always that soft on crime?   

It is always weak and soft on crime over there. Lets give a simple example:

A white female police officer observes a 5$ marihuana transaction in some parking lot, does she call in air support and ask for one or two 2000 pounders?
Does she call in the assistance of the AC 130 gunship?  

Nope, that all does not happen. All there is is being soft and weak on crime... 

Item 3) Goldman Sucks adopts kittens.

First read these two strange FT alphaville files:

Goldman Sachs abandons kittens (really)

Goldman Sachs saves kittens (really) 

Bizarre quote from the first link:

Before we get to the multibillion-dollar stuff, we’d first like to apologize that the firm has not yet paid a few thousand dollars of vet bills for the five kittens born in its headquarters building nearing completion in Battery Park City.  

Comment: How can five kittens ramp up a few thousand of veterinarian bills?
Did all five kittens had open heart surgery? 

Well these five kittens made a large contribution to the US gross domestic product! 

Item 4) The Lehmanization of global debt issuances.

Lehmanization (or maturity mismatch) is the process of constantly shorter times you can borrow money. Just before the Lehman Brother fell about 25% of their entire balance sheet was financed with one-day-long borrowed money, so every day the Lehman employees had to fix 25% of the entire balance sheet...

With US Federal debt the same thing is going on: most long maturity debt went to the Federal Reserve, China stopped buying long term stuff and changed her long term holdings for short term bonds.

Ratings company Moody's reported, quote:

The average maturities of new debt issuance by Moody’s-rated banks around the world fell from 7.2 years to 4.7 years over the last five years — the shortest average maturity on record. 

And if that is not enough:

That means banks will face maturing debt of $10,000bn between now and the end of 2015, or $7,000bn by the end of 2012, according to Moody’s.  

Comment: This abundantly demonstrates that banks never planned to pay their bondholders for real from ongoing banking activities but only pay it back via newly issued debt.
This culture of refinancing is important to understand because it makes the entire system fragile to the bone, beside this the US government guarantees a few trillions of these maturing debt issues... 

Source (FT alphaville, Tracy Alloway): 

Banks don’t just have an asset problem, says Moody’s 

Item 5) Links & The empty item. 

NRA tshirt stating Jesus is a member too: 

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/nra_member_tshirt-235224960876241127  

Another NRA shirt claiming peace through superior firepower: 

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/guns_dont_kill_people_t_shirt-235600447586805480  

Also funny & good propaganda: NRA supports the troops: 

http://www.nra.org/troops/soldier.htm  

Obama asks Congress & Senate to withhold investigation to the Fort Hood operation, that's good because Senator Joe Lieberman is just some Jackass adding no value at all to such investigations:

Obama urges Congress to put off Fort Hood probe  

Sky News reports a so called 'Pakistan link' to the Fort Hood thingeling (yes at Sky News they never run short of crap stories!):

Pakistan Link To Fort Hood Army Massacre  

US Senator Charles Schuman likes to proof he is a full blown idiot:

Schumer: Gun Laws Lacking With Fort Hood Suspect 

In the meantime war peace hugger Benjamin Netanyahu tell us:

Netanyahu says only talks can lead to Palestinian state 

More from Times Online about a Palestine state (please remark once more the Israelis will always block a Palestine state):

Frustrated Palestinians to seek UN backing for separate state 

Oh oh, American scientists and their students when it comes to math...
You keep on laughing, the students can't convert fractions like 1/7 to a decimal number:

CUNY's got math problem: Report shows many freshmen from city HS fail at basic algebra 

Willem Buiter has a nice mind provoking article around gold, his arguments are 'almost valid' because gold has an important industrial use in electronics:

Gold - a six thousand year-old bubble (At geology dot com they claim in every cell phone there is about 50 cents of gold: The Many Uses of Gold)  

For the rest this item is empty.....

 

 

  

Till updates. 

(12 Nov 2009) It was a beautiful day today and if I had the time I could write one hundred items but I am not going to do that.
Sorry, only two items:

Item 1) Fort Hood lapdance thing & are the Action Girls coming to Afghanistan?
Item 2) Some links.

 Item 1) Fort Hood lapdance thing & are the Action Girls coming to Afghanistan?

A few days back there were already some files out stating major Hasan has visited some US based lapdance club. 

My dear reader, is the offered information true or is it carefully crafted propaganda?

In the Telegraph article they try to relate the lapdance thing to the behavior of the magnificent 19 that did the original 911 attacks from the year 2001.  

Quote from the stuff (Telegraph source):

Hasan was a regular customer at a club close to the Texas military base and on one occasion spent six hours there watching women poledancing.

His behaviour in the run-up to the shooting spree is similar to that of some of the September 11 hijackers who also sampled Western decadence before committing their atrocity. 

Comment: In the years back in 2001 in Oct & Nov it was a wild hypothesis of mine that the magnificent 19 in all kinds of way mimicked or copied my life as it was back then.
In the year 2001 that was a wild hypothesis and since there is utter lack of corporation from the USA side it is still a wild hypothesis today.
In these years I no longer operate upon wild hypothesis, why should I now I have a fully rigid mathematical & statistical so called 'zero-one project' to tell?
After all it were the most deadly 3 months on a row for the US military (in Iraq) and all the time they did not have a clue...
Lets keep it simple: The timescale does not fit, lets quote:

Jennie Jenner, 31, performed a lap dance for Hasan on Oct 30, six days before he killed 13 people and wounded 29 at America's largest military installation. 

As far as memory serves, I only mentioned psyops in relation to Afghanistan four days before the Fort Hood shootout. The timescale just does not fit!

So for the time being this Jennie Jenner is only propaganda as far as I am concerned.  

Source file (UK Telegraph) again:

Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik Hasan visited lapdancing club 

__________________________ 

Now for the Action Girls.

The Action Girls are a giant asset of the USA.

Will the Action Girls join the USA lead war on terror in Afghanistan and what will the other NATO members think of that?

And in howfar do the Action Girls represent the Worship of the Gun that rules US society?

I don't know but if I were some NATO member I would scratch my head if this is what the average US soldier jerks off on:   

 

If you click on the picture you get a better understanding of the 'twisted logic' of the USA. 

Item 2) Some links.

A few boring links: 

China Signals That It May Allow Currency to Rise Against Dollar 

Half of US kids will get food stamps, study says 

Report: 237 millionaires in Congress 

If the Fed is looking to inflate away problems, what should Asia do? 

Entangled photons make better messengers 

 

That's it, till updates. 

(10 Nov 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Fort Hood shootings, remarks & simple statistics.
Item 2) Simple flaws in US economical statistics (GDP, labor prod etc). 

Item 1) Fort Hood shootings, remarks &, simple statistics.

A few minutes back the number of media files linked to on Google news related to the Fort Hood shooting passed 27 thousand, I cannot recall it ever was so high in any other subject (but I also say I don't track quantities that much because content of the news is far more important).

Like said before: Even if the honorable major Hasan was a (regular) visitor of this website, this will never make it to the news.

Lets see a bit in how far the US authorities have come:

They seem to focus on 'internet activity':

Fort Hood massacre investigators focus on suspect's internet activity    

There was some hussle and fussle over emails send to some Muslim cleric:

Hasan e-mails to cleric didn't result in inquiry  

After that the Muslim cleric is suddenly an al Qaida recruiter:

Al Qaeda Recruiter New Focus in Fort Hood Killings Investigation  

In the meantime US prez Obama observes twisted logic... (Lets go back to the economical sanctions against Iraq, the Iraqis could not even buy water pumps because in theory you could also pump chemical poison with these pumps. That was not twisted logic?) Give me a break!

Obama blames 'twisted logic' for Fort Hood killing 

YouTube Obama speech (3.42 long) with the 'twisted logic':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSFe7ijNg8   

And now after the break (thanks for the waiting!) we can look at a nice modification of a photo of the ongoing Fort Hood memorial gathering:

 

Original image was found here: 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/AL
eqM5hh4tr8F2auwAx_jtXYuVt02psyops05ueW8wD9BSS8QG0
 

__________________________ 

Many folks say it was a mass murder, do you agree?

Lets do some simple statistics; compared to European countries like Germany or France or the Netherlands a good rule of thumb is that murder rates in the USA are five times as high. (Source). USA murder rates run at about 6 murders per 100 thousand per year, given a population of 300 million this is about 18 thousand murders a year or just under 50 murders a day.
So Fort Hood might look spectacular but it is only about 6 hours of 'normal murders' in the entire population.

For myself speaking, since it's only six hours of regular killings, I wouldn't say it a mass murder. On the other hand a size batch of 13 killings in one incident is still very seldom over there in the USA so from that point of view you can call it a mass murder. 

__________________________ 

Item 2) Simple flaws in US economical statistics (GDP, labor prod etc).  

Ok ok these flaws are not horrible but I have to say I was unaware of them.
Better read the simple source file first:

Economists Seek to Fix a Defect in Data That Overstates the Nation's Vigor  

The quote that explains it all:

The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.  

Comment: The problem is very easy to understand:
The 50$ Chinese carburetor arrives in the USA and as usual imports are withdrawn from the GDP. Later the 50$ carburetor pops up in a US made car and gives a nice 100$ on the GDP reading as if the carburetor was a US made one..
For me this is new so I don't know what to think of it in quantitive numbers.
But if you only multiply the imports by 10% to correct for this phenomenon and subtract that from all the GDP growth from the last years, it doesn't look good for the USA economy... 

That's it, till updates. 

(08 Nov 2009) Ok one item:

Item 1) Are the investigations upon the Fort Hood shooting going ok? 

 Item 1) Are the investigations upon the Fort Hood shooting going ok?

For the time being everything goes as smooth as can be expected. The USA version of Google news reached over 20 thousand news articles (remark they spot about 4500 USA media sources) yet it was all plain sailing.

So how are the investigations going?

Not bad, on the one hand you have (from the Washington Post): 

Officials cast wide net in search for answers 

And at the other end of the spectrum we have idiots from stuff like Jihad Watch that says, (source) quote:

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch reported that the online magazine “Sada al-Malahim” Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi released an article calling jihadists to initiate simple attacks on random targets. In the article, he described these targets as "any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc…" 

Spencer’s article was quick to ask the obvious question – was Hasan’s attack a response to this invitation. Was it “freelance jihad?”  

Comment: This is so stupid, I cannot comment... 

 

 

Lets leave it with that, till updates. 

(06 Nov 2009) Five items: 

Item 1) Psyops here, psyops there, are the psyops everywhere?
Item 2) And Screaming Faggot takes the lead...
Item 3) USA monthly jobs report.
Item 4) Does high debt growth automatically lead to inflation?
Item 5) The empty item. 

 Item 1) Psyops here, psyops there, are the psyops everywhere? 

Psyops or psychological operations were mentioned only four days ago in item number 1. In the meantime two attacks have been observed that can be classified as psyops. 

Attack 1: Theatre of operations = Afghanistan; 

Five British military slime were killed during their afternoon tea by an Afghan police agent. It seems the police agents has escaped...;)
Needless to say that from the viewpoint of psychological operations this was a thundering success, see for example this media file (from the Ass Press): 

Killings by Afghan policeman shake British resolve 

Quote from that file:

Several newspapers used the same photo, of the bloodied flak jacket of one of the victims. "Gunned down as they had tea" said the Daily Mail. "A bloody betrayal," said The Times, while the Daily Mail asked: "What kind of war is this?"  

Comment: Wow, an attack during the British tea ritual is an attack straight against the British soul... In the entire UK during the afternoon tea British ladies and gentlemen will shake their head in disbelief.

Attack 2: Theatre of operations = USA; 

This morning it came out that major Nidal Hasan (a psychiatrist by the way) started attacking resulting until now in 13 deaths and up to 30 wounded! Location: Fort Hood, Texas.

I cannot validate it but this seems to be the worst death toll of an attack like this in the entire history of the USA.

In the past I have tried before to move parts of the US military against herself, that has never been a great success. Even if major Hasan was a regular visitor of this website, believe me it will never make the news...
Or, my dear reader, do you believe that military and police officers will state in public with the camera rolling that recently a website under the name of kinkytshirts was visited? (US authorities even have his computer, it won't make a difference.)

NYT link: 

Army Doctor Held in Ft. Hood Rampage 

So within four days two attacks that can be classified as psyops were observed, not bad... Not bad at all! 

After a bit of thinking I decided to grant the highest military award that this website has to offer to the two attackers, this award is the so called Blue Footed Crane:

 

 Item 2) And Screaming Faggot takes the lead...

This week there were some horse races on the television (from Australia or so).
The end race was between two horses named Shocking and Crime Scene... 

It was funny to observe the text 'crime scene' at the bottom while looking at some horse racing. So I thought of a few more funny horse names:

Corrupt Cop
Citizens Arrest
Lost Elections
Thundering Monk
Screaming Faggot
Shooting Psycho
Multi Culti
Speedy Coke  

And so on and so on. 

Item 3) USA monthly jobs report.

Latest US jobs report came out, source file: 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm  

The so called non-farm-payrolls declined 190 thousand but that is only a fraction of the stuff. Far better is always the so called Household data (on top of the first table in the above link).

This time it says:

Civilian labor force minus 31 thousand
Employed minus 589 thousand
Unemployed plus 558 thousand while those
Not in the labor force climbed 259 thousand.   

Once more you see the fixation of the financial markets on NFP numbers and unemployment rate leaves a lot of information out.

On econompicdata they have nice graphics:

Civilian Hours per Week Cliff Dive Continues 
Job Losses... Again, Worse than Reported 
Broader Unemployment to 17.5%
  

Barry has 3 more highly interesting charts:

Even More Unemployment Charts  

So the green shoot smokers don't have a nice day today. 

Item 4) Does high debt growth automatically lead to inflation?

Often I have stated that since in the USA debt growth is always a large multiple of gross domestic product growth (and thus a large multiple of total profit growth for the entire economy), sooner or later this will collapse. 

A guy named David Ross argues you can also fixate the debt to GDP ratio if you inflate the economy fast enough. Mr. Ross only looks at Federal debt but it is better to look at the entire 50+ trillion of direct debt, in that case inflation of over 10% is needed year in year out. (Remark I am not talking about consumer inflation like meat and potatoes but for the deflator that is used to measure inflation for the GDP). Quote:

It is worth noting that in order to keep the debt at 100% of GDP while still increasing it at the 2010 rate of 9% per year, it is necessary to grow the GDP at 9% per year in current dollar terms. This means that if the GDP grows at 3% per year in real terms, prices have to inflate at 6% or else the debt will grow as a fraction of GDP. Even taking 2012’s estimated $950bn increase in total debt and $16.5 trillion as standard, the CBO estimates assume a combined growth and inflation rate of nearly 6% per year. 

Sources:

Financial Times Alphaville:

The US debt to GDP balance, and China   

Scribd: 

The US debt to GDP balance, and China 

Item 5) The empty item. 

Empty empty empty, only a simple question for your own brain to ponder:

Suppose major Hasan was indeed a regular visitor of this website, will US authorities investigate further yes or no?  

(Answer: Stuff like that is a big NO for over 8 years already, from anthrax to psyops the USA folks prefer to be dumb, blind, deaf & most of all:
being stupid to the bone!)

 

 

Till updates my dear reader! 

(02 Nov 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Afghanistan: Over 1500 dead coalition slime in the entire war.
Item 2) WSJ: The cruel math of big losses? Some high school math for idiots...
Item 3) FT: The DOW/commodities/currencies correlations.
Item 4) Power slut Hillary Clinton visits Israel, of course nothing happens.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Afghanistan: Over 1500 dead coalition slime in the entire war. 

As you can see below, very satisfactory the 1500 threshold was taken (on 31 Oct to be precise). Winter is coming so as far as I am concerned the Afghanis can wind down for the Winter times.
From the standpoint of psyops it would be great if both November and December will have double dead coalition slime compared to last year.
That means over 24 dead coalition slime in November and over 54 in December, needless to say the 54 number will be difficult to reach...
Let the local commanders decide; after all they know the weather and the terrain and I don't like it when my dear Afghanis freeze to death because I have some 'psyop wish'.

Anyway: CONGRATULATIONS with taking the 1500 threshold before the end of last month! Thanks! 

 

In the meantime the US slime that still is stationed in Iraq can't wait to come over to Afghanistan and kill help the Afghanis. I don't know how big the bonuses for Afghanistan are, don't forget US soldiers are mostly trailer trash people and for trailer trash people 10 or 20 thousand extra bucks is a lot of money. Link:

Frustrated in Iraq, U.S. troops eye Afghan action 

Didn't I say it before? Other NATO countries don't need to send more troops because there are plenty of freedom bonus loving US soldiers eagerly waiting to kill help Afghanis. 

Item 2) WSJ: The cruel math of big losses? Some high school math for idiots...

It is well known that in international comparison between countries the USA always ranks very low when it comes to math.
That's logical: most think that with wasting your time on math you can't get rich quick. 

Via Barry's hangout (main page, article) I found the next quote:

“If an investment declines 10%, it takes about an 11% gain to break even (assuming you don’t pump in additional dollars). If the drop is 20%, you need a 25% gain to recover. A fall of one-third requires a rebound of 50%. And if your investment falls by half, “you need a double,” or a 100% return, says Mr. Wiener, the New York-based editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors. The recovery percentages grow exponentially because you have so few dollars working for you after a big loss. 

Comment: Oh oh these poor mentally handicapped people think there is some 'exponential stuff' going on when you had big losses.
As a matter of fact it has nothing to do with exponential growth or decline, in other countries it is high school stuff and it says it is hyperbolic. 

To be precise: If you have lost p% in that case you must recover

r(p) := 100p/(100 - p) 

Examples:

You lost 10%, you need to recover r(10) = 1000/90 = 11.11111...%.
You lost 50%, you need to recover r(50) = 5000/50 = 100%.
You lost 75%, you need to recover r(75) = 7500/25 = 300%.  

The same thing also works with gains, suppose you gained 100%.
That is the same as a loss of minus 100% and
r(-100) = -10000/200 = -50%  

Want to bet with me that if you show this simple math to some USA 'scientists' from the study of economics, they will act as if they see water burning?

My God, why is it always so utterly stupid over there in the USA?????

WSJ source:

The Cruel Math of Big Losses   

Item 3) FT: The DOW/commodities/currencies correlations.

With head and shoulders far above all that simple minded crap that comes from the USA, at the FT Alphaville they had the best article of last week:

A very simple study between DOW futures and oil prices on a thing known as WTI, prices were sampled every 10 minutes during two trading days.

The result was staggering: R square above 0.90!   

Lately I already complained that DOW up = US dollar down (and vice versa) and this is another indication that the policies of the Federal Reserve only destroy the fundamentals of a lot of markets. The idiots at the FED turn the entire international world into a casino ripped loose from fundamentals.

It simply would be better if the other nations impose economical and financial sanctions against the USA because this practice will prove to be very harmful in the future (but I know I am standing alone with that point of view, so don't come here at my door to complain when you have no pension 20 years from now).  

FT source file by Izabella Kaminska: 

RIP oil fundamentals? 

Also funny: 

Saudi Aramco’s WTI snub 

Item 4) Power slut Hillary Clinton visits Israel, of course nothing happens.

A few times before I have already stated that at the end of the first Obama presidency there will not be a start of a beginning of a start of a beginning of a serious kind of Palestine state. 

Since that is as obvious as 1 + 1 = 2 we wonder why the US Secretary of foreign affairs Hillary Clinton visits Israel? Why does she do stuff like that?

Why does the power slut visit Israel pretending the USA wants a viable Palestine state? 

Why does the USA fully support this Israeli apartheid regime? 

I don't know and I don't understand, it is obvious the Israelis don't want to live in peace and play the arrogant thinking they are 'God's chosen people'.

I don't buy it Israel, look me in the eyes and give me just one reason as why not repeat another holocaust. Please give me just one reason because year in year out I am better in understanding holocaust stuff and century old pogroms against the Jews.

Look me in the eye you Jewish whiners with your stupid Whining Wall and the stupid ways you perform your prayers like you are whining children:

   

Link from Reuters:

Palestinians accuse U.S. of killing peace prospects  

Item 5) The empty item.  

This item is mostly empty, we only have a bit more math around the 'cruel math' from item number 2.

If you skip the stupid percents and use fractions life is a bit more easy and simple.
If you have a loss of 10% you have lost 0.1 of your stuff if your stuff was classified as 1 on that point in time. If you loose the fraction p you have left 1 - p. 

When you want to get back from 1 - p to your original 1 you only need to multiply by 1/(1 - p) and that fraction is also known as the geometric series:

1/(1 - p) = 1 + p + p2 + p3 + ... ad infinitum   

Here is a wiki thing: 

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

For the rest this item is empty so do the math and understand we need another holocaust against the Jewish whiners to get normal life back on track... 

 

Till updates. 

(29 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) USA GDP a staggering +3.5%!!! But what does it mean?
Item 2) Israeli drones to be used by Germany in Afghanistan.  

 

 Item 1) USA GDP a staggering +3.5%!!! But what does it mean?

Today the long awaited US gross domestic product numbers came out, every body is dancing on the table because the USA is now out of a recession!

A lot of other writers already commented on the details so lets skip that and repeat a similar easy calculation as was made yesterday with the housing start statistics.  

Select table 1.1.5 from the next collection of tables:

http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected=N  

(Remark I now use the GDP numbers included inflation, you can repeat a similar calculation with the use of table 1.1.6.) 

We observe:

2009 Q2 = 14,151.2
2009 Q3 = 14,301.5 (in billions of present dollars). 

How much % did it grow? 

Simple: 14301.5/14151.2 = 1.0106 or 1.06% Quarter on Quarter.
That would give an annual growth of 4.3% (again this is included GDP inflation, the deflator came out at 0.8% giving the 3.5% growth number in the news). 

Now we simply divide the GDP numbers by four to get the 'non annualized' numbers:

2009 Q2 = 14,151.2/4 = 3537.8
2009 Q3 = 14,301.5/4  = 3575.4 (in billions of present dollars).  

Of course you get exactly the same percentual growth, only it now looks a less bit spectacular because in absolute growth this is only: 

3575.4 - 3537.8 = 37.6 billion... 

On average the profits from the USA economy are about 9 to 10%, this leads to the conclusion that total profits of the USA economy only grew 4 billion from the second to the third Quarter...  

To make this 4 billion profit growth miracle happen, there was a lot of so called monetary and fiscal stimulus done. 

Lets only look at the wider statistic of US Federal deficits, the last time I checked it it was 1.42 trillion. Of course the deficits are not spread equal over time because taxation has large seasonal, monthly and weekly fluctuations.
Yet on average a nice 1420/4 = 355 billion a Quarter... 

You observe a little problem here:

Debt growth of the US Federal government only is about 9 to 10 times the absolute GDP growth. Furthermore: all that extra debt has to be repaid via the extra profits that were only a tiny 4 billion.

Funny detail:

Now we have those ultra low rates that naturally comes along with an ending fiat money system; the 4 billion in extra profits are (just) not enough to pay the interest obligations on the USA debt. But that is theory.
In practice you cannot tax all profits away so it is sheer impossible this US government debt will ever be paid off.  

 

For some strange reason the Americans still refuse to accept their money system (and thus the economy and their military might) is dying. You still observe weird rationalizations like:

All Debt is Not Created Equal: Government Debt is NOT the Same as Private Debt 

The choice is between increasing or decreasing aggregate demand 

Both writers seem to think you cannot blow up a fiat money system like the US dollar only because the government controls the money printing press... 

Item 2) Israeli drones to be used by Germany in Afghanistan. 

Yes why not make the international jihadis a bit more mad as hell? 

Deploying advanced Israeli weaponry is of course the guaranteed path to peace and will of course minimize terror attacks inside Germany for ever! 

I wonder what they smoke over there at the Bunderwehr, some high quality Dutch weeds or so? 

This is bizarre but it looks true:

Israel drones to be used by Germany in Afghanistan  

Till updates. 

(28 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Short Afghanistan update.
Item 2) New US housing starts seem to disappoint 3.6%, what are we talking about? 

 Item 1) Short Afghanistan update.

Yesterday 8 more US military slime died and 3 more slime bodies were recovered from an airplane that was lost a few weeks ago.

That brings the total for Oct until now at 54 Americans and in a broader statistic that includes the entire coalition it stands at 66 death. For the Afghan theatre the 54 number is an all time monthly high. 

Luckily this month has a few more days to run, lets just wait and see if there are more surprises to come this month (and of course until the repeat of the election on 07 Nov).

And for what it's worth; here is a YouTube file claiming a brother of Afghan prez Karzai is on the CIA payroll for a lot of years now...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_UOpq75gyI&feature=player_embedded  

A NY Times file about the same allegation: 

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A. 

And, for what it's worth, it could be that the new White House strategy will focus more or less on the protection of 10 populous Afghan areas. To be honest I don't have a clue about how much extra US troops will be send and for what reason.
As long as there are 'embedded reasons' like also sneakily trying to fight War on Drugs it is logical other wars like War on Terror cannot be won. If the one war is stupid, the other wars will follow suit...
Although one thing is clear: Other coalition nations don't need to send more troops because of the vast quantities of US troops that are withdrawn from Iraq...

NY Times link: 

U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say 

And last but not least, only 8 more to go before we reach the 1500 number for Afghanistan for the entire war: 

 

Only 8 more, will it happen this month? I don't have a clue. 

Item 2) New US housing starts seem to disappoint 3.6%, what are we talking about?

Today we had one more of that 'unexpected news' coming out, (source) quote: 

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales fell 3.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 402,000 from a downwardly revised 417,000 in August. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a pace of 440,000. 

Comment: This 402 thousand is seasonally adjusted and as such it represents a trend number. So on a monthly basis this is 402/12 = 33.5 thousand new homes a month (again: as a trend number).
And 3.6% of 33.5 thousand = 1200 houses.
So in this stock market rally where 'positive housing news' was often used to 'explain' the rally, all they were talking of was give or take one or two thousand houses...

That's all we are talking about when it comes to new houses; a couple of hundred less or more houses has a large effect on the news.   

And it has nothing to do with housing but Bill Gross has spoken nice words: 

Bill Gross: Assets Are $15 Trillion Overvalued and Fed Will Keep Rates at 0% Forever to Keep the Fantasy Alive 

Lets leave it with that. 

Till updates, have a nice crisis or try to get one! 

(26 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Afghanistan & Iraq update.
Item 2) Why do Wall Street stock analysts hate America? 

 Item 1) Afghanistan & Iraq update.

Afghanistan:

This was a strange day because with so much helicopters suddenly down and a nice double digit death toll for the US slime, it had all the looks and feels of a good old Military Bloody Day!  

But I had never declared an MBD (simply because there is not enough internet in Afghanistan and it is better that both the Afghanis and I don't get frustrated by a long series of failures in this detail).

Yet today two helicopters collided resulting in four dead US military slime and in another incident a heli went down resulting in seven dead US slime and 3 so called 'US civilians'.  

The day could not have been more beautiful when it came out the so called 'US civilians' were officers from the US DEA (the drug enforcement agency). So 4 + 7 = 11 US slime killed where we can easily classify the War on Drugs officers as utter slime...

Links:

From CNN (please Obama make America more proud!):
Obama: Americans killed in Afghan crash 'doing this nation proud' 

And a YouTube video from an ISAF officer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQDiYJpwnp4&feature=player_embedded   

 

Lets turn to Iraq:

Death toll estimates from yesterday's bombings in Baghdad climbed to about 160. Although it is a spectacular attack against government institutions like the Justice department, please remark it is only 3 days of only death squad activity in Baghdad only (when stuff like that reached it's high).

Furthermore it is estimated there will be no attacks against the funerals related to these attacks. 

And and oh yes, now we are talking about attacks against funerals anyway:
I thought I have found a great question to research for by American journalists!
They should ask the Pentagon the next question:

How did the great Donald Rumsfeld succeed in bringing down these 
attacks on funerals so fast?  

 

May be it is better to go to the next item; 

Item 2) Why do Wall Street stock analysts hate America? 

In the previous so called Quarterly figures from lets say S&P500 companies, a staggering two third of companies did beat expectations of so called analysts.

In the end of the present Quarterly round I observe that 3 out of 4 companies beat the expectations of the same analysts...  

I don't understand it; statistically speaking this should be 50% of beaters against the non performers, so how can a sample of so called 'analysts' get it wrong so much? 

Why do they hate America with all those negative expectations? 

Nice but long video about why everything changes but still says the same (how to avoid a depression) is found (via Jesse):

The Crash of 1929  It is long but very good made.

Till updates. 

(25 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Baghdad blasting: Justice to the ministry of Justice?
Item 2) Totally absurd FDIC advertisement observed. 

Item 1) Baghdad blasting: Justice to the ministry of Justice?

Wow man what a big blast at the Baghdad ministry of Justice today!
At first I was only thinking "Why can't we have that over here in Leeuwarden at the Central Justice Incasso Bureau?"

Before we proceed I would like to make two remarks:

Remark 1) Why do I write so little upon Iraq the last two years?  

That is rather easy: Since it is one of the goals of my life to change the rules of modern warfare in the sense a less few civilians get killed, I have stated a lot of times that when over 1% of the population had died, every one has to rethink about what they are doing.

That goes from local commanders to foot soldiers and also foreign guys like me.  

As far as I know reality about one million Iraqis died in this weird USA operation under the name of 'Iraqi Freedom' and it is well known how the US policies contributed to that huge one million number. And one million is about 4% of the Iraqi population...

My dear Iraqis, remember the days when routinely day in day out about 60 dead people were found killed by Shia death squads? And that was Baghdad only! 

My dear Iraqis you have brought high pleasure in my life; the zero-one project killed more Americans over a 120 days span than everything else since the Vietnam war.

The long ago 'self extracting' project of minimizing death squad activity was a miracle done by the God we all worship. Ok ok I know I wrote down the words of the self extracting project, but in those days I prayed because 60 corpses a day was beyond the control of this little writer...  

Ok, lets go to the oil thing: 

Remark 2) From puppet regimes and the oil they have. 

At this point in time the Iraqi Shia dominated puppet regime is still classified as a puppet regime because they still have not proved to be able to survive without the US military power. 

But they have made great progress in the sense the oil contracts still don't go to the Americans... 

My compliments by the way; last Summer when oil contacts came out a bit I knew the Shia folks were on the right path.

I hope both Iraqi Shia & Sunni understand the importance of oil and not getting the oil profits to the USA.

__________________________   

The fun of the day (don't forget we have only 132 deaths reported and about 520 wounded so that makes only up for 2 days or at most one week in the past when routinely 60 dead corpses were found due to the death squad activity. By the way do you believe the Pentagon bla bla or do you by now think they are a neglectable quantity?)

The ministry of Justice:

 

This is how it looks after a few hours: 

 

And I will not call it warart, but I still have a death wish for some Justice folks like we have for example located in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden: 

 

We leave this highly interesting item behind to concentrate upon the absurd stuff: 

Item 2) Totally absurd FDIC advertisement observed.  

Totally absurd, this 3 minutes and 42 seconds video has all it needs to understand the USA financial system: It is utterly full of lies while telling a bit of truth. 

It is so stupid that I don't know what to say... For example chick Sheila Bair is telling us that bank failures are paid by other banks while in fact the entire FDIC is only another accountancy outlet from the US Treasury. 

So TARP is paid for by the banks?

Please Sheila, shove it in one of your power slut holes...  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxiEJcOoo0&feature=player_embedded  

Till updates.  

(23 Oct 2009) Five items:

Item 1) After so many years a new warart file?
Item 2) Ha ha ha, UK GDP growth still negative 18 months on a row.
Item 3) Unleashing entrepreneur powers the American way.
Item 4) First black hole for light created on Earth?
Item 5) The empty item. 

 

Item 1) After so many years a new warart file? 

Yes why not? I mean this is not wash, rinse, shine & repeat the 911 stuff.
No, just a small size picture:

 

 

Item 2) Ha ha ha, UK GDP growth still negative 18 months on a row.

Today the United Kingdom latest gross domestic product numbers came out. They are of interest because the UK has done a lot of fiscal and monetary stimulus stuff.

Stimulating the economy with borrowed & printed money can only work if there is something to stimulate; yet in the UK there are also a lot of debt huggers so will it work?  

Well Y on Y the UK economy shrank 5.20% and Q on Q the reading was minus 0.40%. (Source) It seems to be the longest strike in a shrinking UK economy ever reported. 

Lets wait until the USA fun comes out; if things pan out the way they are expected to pan out, all that stimulus stuff will lead to nowhere but crazy stock market valuations and ridicules commodity prices...

Item 3) Unleashing entrepreneur powers the American way.  

I still miss the former US prez Dubya, I miss that clown.
Often Dubya had visions of unleashing the US entrepreneurial powers... 

Yesterday I found a perfect new entrepreneur, if you hire them your (advertisement) video will get at least one hundred thousand views on YouTube (or you don't get charged). Source link (2 years old already):

The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos  

Nice quote:

We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.  

Comment: Here you are looking in the heart of USA entrepreneurs, they never waste any time with questions like if some kind of behavior is morally or legally ok. They only ponder 'can I get away with it'.
And that is all you have to understand about the Americans when you need to deal with them: don't think they are like other nations, only keep in mind they will try to fuck you up if they can get away with it.

Item 4) First black hole for light created on Earth?

Hm, I have to admit that at first I thought 'this is a fantastic development' when I read those first lines of the next link: 

First black hole for light created on Earth 

But what is the use of light getting round in circles inside one of those 'black holes for light'? You might just as well make a circle of optical fiber cable to let light go round, in that you cannot 'store' light in any way but a small and dying amount. 

So my dear reader, what do you think? Will the new black hole for light suck up all light in the universe and explode dramatically when it becomes too large? 

Item 5) The empty item.  

Sorry, it's empty. 

Till updates. 

(21 Oct 2009) The financial news was more or less like expected, therefore only a nice video that made me a bit jealous. May be jealous is not the right word...;)

The vid originates from http://icescapes.tv/episodes/?currentPage=3 (scroll down to Inside Dye-II) but on my browser there are bandwidth problems.

From http://vimeo.com/2908445 the video is a bit better.

Ok ok, may be the vid is so good it deserves an official embedding:  

Inside Dye-II from icescapes on Vimeo.

That's about it, lets close with some funny reading:

At Business Insider where a Goldman Sucks exec declares:

Goldman Exec: Inequality Is The Path To Prosperity (GS)  

Till updates. 

(18 Oct 2009) Two very boring items:

Item 1) Boring: US government debt growth = all US companies profits.
Item 2) Even more boring links. 

Item 1) Boring: US government debt growth = all US companies profits.

All the time it is so boring: You see all these high paid so called 'scientists' from the economical profession on the television and the internet stating stuff like 'When the economy picks up again, US government deficits will decline'.

The last time I checked US Federal deficit for this fiscal year it stands at 1.42 trillion (that's about 10 to 11% of the gross domestic product)  while the combined profits of all US companies is in the range of 9 to 10% of the US GDP.

I, Reinko Venema, have stated so often that simply the interest obligation on the 50+ trillion of debt the US economy has, as a whole simply outstrips all profits of the entire economy.  And as such the only answer is the money printing press from the Federal Reserve and not all that crap coming from 'highly respected' US based economists. 

So why do US economists keep feeding us their crap?

I don't know, all I know is I am getting bored...  

Further reading (from Financial Times alphaville):

Debt and the dollar’s demise, a compendium of concerns 

From the above link you surely must read the nonsense as coming from the Deutsche Bank’s fixed income team, quote:

One concern is that these same accounting maneuvers, when applied today, will not be able to stave off a government shutdown (or possible suspension of bond payments) for long. Today, the financing needs of the government are so much higher, that diversion of these funds would not last more than a couple of months, and probably far less.  

Comment: Hey you Deutsche Bank eggheads: There will be no government shutdowns or not paying foreign debt holders. We live inside a fiat money system so the Federal Reserve will always live up to her responsibilities.
Do the idiots at Deutsche Bank think Ben Bernanke will be the guy that 'shuts down the government'?

At the French based Société Générale they have similar lack in basic math, as Barry reports a few of their weirdo 'streaming diagrams':

SG: Worst case debt scenario   

Comment: I know most readers will disagree with me, but the amazing strength of the US dollar is what blurs the 'analysis' of banks like DB and SG.

Any fool can see this strength is manipulated, as a matter of fact you can use printed money to bring that strength... (Or, to put it differently: why should free markets with all their access to information prop up the US buck for free?)  

Item 2) Even more boring links.  

A lot of people still live in the age of the Golden Standard where money was backed by real assets like gold in fort Knox. These days & years with that fiat money it is utterly different: Have a problem? Simply ask the FED to stand up to her obligations. 

As far as I know reality (don't forget I only understand about 0.000000001% of reality) all US Federal Funds are only accountancy vehicles that measure on a yearly basis the inlets and the outlets. Mama whore the US Treasury takes care of any problem if it arises.

Stuff like that stands for about 3 decades right now, so the FDIC was one of those fake funds from the beginning.

Here we have CNNMoney stating:

FDIC bank fund in the red until 2012 (I think at CNN they have lost it.)  

A detail where I have waited a long long time upon is damage from these multi trillion interest rate swaps in financial derivatives. First victim observed (Bloomberg link, please remark it only makes the news because the Harvard university is not part of the financial sector):

Harvard’s Bet on Interest Rate Rise Cost $500 Million to Exit  

The most important link is about implementation of the so called Basel II accords. For a long time I was thinking I would never hear from that again but with all that so called 'credit crisis' around lately it is good news the Basel II accords still ain't dead!  

How the Basel II capital cliff begets resecuritisation 

That's it for today, see yah in some future update!

Till updates.  

(14 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) The DOW above 10 thousand, so what's next?
Item 2) If you stop paying your debt, what's next according to accountants? 

 Item 1) The DOW above 10 thousand, so what's next?

My congratulations go to the computer trading programs that by now have proved their value in the run up from below 7000 to 10016 for the DOW.

Here is a screenshot from Yahoo finance (I don't use the Nasdaq website for over a year because that constantly gives advanced viruses not detectable by standard anti virus software...):   

 

So what's the next target? As long as consumer inflation stays as low as it is, I think it cannot breach 11500 in the next 12 months. 

And there is so much new stuff around, it is hard to make sensible predictions. When the DOW topped 14 thousand in 2007 any fool could see she would be cut in half, this time it is much more difficult to grasp all the statistics and get some rigid outlook for stock markets.

Lets zoom in on one of these weird details we have lately: The strong negative correlation between US stock markets and the value of the US dollar.
Today the DOW had a one year high but the US dollar had a similar low: 

 

This negative correlation between US stock values and US dollar value almost looks like some kind of rule: Stocks up = Dollar down.
There really is no way of explaining this via normal or standard economical theory, only a 'dead cat bounce' theory explains this kind of behavior. 

Ok ok 99 of 100 commentators on the television explain that the US$ is a 'safe heaven' to explain the negative correlation, you often observe reasoning like 'when things go better people step out of the dollar' and vice versa.
I don't understand that line of reasoning because 0 out of 100 commentators explain exactly why the US dollar is a 'safe heaven'.
This is surely a weird detail: What explains this negative correlation?

Commodities? Same stuff: Oil up = dollar down and so on.
When it comes to commodities and raw materials it is easy to understand: The value of the commodities does not change but only the fact it is priced in US dollars makes up for the negative correlation.
So weirdly enough it looks like the DOW Jones index is nothing but some commodity... 

Lets also look at a few earnings from US companies:

Chip maker Intel reported higher profits, but ha ha ha a lot came from abroad and not from the USA home market. That validates the simple fact that an economical stimulus package can only work if there is something to stimulate, in the USA there is trillions of bucks sitting on the sidelines but almost no consumer savings to activate.
So the Intel earnings are not very impressive, year on year total turnover is still down over 10% and that is nicely in line for a company like that. 

What about JPMorganChase? Multi billion profits and about 7 times as much profit compared to a year ago? Hello folks, JPMC is just like Goldman Sucks in the sense they are very good in sucking out other parts of the economy.
Companies like that are needed because every economy needs it predators in order to stay alert, but companies like that are of no use for the real economy. They don't add value, they only suck value out of weaker things.

Item 2) If you stop paying your debt, what's next according to accountants? 

This is a long story having it's roots back to the year 1994 when I was unemployed for about one month or four weeks.
So I filed for unemployment benefits and after one month I informed the particular burocracy I had work again...

Although I only had a small job I could survive on it, strangely enough the unemployment benefits kept on streaming in month in month out.
They were unstoppable.

Anyway to make a long story short; after my humble opinion I still have to pay some well known accountancy company about 6000 €. (Of course I cannot name this accountancy company).

About 11 months ago I simply stopped payments towards them... 

This day I received one of my bank account updates and it says:

A nice 104.26 € back because I overpaid my debt obligations.        

Lets leave it with that, till updates. 

(13 Oct 2009) Five items:

Item 1) For over 5 years I waited for this Central Bank detail...
Item 2) Just 800 bucks a piece: corpses piling up in Illinois mortuaries.
Item 3) Econopicdata: 10.9 openings for every job.
Item 4) The four color problem solved? (Watch out: it's boring math.)
Item 5) The empty item.  

Item 1) For over 5 years I waited for this Central Bank detail...

Lots of others have also linked to this file of course:

Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves  

For myself speaking I don't believe there is much of a 'breaking point' and only a very gradual growing awareness of the US dollar future.
Beside that the Bloomberg file contains nice news like new US$ Central Bank reserves are only 37% of total new purchases.
But I want to zoom in on a detail I have waited for for a long long time, quote:  

Developing countries have likely sold about $30 billion for euros, yen and other currencies each month since March, according to strategists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. 

Comment: That is by far not enough! Lets hope Central Banks from developing nations get a bit more wise a bit faster! 

Item 2) Just 800 bucks a piece: corpses piling up in Illinois mortuaries.

It was on the television so I cannot link but it was beautiful news:

If memory serves it was Illinois, so if I am wrong I apologize.

The story line of the observed documentary was as next:

For 800 dollar you can get a funeral here, that's the minimum prize.
Corpses are piling up in mortuaries because folks can't pay the 800 bucks.
City and state government have the same problem: 800 bucks a corpse is too much, thank you but thanks... 

And the freezers get overloaded with piles of dead bodies... 

It was beautiful to see and even more beautiful to understand that Americans are always out there 'building bridges' and 'helping people'. 

Lets hope al Qaida International considers this detail as good news: Corpses of the poor are piling up in Illinois freezers due to the crisis.  

Item 3) Econopicdata: 10.9 openings for every job.

Some time ago we looked at the US weekly jobless claims seriously hurting the monthly so called 'non farm payrolls'. As a matter of fact it was a 'future thing' to happen.

For this to happen it was important that the ratio of job openings kept on climbing...  

Although it was just a few weeks ago we looked at that problem it is important to look at the nice graph from Econopicdata:

 

 

So in this economical environment where cause and effect still can interchange:  

Will unemployment become a 'leading indicator' instead of a lagging one? 

 

Item 4) The four color problem solved? (Watch out: it's boring math.)

Hey I just wonder who gets the Nobel prize for mathematics this year...;) 

Is that true; is it solved?

In case you don't know what the age old four color problem is, quote:

In 1852, botanist Francis Guthrie noticed something peculiar as he was coloring a map of counties in England. Despite the counties’ meandering shapes and varied configurations, four colors were all he needed to shade the map so that any two bordering counties were different colors. Perhaps, he speculated, four colors were enough for any map.

Little did Guthrie know the load of trouble he unleashed with his innocent conjecture. It took mathematicians nearly a century and a quarter to prove him right, and even that wasn’t enough to close the Pandora’s box Guthrie had opened. Mathematicians pulled out their markers and tried to color everything in sight.   

Comment: Try it for yourself, get a paper and a pencil and draw a few maps of countries. Color them with only four colors.
After that try to find a map of countries where you need five or more colors... 

Item 5) The empty item.   

Just emptiness. 

 

 

 

Till updates. 

(11 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Paul Krugman on the Taylor rule.
Item 2) Things Larry Summers doesn't know. 

 Item 1) Paul Krugman Taylor rule.

Paul Krugman had a few refreshing posts on the Taylor rule for setting interest rates for Central Banks. Two weeks back I came across that rule for the first time and all I knew was this:

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

And this rule looks as follows:

 

Lets not explain what these symbols all mean, only observe it is a linear equation in more variables. 

Furthermore in this rule inflation and employment are balanced against each other, other Central Banks have other mandates so this is a USA version.

In The madness of the monetary hawks (wonkish) Paul comes with (Rudebusch version of the rule), quote: 

Target fed funds rate = 2.07 + 1.28 x inflation - 1.95 x excess unemployment 

And that gives some simple hands and feet to the Taylor idea of a linear equation in the two variables 'inflation' and 'excess unemployment'.  

Anyway to make a long story short: A lot of those Taylor rules are standing in the negative right now. Some even at minus five percent...

More reading from Krugman:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/beware-the-dollar-hawks/    

And today we observe an updated version:

Fed funds target = 2 + 1.5 x inflation - 2 x excess unemployment 

Source:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/when-
should-the-fed-raise-rates-even-more-wonkish/
  

For myself speaking, I think simple models like the above can work only in easy times. Now we are outside the range these models are supposed to work one can ask questions about the validity that is derived from them.  

Just like my crazy cubic model for total US debt contraction:

It only works for as long as it works...  

Item 2) Things Larry Summers doesn't know. 

Lets end the day with some humor (Bloomberg source):

-- White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers rejected the notion that the U.S. faces an extended period of below-average growth and high unemployment in the wake of the worst recession since the 1930s. 

“I would be very reluctant to accept the idea that the American economy no longer has the potential to grow rapidly,” Summers told a forum in New York yesterday organized by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News. “The American people have not become less capable of entrepreneurship. They have not become less dedicated to hard work, and the productive potential of this economy has not declined.”
  

Comment: So in the USA elephants still can fly? That is weird so I have made some very basic calculations around the USA GDP growth (BEA source):

Period 1989 - 2009: 2.5% a year.
Period 1989 - 1999: 3.1% a year.
Period 1999 - 2009: 1.9% a year.   

Some say the more everything changes, the more it stays the same...
If you look it that way, the above quote could also have come from the previous regime under Dubya. 

Lets leave it with that, till updates. 

(09 Oct 2009) Two items: 

Item 1) Absurd: Nobel peace prize goes to Barack Obama...
Item 2) Links. 

 Item 1) Absurd: Nobel peace prize goes to Barack Obama...

If US prez Obama gets the Noble prize for peace, it is not more than logical the Nobel prize for economics should go to Alan Greenspan.
This is completely absurd, the only thing Mr. B. Obama is good at is delivering speeches about peace love and understanding, a bit of speeches around 'building bridges' and that's it.

Yet Obama say nice speech is not the same as Obama do nice speech. 

Let me repeat what I said before:

At the end of the Obama presidency we will not have a start of a beginning of a start of a beginning of peace in the Middle East in general and a serious Palestine state in particular.

And why has former US SecDef Donald Rumsfled not gotten the Nobel prize for literature? After all Donald has crafted wonderful poetry:
The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld. Recent works by the secretary of defense. 
That's Life! The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, Volume 2. 
The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, Set to Music 

Lets skip this nonsense...

Item 2) Links.  

To be honest I never heard of the wave of inflation in the third century, FT alphaville has nice stuff on a detail known as debasing the denarius:

Et tu Bernanke? 

The words from Robert Fisk keep on hanging in the air; a whole week of rumors of a sudden attack against the virgin US dollar. For the time being I consider it a bag of nonsense. While on the other hand you can argue that if only some orchestrated rumors can hurt the dollar, is that evidence of utter weakness?
Here is one of those files around gold traders staging raids (businessinsider):

Did Gold Traders Stage A Bear Raid On The US Dollar? 

Perfect anti opium propaganda observed! It is so good it does not deserve a Joseph Goebbles prize for propaganda but the very first JG prize for Advanced Propaganda!
The last words of the file as found on John Pike's globalsecurity.org need to be quoted: 

However, it should be noted that the main opium producing region is the comparatively wealthier south which is endowed with superior soil conditions than the rest of the country and thus allows for a range of other crops to be cultivated in place of opium poppy. 

Comment: This is a lie in so many ways I can only classify this as Advanced Propaganda. Shame on you John Pike, where is your 'independence'? 

Source:  

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/drugs-market.htm  

Have you ever made 'strange faces' against babies? How did they respond?
Monkeys seem to do the same (Science News): 

Monkey moms and babies communicate from the start 

And still not everything on Yahoo finance is not worth a read:

Dow 10,000 - Springboard or Final Kiss Good Bye?  

Till updates.

(08 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Barry on the combined results of 29 secular bear markets.
Item 2) Paul Krugman watch & the death of shadow banking.
 

 Item 1) Barry on the combined results of 29 secular bear markets.

For a lot of reasons I did not like Barry's update from today; in the short term it validates what I fear and that is DOW above 10000 in a short notice.

May be you should read the source of my fear first:

The Most Hated Rally in Wall Street History   

Now we are into this weird situation with plenty of liquidity around (only for banks and not for consumers of course) market psychology is important as Barry notes in his remark number 2, quote: 

2) Hated Rally: I have noted previously that this is the most hated rally in Wall Street history. Many people — both pros and individuals — all have reasons as to why it must end badly: PPT, hyper-inflation, bad economy, etc.

Most bull moves do not end when they are hated, they come to a halt and reverse when they become over-owned and over-loved.

We are not there yet. 

Comment: Ok ok, I accept a DOW above the 10000 mark. I don't like it but smart traders can lock in large profits now all this loose monetary policy is around.

Yet at remark number 3 I honestly disagree with Barry, Quoting remark number 3:

3) Dollar Selloff: Yet another factor is the weak dollar, mentioned earlier in our Gold discussion. The relationship has been pretty explicit lately. See the FT’s Dollar-adjusted S&P 500. 

Comment: I was not aware of any serious 'dollar selloff' lately, ok ok the Jap Yen might be stronger than Jap debt huggers like but the so called 'dollar weakness' of lately is not very serious. Of course I had seen the FT chart today, again it is only peanuts and not reflecting economic fundamentals. 

Dear Barry, lets zoom in on a very easy so called economical fundamental:

When the US economy goes up they have a trade deficit, when the US economy goes down they have a trade deficit.   

To put it simple: Nobody wants to buy that US made shit because it is too expensive... 

Item 2) Paul Krugman watch & the death of shadow banking.

To understand this item you must understand the role of debt and debt growth into an economy. New debt is only future consumption activated today, new debt only works on a long term scale if your future profits outstrip your interest payments + your payments on the original loan you made. 

If your debt growth always is a large multiple of your profit growth, one way or the other your company or economy will hit the wall.

Inside a fiat money system backed by nothing you will run into trouble if your debt load climbs at lets say 10% a year while your real economy only climbs 2% a year.  

Any idiot can understand that. 

So lets zoom in on what Nobel prize Paul Krugman has to say on the subject of delivering loans to 'those who need it'. Link:

Still chasing shadows? 

Comment: Now Paul is only referring to the old and dead shadow banking system. The reason there are no fresh loans could also be explained by the fact there are no savings observed: banks observe no savings to be lended out to responsible companies.
And if an economy has no savings to finance future expansion, what will they do? 

To make it more worse, although I do not hold Paul Krugman in some kind of high esteem, a critique of him named John Carney is the true recycled toilet paper.

You really don't believe what toilet paper John Carney is up to! Link to source:

Why Debt Markets Are Paralyzed Without Shadow Banking    

Comment: This toilet paper guy named John Carney seriously explains why the shadow banking system should be restored again, quote:

The reason why we need securitization to get banks lending is that the international Basel capital requirements reward securitization and punish bank lending. 

Under Basel, a well-capitalized bank was required to hold $4 for every $100 in individual mortgages—a 4% reserve requirement. But if it held the securitized the AAA and AA tranches, the bank only had to hold $1.60 in capital. Similar formulas apply to corporate loans and consumer debt. To put it differently, asking banks to hold on to loans because there is no securitization is asking them to set aside an extra $2.40 for every $100 they put into the markets.  

Comment: Inside a fiat money system, could you read more nonsense like only 1.6% in reserves for AAA and AA tranches?
I don't know if it's true, lets not forget it comes from a toilet paper guy named John Carney... 

Till updates. 

(07 Oct 2009, temporary update) 

During the last stock markets boom from the low's of March this year sometimes folks are critical because the price to earnings ratio's are so high. 

Now markets were so low this year suddenly all kinds of people think it is important you should not only look at the earnings for one year but for a range of years...
(You never heard those guys at DOW 14 thousand top, but anyway.) 

From the statistical point of view you can create lots of ways to include more years in your P/E ratio. For example you simply look at the past five years and all earnings in this five year period are combined.
You can use 'linear fade out' so earnings from five years ago only account for a 20% weight. You can use exponential decay and so on and so on. 

Lets keep it simple:

Alcoa the aluminum producer came out with the numbers a few minutes ago:

Alcoa reports surprise profit   

Alcoa earnings cheer Street 

Alcoa posts surprise Q3 profit 

Alcoa Reports Unexpected Profit on Cost Reductions 

It might be of no surprise there is so much surprise on the fantastic numbers that came out a few minutes ago. 

Alcoa smashed, destroyed and demolished all that negative stuff from bearish forecasters:

Fasten your seatbelts: Alcoa posted earnings of 8 cents per share!!!!! 

Buttt there is more good news: Not 8 cents a year buttt only in the last 3 months!! 

So investors: Invest in Alcoa because for the entire year they show a full 32 or 33 cent earnings per share at only 14.20 dollar! 

Therefore Alcoa is given a 'buy' advice because during these hefty times they report a very low P/E ratio of 14.20/0.33 = 43. 

The best investment advice I can give to wise investors: Buy Alcoa at these bargain levels of P/E = 43.

Oh yes, before I forget, if you include those stupid 'one time items' profits are not 8 but 4 cents per share. Even cheaper! So I repeat my advice to investors: buy it while it's cheap!  

End of the temporary update, lets wait for the next 'surprise' en the earnings front...

Till updates. 

(05 Oct 2009) Only a few links & a bit of my usual bla bla:

In Iraq US military withdrawals are speeded up a bit. General Ray Odierno noted about 110 to 120 thousand less military slime in Iraq at the end of the year:

Iraq Commander Plans More US Troop Cuts  

And surely highly interesting is:

N. Korea says ready to discuss denuclearization of Korean Peninsula  

A bit more intellectual (or better quasi intellectual) is a piece by John Mauldin. It's a bit of easy reading about fundamentally instable systems like growing piles of sand or debt. The size of the avalanches observed is pretty unpredictable from just one grain of sand to the entire pile flattening down. Here's the stuff as published at Paul Kedrosy's hangout:

Mauldin on Fingers of Instability  

The US Treasury is delehmanizing... What do I mean by that?
An important detail in the sudden death of Lehman Brothers was the fact that up to 25% of their entire balance stuff, it was financed with one day long borrowed money.
So every day the Lehman folks had to refi 25% of the entire balance sheet...
And thus if you try to 'delehmanize' you cut a bit on your own short term funding stuff:

Geithner Note Buoyed by Less Bills as Inflation Slows   

In case you need a long laugh, Federal Reserve’s Fisher says tightening will be aggressive... Just try a healthy 5% of Federal rates (that naturally comes along with healthy economies) in your vuking economical models my dear Fisher!
I think you need a so called 'finger of instability' in some place where the sun never shines...  

Federal Reserve’s Fisher says tightening will be aggressive 

And I don't know if it's true, but if it's true it's also funny:

Barack Obama angry at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan  

Remember Rumsfeld from team Dubya? It was so easy to get mad on that incompetent guy. At some point in time this incompetent Rumsfeld made clear he had no clue about vehicle armor in Iraq... (He said that unarmored vehicles were only used inside military bases... That was sure one of the 'unknown unknowns' as Rumsfeld would have said it himself.)
Today we still have Robert Gates as the USA SecDef. So without doubt Robert is for sure in the top ten of enemies to be attacked...

Why can't I get mad as hell at this guy?

Is it for example this? Quote:

"We must always recognize the limits of technology - and be modest about what military force alone can accomplish. Advances in precision, sensor information, and satellite technologies have led to extraordinary gains that will continue to give the U.S. military an edge over its adversaries. But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of war or succumb to the techno-optimism that has muddled strategic thinking in the past," Gates said.   

Comment: So Robert what are you? Are you in the long run my most dangerous enemy because I can't get mad at you? Or can we be some kind of 'don't call it friends'?

At last, here is the link from the quote:

Gates Says Military Recommendations to President Should Be Kept Private   

Till updates. 

(04 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Afghanistan 24h update (no graphical artwork).
Item 2) Iran and the USA based cockroaches.  

 Item 1) Afghanistan 24h update (no graphical artwork).

Ten US military slime killed over the weekend! And this while the US military is only over there 'to help the Afghani people'...

In fact the artificial construct known as 'helping the Afghani people' only lives in the US political circles while in practice in Afghanistan air power rules and of course now the war on terror is entering year number nine of course there is no help for the Afghan people.  

Air power, heavy artillery and the likes is what the US population wants to see, fighting evil is what the USA does, there is no help for Afghan folks. The circus continues & the Americans still don't understand why they are hated so much...

Here you see what the USA population wants to see: Fighting evil = helping the Afghanis...

 

The scumbags known as the US military don't give a shit about helping Afghanis, just like the US bankers they only care about their bonuses. But where bankers have a yearly bonus, the US military does it with enlistment bonuses that ensures a steady flow of trailer thrash folks.

More of these hero's fighting evil (a nice picture for the US home base population): 

 

Don't forget we are entering the 9th year! 

Some links around today's fun:

Ten US soldiers killed in Afghanistan 

American strategy of winning trust of Afghan people is high risk 

Yesterday some small outposts were attacked, quote from the last link:

These small outposts are built as satellites to larger forward operating bases which provide artillery support. 

Comment: So the heroes from the US army can only 'help the Afghanis' if they have artillery support from larger bases and of course the constant air force pounding.
Lets not forget there is no help for ordinary Afghanis, there are only zero hospitals and lots of propaganda. 

At the end of this item a very surprising statistical detail:

For many years the Helmand province in Afghanistan was where most slime died. Neighboring provinces like Kandahar and Uruzgan were also ok.

But all these years we only had one killed slime in the Afghan province of Nimruz.

Recently death toll in that province climbed by a full 100% to 2.
I don't have a clue why in Nimruz stuff is so low.
Here is a province map of killed slime in Afghanistan: 

http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/ByProvince.aspx  

Item 2) Iran and the USA based cockroaches.  

The more everything changes the more it stays the same. That's true, the 'q' is replaced by the 'n' and it is no longer Iraq that is the master of weapons of mass destructions but Iran desperately seeking nuclear weapons.

A million dead Iraqis from the economical sanctions against Iraq was not enough for the USA based cockroaches. A fresh million more dead Iraqis was needed in operation 'Freedom Iraq' (the US military use of killing Iraqis with the help of Iraqis has always been the major factor into steering into a full blown civil war), did the USA based cockroaches change only one millimeter?

This weekend it emerged that Iran was willing to ship all enriched uranium oversees to get medical grade stuff in return.   

Is it enough for those USA cockroaches? 

Of course not, once a cockroach always a cockroach. Link:

Lawmakers vow swift action over Iran's alleged nuclear inroads  

Yeah yeah, now suddenly there is fear that Iran has mastered the art of miniaturizing nuclear warheads...

Like I said: Once a cockroach always a cockroach!

Lets leave it with that. Till updates.  

(02 Oct 2009) Five items:

Item 1) US Non Farm Payrolls minus 263 thousand.
Item 2) A good tip for saving money on teenage daughters.
Item 3) And the Olympic Games for 2016 go to...
Item 5) Afghanistan 24h update.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) US Non Farm Payrolls minus 263 thousand.

Not bad, the NFP came in at a negative 263 thousand versus expectation of minus 187 thousand. Here is the bls source:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm   

Although the financial markets think the NFP numbers are very important, I prefer table A from the above link.

It says:

The US civilian labor force shrank 571 thousand,
Number of employed workers shrank 785 thousand,
The number of unemployed rose 214 thousand while those
Not in the labor force climbed 807 thousand.   

I am very satisfied but it is a pity we don't have the former US prez Dubya stating that 'the fundamentals of the economy are very strong'. That would surely make my day...

At econompicdata.blogspot.com nice graphic from the stuff:

Unemployment: Even Worse than the Headlines 
Hours Worked per Person Tailspin Continues 
Broader Unemployment to 17% 

FT Alphaville: US unemployment hits a 26-year high 

And later on the day Barry hits with: The Mother of All Jobless Recoveries? 

Item 2) A good tip for saving money on teenage daughters.  

As a lot of parents know, when their daughters get beyond a certain threshold of age shopping is no longer going to a shop, get what you need and go back.
No, suddenly shopping is a way of life and every shop in town has the fundamental right of at least one visit every month... 

To get an idea what I am confronted with, below you can see Teenage Daughter: 

 

I have found out a magical way in avoiding unreasonable payments while at the same time keeping the peace in the house. It works as next:

TD: Oh dad I saw these wonderful trousers and I only need 10 € extra and can I have please...
Dad: No way, you have your monthly budget and that's it!
TD: But I need that tiny amount of money and I'll keep on asking until you give it to me!
Dad: Ok ok, you can have your 10 € but first you have to repair your bicycle...
TD: Ok I will repair my bike first.  

After that you hear nothing for a long long time because she doesn't repair her bike, it also works with the monthly allowance:

For a raise of 5 € a month TD was supposed to do the dishes only one week long or seven times. 

That was four months ago, I never heard from it again...

Item 3) And the Olympic Games for 2016 go to...  

Poor Chicago went out in the first round... Lovely!
Is it true Chicago got only 4 votes? Even better!

I hope Rio de Janeiro will get the 2016 games, so lets wait... 

Yes, after the waiting it was indeed Rio de Janeiro! Nice 2016 Olympic Vote Quote Box observed.

Item 5) Afghanistan 24h update.

Rather likely only 71 military deaths in Afghanistan for the month of September, may be there is a bit of afterdrip but reaching 78 dead slime looks impossible. 

End of the item.

Item 5) The empty item.  

 

Till updates. 

(01 Oct 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Dry Baltic Index says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery (2nd time item).
Item 2) Is doom and gloom coming for the US labor markets? 

 Item 1) Dry Baltic Index says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery (2nd time item).

A few days back (on 28 Sept to be precise) I remarked that I don't believe in the world wide economical recovery because for example the Dry Baltic Index has halved from June until now. 

And that contradicts the 50%+ climbs on the stock markets.

To my surprise the exact same question was made on CNBC, the talking head on the television noted that the fall in the DBI was related to the new ships coming from the ship yards.
And as such it was no problemo...  

Although I know almost nothing about the DBI I would like to disagree.
Again I know almost nothing of the DBI:
--Marginal price pressure on the DBI from fresh tonnage?
--Actual transported tonnage? I don't have a clue...
--And so on, and so on.  

I know I know almost nothing, but at least I know the so called 'ghost fleet' of ships taken out of competition is claimed to be bigger than the combined Navy's of the UK and the USA.

It is a pity I cannot validy this claim in any way, the ghost fleet is an ad hoc phenomenon anyway so there are zero statistics on it.

Yet in my opinion you should balance the fresh tonnage against the ghost fleet, adding new ships puts only pressure on more ships taken out of competition.

Below is supposed to be a photo from a small part of the ghost fleet, if you click on it you get a news article from the St. Louis Investing Examiner (written by Jim Mosquera):     

 

So lets rephrase the question for CNBC:

Why did the Dry Baltic Index got cut in half so fast and is there a relation to actually transported tonnage of dry bulk and the likes?  

Item 2) Is doom and gloom coming for the US labor markets? 

This is a complicated item because I would like to bring forward some stuff that is derived from a whole lot of different statistics. 

I would like to make it plausible and explain why the so called 'weekly jobless numbers' will bite the monthly so called 'non farm payrolls'. 

Statistics observed and needed in the plausible stuff:

1) Jobs standing open, about 2.5 million right now.
2) Unemployment volume, lets use some U3 stuff or about 14.5 million.
3) The ratio between the above 1) and 2), it is about 1 to 6 and still climbing.
4) Weekly jobless number, lets say it's about 2.2 million a month right now.
5) The Non Farm Payrolls, a measure for the total amount of jobs.  

From the above five statistics it is plain sailing to observe that the average time a job stands open is about one month. 

This time frame is of importance because if the ratio 3) climbs higher the average time a job stands open will get less and less.

And one way or the other this will bite the Non Farm Payrolls. 

End of the plausible stuff.

__________________________ 

Lets just wait and see how the stats unfold, tomorrow we have fresh NFP numbers... 

See yah! 

Till updates, have a nice crisis or try to get one...  

(30 Sept 2009) Just a few links:

Today it was published that the US gross domestic product shrank only 0.7% on an annualized basis in the second Quarter of this year.
Looking at table 1.1.6 in this list we observe (in billions of 2005 Chained dollars):

2009 Q1 GDP = 12,925.4
2009 Q2 GDP = 12,901.5 

The difference between these annualized numbers is about 24 billion Q on Q, if you annualize that indeed you arrive at a 0.7% contraction... 

But hey! Aren't these 12.9 trillion figures annualized? Yes they are, insiders know it's SAAR stuff (SAAR = seasonally adjusted annualized rates).
And doesn't that mean you can roughly divide the numbers by four to get the Quarterly numbers? 

If you think so, do you need only 6 billion more Quarterly GDP in Q2 to get a flat reading on the USA gross domestic product? Or am I fooling you with fake logic? (This beside the fact we skipped the way 'seasonal adjustments' work at the FED & BEA, you never hear about how they adjust it.) 

More from the BEA homepage (a pdf version):

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2009/pdf/gdp2q09_3rd.pdf  

At UPI (where they celebrate 100 years of journalistic excellence) I found weird analysis (the author LAWRENCE SELLIN expresses weird and outlandish views on military stuff, he is a colonel in the US Army Reserve):

Outside View: A nuclear-armed Taliban?  

At Goldman Sucks they are good at their job:
Monetary policy is already very tight because using estimated Taylor rule parameters they arrive at the conclusion that the `appropriate’ funds rate is -5% or below...
That minus 5% not only validates old jokes from me dating back to the end of 2007, it also gives rise to the idea that at Goldman Sucks there is at least one person that understands the Taylor rule.

Don’t fear the inflation, Goldman says 

And the Taylor rule (new to me by the way):

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

So they did not use Taylor's theorem I just guess: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor's_theorem  

For what it's worth, Greenspan sees stocks 'flattening out'. He also think US unemployment won't move much from 9.7%... Bloomberg link: 

Greenspan Sees Growth Slowing as Stocks ‘Flatten Out’ 

At John Pikes globalsecurity dot org I found a guy named George Smith that likes to poke fun at Muslim bomb makers. My insights into the chemical science are only limited so I cannot comment very much.  

The Beauty Parlor Supply Store Bomb  

George Smith also writes on a blog named Dick Destiny, that is a strange name to write under. But here at kinkytshirts the entire staff likes strange names...
Anyway, here are the insights of Destinies Dick (from 16 Jan 2007):

Incompetent Londonistan terrorists again 

Another old link very much worth repeating is observing the FDIC is only a fake fund. It is a pity that former FDIC chairman Bill Isaac writings are no longer there, but this old file from 12 Sept 2008 is still valid:

FDIC Insurance Fund - It Doesn't Actually Exist   

But there is more to the FDIC, Chris Whalen observes:  

Why Does Bloomberg Keep Getting the FDIC Story WRONG? 

At the Times Online they think the Taliban are masters of chaos...
Is that true? Or are Western air forces the real masters? 

The Taleban: masters of chaos thrive on bombs and charity 

Lets leave it with that. 

Till updates.

(28 Sept 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Baltic Dry Index says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery!
Item 2) Things thundering from the past & what's the shape of things to come?
Item 3) Will Germany come under attack? If so, is it deserved?
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Baltic Dry Index says: Ha ha ha, no economical recovery!

Lately we already observed that the rising storage of oil both on land and on sea was contradicting the 'path to recovery' we are supposedly on.

It takes only a few minutes to find similar stuff in the Baltic Dry Index, in June it was above 4000 and on 23 Sept it was 2175. Quote (source):

The Baltic Dry Index, which measures dry bulk ocean freight rates in a collection of lanes, has dropped steadily from a recent peak in June above 4,000 to its close yesterday of 2,175. Reuters reports that average Capesize earnings, for example, have fallen to $23,762 this week, down 74% since their June peak this year.  

Comment: No comment needed I think. 

On FT's Alphaville there is even a graph that is also linked in the next item (look for the blue graph with it's values on the left): 

Of square roots and economic indicators 

Item 2) Things thundering from the past & what's the shape of things to come?

From the previous link (Of square roots and economic indicators) we found that beside L, V or W shaped economical recoveries we also have WWW shaped models.

Lately inversed and reversed square roots have been added to that important arsenal of the shape of things to come...  

 

Tech Ticker had a video on the last reversed square root on Sept 25, but in my browser the video isn't working anymore: 

Now We've Heard Everything: The "Reverse Square-Root-Shaped Recovery" 

Item 3) Will Germany come under attack? If so, is it deserved?

Ok, the last time we discussed stuff like this Germany was not on the list of so called 'countries of interest'. (Those were my home country because lack of NATO leadership, Belgium because it is home base of NATO headquarters and France because they aroused my irritation levels in those times.) 

Now with a surprisingly high speed, Germany has selected herself.

Local mujahedin posted a first video and German authorities dismissed it as propaganda, a short time later Taliban and al Qaida joined in.

Of course the sudden hatred against Germany has it's roots in the bombed fuel tankers that were stuck in the mud in Afghanistan, a whole lot of civilians died slowly and painfully from their burning wounds...    

To make things worse, German Angela Merkel at first flatly denied there were any civilian casualties at all. And later telling us crap like 'No civilian should die without a reason' (or words of similar political crap). 

And on top of that I observed General Stanley McChrystal stating that until recently he did not understand the role of air power.  

So will the propaganda materialize into reality and if so, does Germany deserve it? 

Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update.

Is it wise to ask for 78 dead coalition soldiers in Afghanistan this month?

Or is it not wise but funny anyway?  

 

Ah, the zero-one project in Iraq...  

Like a light switch the amount of killed US soldiers was higher or lower and in the end it maximized a 3 months killing spree against Americans...

Like a light switch...

Item 5) The empty item.  

Empty empty empty, use your own brain please! 

Till updates my dear reader. 

(24 Sept 2009) Only one item with boring links.

Item 1) Boring links. 

 Item 1) Boring links. 

Lets start to unload a few tabs from my browser:

At Financial Times alphaville Tracy Alloway has remarks around:

This bank-engineered equity rally   

There is constantly that talk that the US housing market is improving, I still don't buy it. So I still use my simple logistic model that says US house prices will bottom out at the end of 2011. Calculated Risk observes (on the shadow inventory): 

WSJ: Delayed Foreclosures and "Shadow" Inventory 

Already feeling bored? Play Fishy! (I can't get behind level seven, can you live up to that important challenge?):

http://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=fishy 

Will the 9 trillion tab for rescuing the world economy lead to an 'Age of Austerity'?
Simon Kennedy has more on Bloomberg:

‘Age of Austerity’ Awaits G-20 as Debt Haunts Rogoff  

Bloomberg's Warren Giles makes it real funny with:

Swiss Secrecy Onslaught May ‘Criminalize’ Elites, Hummler Says  

Need a long list of links around 911 conspiracy theories? Here is the crap:

http://www.infowars.com/category/september-11/   

Once more confirmation that in mainstream US economical thinking, there is nothing about some kind of debt ceiling. That's weird but it's true. (Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns):

It’s the debt, stupid 

An old one but definitely worth reposting is from the same Edward Harrison (from 17 Oct 2008):

Charts of the day: US macro disequilibria 

Why has the next file 1173 comments on it?
(Answer: That proofs that by adding only one gram of math you scare away 99.92% of potential readers.) Link:

Bernanke’s Secret Debt Solution  

And a true 'must see' is the graphic in the next link from Trader's Narrative (it gives some statistical hands and feet to the weird stock market rally we have the latest months):

Volume Mirage: Biggest Rally Powered By Least Volume  

Here is the original file where the 'must see' graph comes from (written by William Hester):

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/rsi/PhoenixVolume.htm  

Till updates. 

(21 Sept 2009) Sorry, only two items:

Item 1) A new tshirt made.
Item 2) Fun with Paul Krugman & links. 

Item 1) A new tshirt made.

After making no tshirts for a couple of years, last Saturday suddenly creativity striked and within about five minutes the whole 'composition' was finished. 

Problem with tshirts is you always have to keep it simple so I did not put in pictures from the 'cash for clunkers' or those other car destroying stimulus programs from around the world.

If there is any truth in destroying otherwise good cars, being good for the economy, in that case al Qaida International should get a Nobel Prize for (applied) economical theory... 

If you want a shirt for yourself, click on the picture to get the A3 size and go to your local tshirt printing shop. Here is the thing: 

 

Of course I had to put the 'I love NY' sign in...;) 

Item 2) Fun with Paul Krugman & links.  

In the previous updates we compared USA total debt growth from the trend line to reality. In the fourth picture from 17 Sept (see below) you observe total USA debt (according to the FED Z1 release!) is 1500 billion below trend growth.

To my surprise Paul Krugman posted a similar picture with trend GDP versus where reality stands today. Here's the thing (PK blog source):

 

In the first place the red trend line climbs to steep: check for yourself at bea dot gov that in the last 10 years average real GDP growth was just below 2%:

Choose table 1.1.6 from the list, set the start at 1999 and do your homework...  

Paul Krugman argues that because there is an 8% discrepancy from trend to actual he urges for more government stimulus money.  

This cannot and will not work, I am not a professional economist but that Keynes stuff can only work if there are enough savings in the 'non government system' to pick up demand and thus economical growth. But on all levels of US society there are no savings to be activated.

So the US economy can only be activated from debt growth, how is that one doing?

Well, for every dollar of GDP the Americans have, they have 3.75 dollars of debt.
Based on the last five years, the US economy needs 5.77 dollar for every extra dollar of GDP. (Of course government programs like infra structure don't have such a lousy 5.77 number written on them.)

My dear reader, it is just as simple as 1 + 1 = 2; economical stimuli packages can only work from positive savings bases in other parts of the economy.  

Suppose Paul Krugman is right and the US GDP is over on trillion behind in size compared to his trend model, in that case the USA would have over 5.77 trillion more debt on her own economy... (That is only eight times the US military budget by the way.) 

To Paul his defense (and knowing he lives in the USA) lets only quote:

So we’re something like 8 percent below where we should be. That translates into lost output at a rate of well over a trillion dollars per year (as well as mass unemployment). And we’ll keep suffering those losses, even if GDP is now growing, until we have enough growth to close that gap. Since there’s nothing in the data or anecdotal evidence suggesting any gap-closing in progress, this is a continuing tragedy. 

Comment: Ok PK, that is your vision. It's not mine, I believe in hard math and simple logic. Not in fairy tales... 

And more to Paul's defense: I don't have a clue what 'Freshwater macro economists' are (when it is economical theory coming from the USA it is useless anyway) but Freshwater stuff seems to attack Keynes stuff:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/freshwater-rage/   

__________________________ 

Ok we close with a few links:

There is not much Media follow up on the bombed fuel tankers in Afghanistan where so much civilians died for only two trucks that were stuck in the mud.
If you are an Afghani and if your kid was roasted in the latest Air Force barbecue, do you wonder how your kid makes it to the daily air power summary from the Pentagon? 

Rather likely you don't, but I do.

This is how killing a lot of civilians goes, (CENTAF source), quote:

Also at Konduz, Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft responded to a request to destroy two trucks under anti-Afghan forces control. The precision guided munitions were released and accurately struck intended targets destroying them.   

Comment: No comment. 

In the meantime Tyler from zero hedge is observing:

Federal Reserve Accounts For 50% Of Q2 Treasury Purchases  

And in Afghanistan the 1400+ record was broken: Only 1400 dead Western soldiers in the last eight years but more is to come I just guess. (Look in the upper table.) Link:

http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx  

In the USA they have a lot of weird stuff, one of those is the 'Leading Indicators Index'. I never ever mention this weird thing because it is very complicated and there is not much 'leading' observed. Do you really want to see statistical nonsense?
Please go to the Bloomberg file:

U.S. Leading Economic Index Increased 0.6% in August (Update2)  

Till updates. 

(18 Sept 2009) Again only one item:

Item 1) A bit more on the Federal Reserve Z1 release. 

 Item 1) A bit more on the Federal Reserve Z1 release. 

Yesterday we looked at the evolution of total debt levels with a linear and a cubic model, before we did that it was noted that every 3 months the US based Federal Reserve changes the data a little bit.

The changes from the previous release in the first column of the FED file we used
(http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm) are given in a graphic by:

 

You see the changes are not that big on totals like 34353.8 billion of debt. So it does not look like much of a deal. 

Indeed, a test if there is a bias in the changes (too far from zero would be a systematic bias) finds you cannot reject that the average change is zero. (For statistical fine tasters: t score is minus 1.4 and a Kolmogorov test says the data could come from a normal distribution.) 

All in all it still is strange that these figures change every time but from a statistical point of view there is no fraud or spilling over from all those rescue programs. 

At last a few links about what others wrote on the Z1 release:

At calculated risk they observe:

Fed: Household Net Worth Off $12.2 Trillion From Peak 

At the Financial Times alphaville they are a bit over the hill with: 

The giant sucking sound of US private sector credit contraction

And at econompicdata they observe:

Consumers and Businesses Rebuilding Balance Sheets  

Till updates. 

(17 Sept 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) New Z1 release so more total debt analysis. 

 Item 1) New Z1 release so more total debt analysis. 

Today the latest so called Z1 release came out (here is the 100+ page whole thing if you want). From the long thing we use this small html file around total debt levels:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm  

The graphs below start on 2005 Q1 and end in 2009 Q2 so the last 18 Quarters are included and this time frame has both positive and negative economical growth.

It is important to remark the Federal Reserve adjust the given data every 3 months, in the graphs below I used the 17 old data and the new one. Later we will analyze if this is allowed. 

The data are the dots and the line fits the points as best as possible (least squares method of course). R square for the linear model is still extreme high: R^2 = 0.996 so only about half a percent of the variation is not explained by the linear model. 

This validates the insight that until now in the USA only small bubbles have collided into larger ones (only to burst later). 

Based on the last four and a half year the total debt number (excluded financial institutions) grew 565 billion / Quarter and Y on Y about 2.2 trillion. This regardless positive or negative GDP growth.

 

Just like the previous times we look at the differences between the 18 data points and the linear model. 

And again a cubic approximation is plotted for out 18 dots.
Remark that the last data point fits in sharply with the cubic model...

The cubic model has R square of 0.845 


 

Just like the last time I also plotted a linear model for the differences, since linearity was filtered out it is 100% logical you get a flat line at zero. 

Later to be updated.

Ok, I am back! Thanks for the waiting...;)

We go back to the source file:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm    

And we add the first column with the one before last financial sector debt. The sum is one of the estimates for total debt in the USA, there are many more of course...

Again a linear model is plotted in the total debt, R square in this case is 0.988 so although deleveraging of the financial sector did set in (about 500 billion less direct debt now standing at 16501.9 billion) it still ain't much.  

This is how it looks:

 

And the difference with the linear model now looks like this (with R square of 0.904):

 

Again I have to remark the cubic model looks like a fit, in itself it is of little importance. For the time being it is a fit, but I am still skeptical about the longlivety of charming graphs like that. Lets wait another 3 months... 

Lets end the day with a funny file from Willem Buiter, I mildly disagree with Willem that in economics or social sciences you only have 'one data point'. Link: 

I know I know nothing; but at least I know that 

There was also funny military news today; the anti missile shield in Poland is cancelled and the whole thing goes mobile. So rather likely a NAVY job... (Sorry no links.) 

Till updates.  

(16 Sept 2009) We are waiting for the US Federal Reserve so called Z1 'flow of funds' release tomorrow. It will be very interesting to observe if total debt levels still climb with speeds above 20% of the USA gross domestic product.

Of course I will do the same analysis as on 07 & 12 August (see below) where total debt levels are found to grow linear over time (still above 20% of GDP).

Also we will look at the fairy tale known as 'deleveraging financial institutions', remark that when many months ago we had all these talking eggheads on the television stating that 'the deleverage problem is worked on' I already placed some very simple calculations saying it will never happen.

So lets wait for tomorrow & for today only two items:  

Item 1) The credit crisis for kids (or for dummies).
Item 2) Links. 

 Item 1) The credit crisis for kids (or for dummies).

Lately a kid in the street asked me what this credit crisis actually was. 

So I had to keep it as simple as possible since kids in general have no mental representation of for example marginal GDP growth against debt growth.

I knew this kid lives with his mother and mommy has a job.  

So I told him: Suppose your mommy has a salary of 1000 € every month, but since that is not enough she must borrow every month 20% of her salary so there is enough food and clothing for the family.

The kid was flabbergasted because he understood 20% amounts to 200 € every month.  

After telling the kid the problems were mostly in the USA I asked him for a possible solution to this credit crisis. The response was as next: 

In that case it would be better if all those American people simply go back to the countries they come from and the Indians (the native Americans) will have their country back... 

I had to smile upon so much creativity; but hundreds of millions of Americans going to the rest of the world is not an option without fresh concentration camps (although I did not say that to the kid of course...).

Item 2) Links. 

If there is a person on this earth that should understand you can't go on picking up debt with speeds like this 20%+ of GDP it should be the honorable chairman of the US Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke.
Make up your own mind: does Bernanke understand his own stuff? (Bloomberg source), link:

Bernanke Says U.S. Recession ‘Very Likely’ Has Ended (Update3)  

From the same Bloomberg source we have this highly intelligent masterpiece:

Bernanke May Accept Slow Recovery to Fight Inflation (Update2) 

In the USA the Meredith Whitney chick is hold in high esteem because she was correct on a few details related to banking. Ok ok the Whitney chick might be good on a detail here or a detail there, facts are this chick has no idea of what the future will bring and only looses herself in details that are not that relevant.
Business insider link:

Meredith Whitney: Big Test Coming Next Month  

From the same source the standard autistic view on debt is once more observed (autistic in the sense it looks at government debt only and neglecting the rest of the economy):

If We're Screwed By Our Debt, Then So Is The Rest Of The World 

In the category 'where is our promised global recovery?' the lady Yves has some nice pictures about the ghost fleet that is sitting idle now the poor poor US consumer cannot pick up more debt:  

Ghost Fleet of the Recession = Biggest Maritime Gathering Ever 

Ok ok lets not burn down Joseph Stiglitz but you must never forget this guy also won a Nobel prize for economics and if you are part of that incest clique wise people often ignore what you say.
But Stiglitz is funny when stating the next, quote:

The Federal Reserve faces a “quandary” in ending its monetary stimulus programs because doing so may drive up the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government, he said. 

“The question then is who is going to finance the U.S. government,” Stiglitz said. 
 

Comment: No comment because a long time ago I stated the money printing press will be the only future theme. Link:

Stiglitz Says Bank Problems Bigger Than Pre-Lehman  

By now you must be utterly bored with all that financial stuff, so you can take your time and look at a YouTube video on Quantum Mechanics. It serves as an antidote to all that idiot stuff that is coming from so called 'scientists' from economics. The video is from Standford university:

Lecture 1 | Modern Physics: Quantum Mechanics (Stanford)  

Till updates & never forget that whatever these Nobel economy prize winners tell you, in reality it will always be 10 times as worse. These fuckheads don't understand the most basic math so why waste your time on the Paul Krugman's of this world? 

(14 Sept 2009) Five items:

Item 1) CNN committing war crimes?
Item 2) Anger control for Western air forces.
Item 3) 'Correlation' between monetization and S&P 500 levels.
Item 4) Latest Osama bin Laden tape.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) CNN committing war crimes?

To my utter surprise CNN broke important Geneva convention war rules today, some of these rules are about prisoner treatment and as such it is forbidden to parade prisoners in public (or on the television as in this case) and ask them weird questions.

In a prison in Pakistan about 80 Taliban were lined up in a few rows and the CNN reporter started asking weird questions like 'Are you allowed to behead someone if only that is an infidel?'

The question was translated and the prisoner only said 'infidel?'.

Immediately the CNN reporter jumped to the conclusion that his question got a positive answer, that is weird because the guy only mumbled 'infidel'.

At the end of this weird news item the 80 men were asked if they regretted joining the Taliban, most of them raised their hands.      

I don't know much about legal stuff, but this is forbidden by the Geneva war rules; of course CNN and the Pak army will reply that the Geneva rules don't apply because 'these men don't wear a uniform'.

Even if that would make sense, by all standards for journalism you should never do such a thing.  

CNN as the creator of propaganda, where are your standards CNN? 

Item 2) Anger control for Western air forces.

There is a wide range of reasons for the present air forces to apply air power, for example panic in the chain of command likely caused the mistakes made lately in the bombed fuel tankers.

Revenge has always been a large pillar, especially in the beginning the Americans wrote interesting texts like 'This is for you goat fucker!' on their bombs.

Another important understream when it comes to air power is of course anger and frustration. I only have to show you the next picture and you likely understand it:    

 

So for these frustrated air force impotent dickies we have a nice link:

Controlling Anger -- Before It Controls You  

Funny quote from the link:

It's best to find out what it is that triggers your anger, and then to develop strategies to keep those triggers from tipping you over the edge.  

Item 3) 'Correlation' between monetization and S&P 500 levels.

This is from a very bad written piece on Zerohedge.com. Here is the article link:

Correlation Of S&P 500 Performance With Fed Monetization Activities Since Start Of QE   

In fact no correlation is given (ok a real correlation number would be more work compared to making two graphs).
If you don't know what QE is, that is central banks buying stuff from the financial market place. 

Even the graph is lousy; the right axis should read 'millions' and not thousands (another US citizen that doesn't understand large numbers, or a typo?). Graph: 

Graph 

Item 4) Latest Osama bin Laden tape.

Always funny how people react on that. The Christian Science Monitor had a nice (source) quote:

As has become his wont, bin Laden also name-checked a number of American officials, good and bad. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and US Central Command Chief General David Petraeus are the “bad” carryovers from the Bush years responsible for leading Obama astray.

Obama would have been better off, bin Laden says, by retaining the services of former Central Command Chief Admiral William Fallon and retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. 

Comment: Ha, that would be funny! Sanchez back...

But serious, most of the tape is about new US prez Obama not being capable to stop the wars and the support for apartheid state Israel. 

I would like to add it would be very very strange that there will be a (beginning of a) Palestinian state at the end of his presidency. 

Item 5) The empty item.  

Just empty, use your own brain please. 

In case that is too boring, on YouTube I found 18 lecture course in ordinary differential equations. All of the basic material is in the MIT lectures. (Ok they are Americans at MIT, but most of them are not evil). Link: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhJ8lVGbl8  

Till updates. 

(11 Sept 2009) On a beautiful day with a lot of emotion in the air I would like to keep this update as simple as possible:

If NATO forces fuck it up for eight years, the best estimate is they will fuck it up for another eight years. 

So on the eight year threshold of the date known as 911, from the Afghan Theatre of Operations we proudly present a work known as 'Half way to hell'. 

 

Lets leave this nice 333 'halfway number' with that on this beautiful day thick with emotion... 

Till updates. 

(10 Sept 2009) Since the news is boring only one link from FT Alphaville today.

The FT file is from oil storing in tankers but there is much more info out there that says worldwide storage of oil and oil related stuff only goes up. 

Some time ago Dutch based Vopak (Rotterdam harbor of course) stated they could not build fast enough more storage capacity.

What oxygen and food are to the human body, oil and it's derivates are that for the economical activity. So where is our promised global recovery?

In the strange economy we have lately it makes much more sense to follow a statistic on actually stored oil and completely discard the prices.  

Or do you disagree and on oil future markets more wisdom is found when it comes to prices? 

Link:  

Over tanked in oil 

Till updates. 

(09 Sept 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) Elementary astrological numbers and why Americans are stupid. 

 Item 1) Elementary astrological numbers and why Americans are stupid. 

Via Barry's hangout (he has a website named The Big Picture) I found a very weird mathematical claim (you can find the link on Barry's hangout or go the original source), quote:

At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion. That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people. It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income. Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it. To use a journalistic measure that dates back to the late 18th century—when the British national debt had become a major political issue in that country—if you laid 9.6 trillion silver dollars end to end, they would reach to the sun and back, with enough left over to wrap around the Earth more than 1,700 times. 

Comment: The above quote is the opening paragraph and it is intriguing... But the rest of the article was rather shitty, it is a very autistic view on US debt neglecting for example the US financial sector has over 17 trillion of debt on herself.
It has dozens of more faults but lets zoom in on the math:

Is it true that with 9.6 trillion silver dollars on a row you can reach the sun and back?
And leave enough to wrap around the earth more than 1700 times?
  

As wikipedia says, a silver dollar has a diameter of 26.5 mm.
Lets say for simplicity it is 25 mm so we have 40 silver dollars every meter. 
(If you want you can repeat the calculation with 26.5 mm or 37.7 silver dollars in one meter.)

The average distance from the earth to the sun is also known as an Astronomical Unit and is 149.6 billion meter. Lets say again for simplicity it is 150 billion meter.

How much silver dollars do you need to get to the sun? Simple:

150 billion times 40 silver dollars = 6 trillion dollars.   

So to the sun and back to earth is 12 trillion silver US dollars.

You don't need to be an Einstein to know that 9.6 trillion won't make it to the sun and back because 9.6 is smaller than 12.

Now for the second claim:

How much silver dollars do you need to wrap the earth 1700 times?

The earth radius is 6357 km or 6357000 meter, multiply the radius by 2 pi and by 40 coins a meter to get about 750 billion. 

So if in the future you hear talk about 750 billion, Americans can act smart by stating that it is about 1700 times around the earth in silver dollars.  

The 750 billion number is around a lot lately, for example American house owners took out 750 billion in HELOC loans in the year 2005 only.
It was also the estimated costs of the very first bailout package.
And this year the Federal Reserve is buying about 3 times the 750 billion amount in mortgage backed securities and US government debt...

My dear reader, the math (like all math on total US debt levels) is very easy: The US financial system (private and government combined) is dying. I don't have a clue about how long it will take for them to die.

After all the 50+ trillion of direct debt has to be worth something...

Before we close this update:  

Why are Americans stupid?

In the first place they don't know how far it is to the sun (cognitive failure observed when it comes to large numbers) and the emotional aspect of dying while refusing to rationalize the process of dying.   

This is their problem and not mine, time will tell & 

Till updates. 

(08 Sept 2009) Oops, yesterday I forgot to publish the second item (the boring links).

Most likely explanation is that I was rather emotional, the kind of emotion was not sobbing tears on a dead pet but raw hatred of the kind that pumps up your body for a fight... 

So from yesterday's update I deleted the end where I explain that fresh war is needed against a Dutch government agency known as the Central Justice Incasso Bureau.

So no fresh war against the CJIB and no guidance for, lets say, 10 fresh coffins over there. Of course you won't here complaints from me when in a short notice death toll at CJIB rises suddenly, just like I never complained when 3 fucking Americans died five days before one of my other trials back in 2003 when energy company Essent found wisdom in trying to courthouse me...

Funny file (in Dutch):

28 september 2003: Steiger ongeval, Amercentrale Geertruidenberg     

I only post the above because in today's letter I wrote to the most might Incasso Bureau in the Dutch landscape I mentioned this small detail of only five coffins.

To make it much more funny: At the end some stupid Dutch authority took an air plane with the brains of one of the Turkish attackers to Turkey because Muslim law requires bodies to be buried as a whole...

So the idiot was sitting in a plane with a coffer filled with brain and I stood before the judge explaining I missed one or more payments because I had a lack of liquidity.

Back to the most mighty Incasso Bureau in the Dutch landscape:

If my memory functions properly, I had no lawyer at my Groninger courthouse trial.
This classifies the entire trial as a fake trial.

As far as I know I have never seen a similar case here in Holland: Zero lawyer....  

As such the trial was a fake and my dear CJIB I think I will stop my payments towards you. No fresh coffins needed, you did it all to yourself!

__________________________ 

Free speech as above is a wonderful thing, in China you cannot write stuff like the above because over there things work differently.

So a bit more on how stupid the Chinese are with the accumulation of fake US government bonds is found at Jesse:  

China Admonishes US Monetization, Sees a Hard Fall for the Dollar Over Time  

In the world of fake stuff, Financial Times Alphaville is telling us that US consumer deleveraging is in full swing. It's a fake insight because all in all the US economy still needs above 3 trillion in fresh debt year in year out. Link:  

US consumers: massive deleveraging in full swing 

More stupidity and fake stuff, the UN searching for a new world currency reserve system is right on track. Stuff like that takes decades or a hefty smash.
I applaud the UN thing for a world wide better reserve anchor, but I have to kill stupid locals like we have in the CJIB and as such I cannot help you... Sorry, my hands are tied! Link:

UN plans for new world monetary system have come too late 

The last days there is all that talk about why everything rises, stocks go up, bonds go up, gold and silver are up. Everything goes up, even more and more countries not attached to the USA report positive GDP growth. 

Is it that finally the so called 'decoupling theory' arises?

Don't know, only Bloomberg says:

Stocks Show Why Analysts Dismiss Economists 

That's it, till updates my dear reader.    

(07 Sept 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Afghanistan bombed fuel tankers update.
Item 2) Boring links.

 Item 1) Afghanistan bombed fuel tankers update.

Today on the television I heard somebody state that it was 'nonsense' to upgrade the total number of death to 125 from 90. I was only listening with half an ear because I was doing boring stuff like painting the house.

Anyway the numbers of reported death during war are always interesting, for example when NATO is 'investigating' one of their plenty mishaps they always use accountancy methods to count the number of dead civilians. Grave by grave it has to be photographed and grave by grave their has to be overwhelming proof it is indeed a civilian.
That is why they always arrive at such low numbers, when it comes to killed Taliban they never do this because 'the enemy is hiding the corpses' and voila those numbers are always higher...  

A bit more on that can you find in a Q&A from Reuters:

Q+A: Civilian casualties in Afghanistan 

I never heard of the group named Afghan Rights Watch but they say up to 70 civilians could be killed in the air strike. The local puppet governor of Kunduz Mohammad Omar says total death toll is only 72 very likely only militants while NATO still hangs on a total of 125 and at least 24 civilians.

The Taliban is stating 150 villagers died (remark they don't differentiate between the artificial construct of Taliban versus civilian). Ass Press link:

Afghan group says NATO strike killed 70 civilians 

More from AFP:

Taliban call for probe as fall-out from Afghan air raid reverberates 

Not related to the air strike, but we wonder if the next is information, disinformation, just utter nonsense or propaganda. Make up your own mind (UK Telegraph):

Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai's supporters 'set up 800 fake polling stations'  

And also not related to the fuel tanker air strike, but a directive to the Dutch military forces. Lately we had a fresh coffin filled with a Dutch commando named Kevin van de Rijdt and just in another fresh coffin with sergeant-majoor Mark Leijsen. (Nu.nl source)  

Therefore I would like to proceed in the Dutch language, after all that is my native tongue...

Hee commando lulletjes uit Roosendaal, wat zit je nu stomzinnig to doen met je vlaggetje op halfstok en dat gemekker dat Kevin zo'n goede gast was...

Man man zelfs een hond wil not niet tegen de vlaggestok pissen omdat het veel te steriel ruikt! Jullie denken dat je in Afghanistan bent om de mensen te helpen, maar als dat echt waar zou zijn waarom schieten ze dan op jullie?

Maar even serieus mijn geachte dames en heren van de Nederlandsche Strijdkrachten:

Lang lang geleden had ik de eer en het genoegen om HEAO statistiek te doceren aan een zootje militairen in Seedorf. Dat was in het kader van één of ander programma waarin militairen een HEAO diploma konden halen.

Twee tentamens statistiek in totaal, dus tweemaal een hele week werken voor het tarief van 150 Hollandsche florijnen per uur. Niet slecht...       

We praten over okt 2001 en een paar maand later de rest. 

Voor één van de tentamens konden mijn Seedorf studs een hele punt extra verdienen voor hun tentamen mits zij een werkstuk inleverden over the 911 attacks.
Ik was zeer benieuwd omtrent hun schrijfsels; wat zou de gemiddelde militaire professioneel schrijven over the WTC stuff enzo.

Het resultaat was dramatisch!

Er was alleen één type vliegtuig dat meer tonnage cargo kon vervoeren vergeleken met het tonnage dat in mijn geheugen zat.   

Daarom (en dat is de 'directive') moeten ze op de KMA meer aandacht besteden aan het verwerken van media informatie. In het bijzonder moeten officieren veel meer in staat zijn het 'propaganda element' uit de informatie te filteren.

Laat ik een simpel voorbeeld geven:

Pas geleden waren er verkiezingen in Afghanistan, alle Media outlets doen dingen als 'Je vinger zal afgehakt worden als je gaat stemmen'. Of 'Als je gaat stemmen dan verdien je het om aangevallen te worden'.
Media drumbeat was widespread on that detail.

Nu, een paar weekjes later heb ik twee afgehakte vingers en één man waarbij de oren en neus waren afgesneden... Dat was alles dat er te vinden was.

Waarom altijd dat hysterische gedoe?

Bij de KMA moeten ze meer aandacht geven aan de onzin die de Media steeds uitspuiten, als dat je militaire leidraad is dan kan je nooit een oorlog winnen.

En daarom moet er veel meer aandacht komen bij de KMA voor het onderscheiden van grootschalige nonsense vergeleken met zoals het in werkelijkheid gaat.  

Item 2) Boring links.

The next link is a crown on 'war on drugs' thinking as we observe in the USA, the author thinks that less opium poppies in Afghanistan will somehow lead to less drug abuse in Western countries... 

The idiot author thinks that paying Afghan farmers for growing no opium will have a big benefit for Western drug use. The idiot thinks that paying a few millions to Afghani farmers will bring a multi multi million benefit to the Western world.

The most important economical nonsense is found in the fact this idiot author thinks heroin is like chocolate: If the price climbs consumers will buy less...  

In reality heroin users will use more methadon, sleeping pills or whatever what to serve the need that they have. If the anti drug policies when it comes to Afghanistan succeeds it is only logical criminal behavior in Western countries only climbs. 

War on drugs is only a war on genes; This idiot author is only one of those who pump up the problems. Why a furthermore respectable guy like John Pike places stuff like that on his frontpage I don't know, did he miss the Mexico fun with all the coffins lately? 

Afghan drugs: The contrarian view 

After all that negative stuff, why not end the update with a big big laugh upon those stupid Chinese that labored so hard to bring cheap stuff to the USA?

At first the Jesse post:

Five Reasons for the Recent Surge in Gold 

Lets take a good laugh at China, it is not 'Angry China' but Stupid China...
After all only a bunch of idiots could save so much dumb stuff in USA government debt. Ok ok it is logical you get angry if you understand your own faults.   

 

And what to think of the next, true or not true when you know how much Goldman Sucks pays to the political leaders? 

 

Lets leave it with that, till updates. 

(06 Sept 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Afghanistan bombed fuel tankers update.
Item 2) Boring links.

Item 1) Afghanistan bombed fuel tankers update.

It is a blessing that the air attack was ordered by a German officer, only because it was a non-USA officer details like a breaching of the air power rules would surface. Now almost 8 years into the war I know of zero reports like this when it comes to 'mistakes' or 'accidents' when it comes to the USAF. It never was a breaching of air power rules although the numbers of filled coffins was impressing.
Wow wow wow, after 8 years the first breach of rules for air power application...
Welcome in the fairy tale world of the USAF. 

Next link also says US war planes threw 500lb bombs although the number is not specified just as the actual kind of explosives used:

Afghanistan: German commander 'in possible breach of rules' over air strike  

As usual with stuff like this, total casualties keep on rising for a few days but miracle miracle the number of killed civilians always declines.
Instead of 90 dead included 40 civilians it is now, quote (remark the careful phrasing of these words):

According to The Post, a NATO fact-finding team estimated that about 125 people were killed in the bombing, and that at least 24 of them were not insurgents. Local officials have said many civilians died in the strike. 

Comment: Very interesting, over one 100 evil Taliban killed and only 24 pure innocents! These are highly successful ratio's that the USAF would have killed for in the Vietnam war...
Sorry it is not realistic, most of the time when you ask a killer about the implications of his actions the answer is often very interesting but not a realistic estimate of the damage done.

Source link:

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-09-05-voa1.cfm   

Without thinking and without using the cognitive parts of the brain, the Washington Post sings in harmony when air power rules are breached.
And the fantastic journo's from the WP don't wonder why this is the first joke that makes it to the main stream Media in eight years time? Link: 

Sole Informant Guided Decision On Afghan Strike 

Lets leave this item with that, why I take the trouble and time to write and post it, I don't know.

There is also a rule of thumb that says:

If armies fuck it up for eight years, the best estimate is they will fuck it up for another eight years.  

Item 2) Boring links. 

Before we start some boring links it is important to notice total debt levels in the USA still climb over 3 trillion US$ a year or just over 20% of their beloved gross domestic product.  

Those kind of numbers are pretty normal when it comes to the USA:

Fresh debt needed is about ten times as much as actual GDP growth, my latest calculations say 5.77 $ more debt for every extra $ in GDP and that was based on the period 2002 - 2009.  

A very simple and elementary view is found that over 50 trillion in direct debt needs to be paid by a small GDP of only 14 trillion. 

The Americans think that economical recovery is just around the corner, they also think they are the world leader and that they are a military powerhouse.

Congratulations with being so disillusional and only repost the next picture on total direct debt: 

 

 

After the boring debt levels (only 50+ trillion and everyone expects this will be paid) there are some boring links to post: 

The honorable lady Yves is so boring in posting:

Is Wall Street About to Ruin Another Financial Product? (Life Settlements Edition)   

More boring stuff from the lady Yves: The G-20 folks think that cutting bank bonuses or higher capital ratio's for banks will save the system...
So the G-20 idiots don't understand the stuff, this is the problem of the G-20 idiots and not mine. Link:

G-20 Agrees to Agree on Tougher Bank Capital Rules, Bonus Limits   

And what about the use of food stamps inside the USA, it is boring Yves!
It is fucking boring when you realize the need for fresh debt inside the USA my dear lady. Link: 

Food Stamp Use Rising, Even Among Wage-Earners 

In case you need a good sarcastic laugh; the Financial Times is reporting that team Obama is attacking Israel because of expansion of the settlements on stolen land.

US attacks Israel over West Bank settlements 

Also nice from the FT:

The renminbi black swan  

Lets leave it with that, the Chinese don't know what a black swan is so why post more nonsense of a dreamt up world? 

Till updates. 

(05 Sept 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Reality from war as a mathematical theorem.
Item 2) Fun question: Is the USA funding the Taliban?

 Item 1) Reality from war as a mathematical theorem. 

In mathematics every theorem comes with a proof, only with a good proof you can use the theorem as a kind of 'truth'.

Almost never you can find a valid proof for things like "because a general rule of thumb says the USA fights war always in such a way that things get out of control".

As you can see on inspection below; two days ago I wrote those very words down.

So I would like to state the next 'theorem':

Theorem:

A general rule of thumb says the USA fights war always in such a way that things get out of control.

Proof: About 45 minutes before I published the 'theorem' two days ago, NATO slime bombed two stolen fuel tankers that were stuck in the mud in some river bed.
Result (until now): 90 dead, locals say this included 40 civilians. Qed. 

Yes you read this right: two fuel tankers stuck in the mud, not two big trucks with gold but with fuel... I don't know what kind of air ammo was used. 

Bizarre as it sounds, it was a German commander that called in the air strike. German diplomats say that it was thought the fuel trucks could be used as suicide trucks... (WP source). I don't know what to think of that... 

From the viewpoint of the military doctrines it is weird the NATO are not capable of estimating the damage air power does to the goals they have. In European nations like Greece and France you can have weeklong riots just because police killed only one or two.
In Afghanistan (but also Iraq of course) air power always is used as the major asset, that is very logical if you understand how this all started on 09 Sept 2001.
It is bizarre, weird and strange at the same time to observe so called 'professional armies' not understanding their own wars.
Hey guys: It is not October 2001!
All they can is ramming stuff into stalemate at the expense of about everyone but themselves. Seldom the ratio of killed civilians to killed military has been so high; the cowards fight cheap. 

Lets post no pictures from the attack scene or kids in hospital beds, I would like to give the middle finger to NATO! 

Item 2) Fun question: Is the USA funding the Taliban? 

John Pike from globalsecurity.org has a funny file about who is funding the Taliban.

Funny quote (source):

"I was building a bridge," he said, one evening over drinks. "The local Taliban commander called and said 'don't build a bridge there, we'll have to blow it up.' I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money -- then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project."   

Comment: The words 'we agreed' are so nice, how much money to the Taliban for that bridge? 

Till updates. 

(03 Sept 2009) Two items:

Item 1) More on the six million killed Jews in WWII.
Item 2) A few boring links. 

 Item 1) More on the six million killed Jews in WWII. 

Since I never had seen a country by country oversight of Jewish victims in WWII I tried to find one. On wikipedia you can find the next file:

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

There are about 20 countries with Jewish casualties reported, I will not write all those nations down but only a few in the next table:

Oversight WWII Jewish victims.

Albania 200
Austria 65000
Belgium 24400
etc etc  
Netherlands 104000
Poland 3000000
Soviet Union 1000000
Yugoslavia 67000
Total 5752400

Please my dear reader, I know this is a touchy subject so please let all emotion out! 

In the first place it has to be remarked that the numbers from Poland and the Soviet Union are rounded off on millions while the 5.7 million total is rounded off in hundreds of casualties. Statistically speaking this is nonsense, the total can vary wildly depending on how the country numbers are rounded off. 

Without more information about Poland and the Soviet Union it is hard to say if the 5.7 million total is bubbled up...

Via the CIDI website (a pro Israel website) and some emailing I found the next country by country oversight:

 

You see in this table Poland and the Soviet Union are 321000 higher while the totals again say it is 5.7 million.

So lets look a bit further, in the next link suddenly the numbers for Hungary are 300000 higher and those for Romania lower (very likely at the data entry level a basic mistake was made, that is dumb for such a touchy subject):

http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/bldied.htm    

Also in this file totals sum up to 5.7 million. 

Of course it is important to emphasize that the country numbers are only estimates based on population statistics.

And now you see the kernel of the controversy:

Those who don't believe the six million number find validation for their insight because the country numbers vary widely. And those who believe the six million figure find proof in the 5.7 million number that constantly pops up.   

So my dear reader, what do you believe? 

 Item 2) A few boring links. 

Now that's the stuff as I like it to read! Why constantly talking positive as if you could talk yourself out of a recession? Strangely enough it is not from some obscure hobby economist like myself but from Central Station for Central Bankers:
The Bank for International Settlements.

Quote:  

"The current financial crisis is unlike any others," says the Bank for International Settlements. Lasting damage has been done. The "cumulative output loss" is likely to reach 20pc of GDP in the major economies. 

Source (by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard):

Our quarter-century penance is just starting  

Dutch banking giant ING got a well deserved downgrading today from commercial rating company Standard & Poors. Remember Dutch finance minister Wouter Boss telling on the television that ING has handed them 40 thousand post codes in the USA and that there were zero defaults in those 40 thousand postcodes?
Since that day I don't trust the mental capabilities of Wouter and his team very much...
Lately ING reported up to 20% of defaults / payments behind on her mortgage backed security stuff, of course no journalist asks how to rhyme this with zero defaults inside a bag of 40 thousand postcodes. 

Fully deserved a notch down: 

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090903-711093.html  

In Dutch (from RTLZ):

S&P verlaagt kredietratings ING  

At econompicdata they made a beautiful graphic on the USA so called ADP payroll numbers. In the world of payroll statistics ADP is less important compared to tomorrow's NFP. 

But the graphic is so beautiful, I think it is a must see: 

ADP Reports 298,000 Jobs Shed in August 

And for what it is worth:

Pentagon Officials Defend Afghanistan Strategy 

And again for what it is worth (because a general rule of thumb says the USA fights war always in such a way that things get out of control). 

Gates: Afghan War 'Not Slipping Through' Obama's Fingers 

Because the server from icasualties.org is down I cannot make a new graphic of the so called 24h Afghanistan update. So why the previous graphic not repeated? 

  

Till updates. 

(02 Sept 2009) Only two items, I tried to make them as boring as possible...

Item 1) Dutch prosecutors making a fool of themselves.
Item 2) Paul Krugman making a fool of himself. 

 Item 1) Dutch prosecutors making a fool of themselves.

Local prosecutors from the city of Utrecht are making a fool of themselves, some cartoon from the Arab European League will be prosecuted because it is insulting to a group of society known as 'the Jews'.

As a comparison; a cartoon depicting Hitler in bed with Anne Frank is, judicially speaking, not insulting to Jews just as the Danish cartoons who are not insulting to Muslims... 

The cartoon depicts the wide spread belief among Arabs that the 6 million killed Jews from world war II are only a 'made up number'.

I have spend six years of my life at a local university to study math, in math it is common that with every stated theorem (a 'truth') comes with a proof. Without the proof the theorem might be true but you can never use it.

For myself speaking I am 46 years of age, I have nothing to proof that it is not six million killed Jews but in my entire life I have never ever seen any kind of proof it is indeed six million killed Jews in WWII.

For example, even a simple breakdown in country numbers still isn't there now over 70 years as WWII broke out. From my own country combined with Germany, Poland and Austria you can easily estimate almost all Jews were killed.   

But a simple list of countries adding up to six million? To be honest, I have never seen such a thing...

Here is the cartoon:  

 

 

Why don't the fucking Zionists give the people what they want:

A simple breakdown in nations adding up to six million?

And for the Utrecht prosecutors: Good luck in 'proving' the above cartoon is an insult to the Jews...   

Item 2) Paul Krugman making a fool of himself. 

Paul Krugman still does not understand basic math, lets say it is a theorem:

Total debt growth in the USA still above 20% of GDP.   

Of course I will not give a 'proof' of my theorem right now, only place a few links from Paul Krugman's NYTimes blog:

1945  

A couple of notes on the 40s and 50s 

And to his defense (after all he lives in the USA and has to enjoy all those hate attacks that are common in that society):

Summer of hate  

So like some Jew living in Poland in the year 1938 I wish Paul Krugman good luck in talking us out of the credit crisis...

Lets leave it with that, till updates my beloved reader.  

(01 Sept 2009) Only two items.

Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update: A new monthly record!
Item 2) Links. 

Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update: A new monthly record!

Two days ago total killed coalition slime stood at 70 for the month of August and it was remarked that it would be strange if total death toll would stay below 76 (the July number). 

Yesterday and today seven more dead were reported, so indeed life is not strange and for the time being August stands at a new monthly record of 77!

My congratulations go to the Afghanis!

  

Item 2) Links.  

For what it's worth; the Washington Post is reporting that the US military is developing some 50 variable measurement for 'progress' in Afghanistan:

U.S. Sets Metrics to Assess War Success  

The so called 'savings rate' of USA citizens is still in shambles; lately I already calculated that all these 'savings' are not enough to even service the interest rates on the debt.
Via the lady Yves it is also found that the savings of just the top 1 or 2% of income of the population already explains the entire savings stuff:

The Savings Rate Has Recovered…if You Ignore the Bottom 99%

Barry also had some things on the savings rate 'improvement':

Personal Savings Rate  

Comstock Partners is informing us that in the last decade debt grew by 5.40 dollar for every extra dollar in gross domestic product.
Although the Comstock Partners don't say it, it is important to remark that (banks) speculating with borrowed money don't count for the GDP.
Anyway it is one of those staggering numbers that only show we are at the very beginning of this so called 'credit crisis'. Link:  

Deleveraging the U.S. Economy 

Lately I joked that in order to keep international demand for US government debt high, the Federal Reserve should open a Cayman Islands outlay named 'Maiden Lane CI'.
But folks that buy bonds are supposed to be 'rational investors' compared to stock traders that are better classified as 'hysterical investors' if you believe that latest DOW rally from 7000 to 9500.
A rational investor would never buy US government debt because the only difference with securities backed by sub prime mortgages is the time scale: it will get destroyed but the timescale is longer.
Anyway, the next file has some nice information like possible 'Agency to Treasuries' swaps supposedly done by Central Bank related stuff, for me it also contains completely new elements:

http://alfred.stlouisfed.org/category?cid=127   

And for the main dish (it is a bit hautain because it has a 'executive summary' but ok):

The Shell Game - How the Federal Reserve is Monetizing Debt 

And again for what it's worth, at econbrowser dot com a guy named James Hamilton is telling Nobel prize laureate Paul Krugman again that it is not 1945 but 2009.
Sometimes I wonder if Paul is some kind of hidden Alan Greenspan... Link:

$9 trillion-- what, me worry?  

Till updates. 

(30 August 2009) Just a few links:

Via Barry's hangout there was a Bloomberg link that said leverages were on the rise again. It isn't much but anyway: 

Leverage Rising on Wall Street at Fastest Pace Since ‘07 Freeze 

In just over two weeks a new Federal Reserve Z1 release will be out, it will be very interesting to see how total debt on the US financial sector behaves. It now stands at 17.0210 trillion down from 17.0869 trillion, in a normal world this should have lead to large losses but the scrapping of the mark to market rule hides the view of the real development of the financial sector. Link (one before last column):

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm  

Nobel prize laureate Paul Krugman is 'getting it is not 1945'. Paul Krugman wants already a second stimulus program because unemployment is expected to stay high. Total direct debt levels (that is debt without vague future promises like baby boom stuff related costs) are already above 50 trillion and this statistic still climbs over 3 trillion a year. Link:

Krugman To Critics: Yes, I Get That This Is Not 1945 

From the same source are also nice to read:

Lehman Shares Surge 200% (FNM, FRE, AIG)  

Trading In Trash Financials Made Up Almost One-Third Of August Volume On NYSE (AIG, BAC, C, FNM, FRE)

The Pay Czar Is A Multi-Millionaire 

Also via Barry I found some fun math from the university of Ottawa; they made a mathematical model about zombie attacks...
It is funny to read and as such it is a pity the model is utterly useless, if zombies would attack rather likely humans will react in a military fashion.
And you cannot make a math model of military thinking, there are far too much variables and you cannot create a predictive mathematical model.
(In technical terms, the factor SZ they use for measuring the number of encounters with zombies is not realistic.) Link:

http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf    

No (graphic) Afghanistan 24h report, only mentioning that July = 76 reported dead coalition slime while August only stands at 70.
We have to wait a few days until the last coffins are reported, it would be strange if it would stay below 76 but you never know.
Again: You cannot model military stuff; all years in Afghanistan until now August was worse compared to July. Will it be different this time?

Till updates. 

(29 August 2009) Only the 24h Afghanistan update, ok ok it isn't published every 24 hours. Lets skip all kinds of difficult texts and simply observe:

 

Lets leave it with that, 

Till updates. 

(25 Aug 2009) Oops, internet was suddenly disconnected last week! That was a little bit strange but my internet company was telling the truth: I did not pay the bill for March, so I paid and only one day after processing the bill internet was restored again.

Item 1) Afghanistan elections, Taliban and Western Media reporting.
Item 2) New Afghanistan year record: 295 coalition death and counting...
Item 3) A short guide for more economical stimuli.
Item 4) USA Case Shiller housing index came out today.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Afghanistan elections, Taliban and Western Media reporting.

At first I would like to give my compliments to the Taliban for showing enough restrain, thanks! Reported were only 9 dead civilians (see for example CNN) last Thursday.  

Since the Monday before the elections I was without internet and as such was able to enjoy the nonsense of our Western Media folks via television. Day in day out hour in hour out it was constantly reported that 'People who go voting deserve to die'.

Why are the Western Media folks so hysterical?

Why is it every time the same? Some Western journalist in Afghanistan seeks some extremist, asks for his view and instantly that is reported as 'Taliban policy'?   

Let me simply repeat what I quoted on 16 Aug (source):

"We have already announced that the people should not participate in the election," he said. "We have announced that the people should not participate in this American process. We are going to block the highways and roads leading to polling centers and attack those polling centers where we see Americans and other foreigners."  

Comment: Well my dear but relatively stupid Media folks: doesn't the above quote pretty much sum up what happened in Afghanistan last Thursday on election day?
How come you did not see it coming?
More and more it becomes clear Western Media are much more a part of the problem and not of the solution; why is the learning curve not taken my dear Media folks? 

For the rest: The Afghan elections were not that important because it still a puppet regime only held up by foreign powers.

Item 2) New Afghanistan year record: 295 coalition death and counting...

Since the last update 28 more military coalition death reported, on average just above 3 a day. So that's not bad... 

 

 

Item 3) A short guide for more economical stimuli.

Lately the German and French gross domestic product took a turn in the positive direction, some say it is because of the government stimulus spending.

In some countries there are programs to take old cars in and change them into new ones, details vary, for example in the USA you can get 4500 dollar and in my home country 1000 euro.

With the scientific eye it is hard to see how the destruction of otherwise good cars can be good for the economy. Lets explore this kind of thinking a bit deeper:

Destroying things is good for the economy, or more precise:

Destroying things is good for the GDP. 

 

Actually old things like cars and buildings don't count for the GDP while the new stuff replacing it does count for the GDP of this year. (And with big buildings a lot of years!)

Since I love the Americans so much, I would love to help them with a new stimulus package proposal:

The US military should deploy al Qaida operatives and give them a training as a pilot bomber. After the training they are supposed to bomb away American cities, this has a lot of benefits. Let me name a few benefits:

1) Now al Qaida folks are bombing US cities, they think they are winning the war! In reality the demand for new cities will make the US economy so strong that winning the war on terror is a cake walk!

2) With selective bombing in California and/or Florida a lot of that negative house price decline can be prevented. That will stabilize the economy! 

And just be creative; the al Qaida pilots could also spray poison from the sky on farm fields or throw dioxin in the Great Lakes or the Great Canyon.
Think of the countless billions needed to clean that up! 

That would give some good kick ass to the beloved GDP! 

Item 4) USA Case Shiller housing index came out today.

New Case Shiller housing index out today: year on year decline (20 city index) was minus 15.4% and the first Q on Q increase observed. 

I never took the time to type a lot of data into a reliable statistics program but all in all everything is in line with my (negative) logistic model that says:

US house prices will bottom out at the end of 2011.  

Lets post no links on the CS index detail... 

Item 5) The empty item.  

Empty, empty empty... Use your own brain please. 

 

Till updates. 

(16 Aug 2009) Only an Afghanistan update:

In a few days time it is election day in Afghanistan, until now (that means since about 2001) I had always asked for no attacks on such election days, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. 

This time it was different; the Taliban wanted a boycott anyway and why should I try to save another day after almost 8 years of stupidity from NATO & the likes?

But lets look at some Media stuff from yesterday (source), quote:

"We have already announced that the people should not participate in the election," he said. "We have announced that the people should not participate in this American process. We are going to block the highways and roads leading to polling centers and attack those polling centers where we see Americans and other foreigners."  

Comment: Today the Media files constantly reported that polling stations will be attacked, but if these are mainly polling centers where Americans and other foreigners are spotted it's fine by me.

Since the last update we also had 8 more dead coalition soldiers, so statically speaking that is rather low compared to the eight years of war...

At last the picture of today:  

 

Till updates. 

(12 Aug 2009) Before the two items I would like to show you there is retired US colonel who also thinks the Taliban should execute the Bergdahl prisoner...
You vuking don't believe it, but here is a nice quote (source):

As members of Congress and veterans of the United States Armed Forces, it was with incredulity and disgust that we watched Fox News Strategic Analyst Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters (Ret.) suggest on your airwaves that Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, "abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post, and just walked off," and stated that, if this is true, "the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills." 

Comment: Who needs enemies when you have officers like that? 

Item 1) More 'Total USA debt' analysis.
Item 2) The 24h Afghanistan update from yesterday. 

Item 1) More 'Total USA debt' analysis.

A few days back (03 and 07 August below) we looked at total debt in the so called non financial sector in the USA (to be precise, mortgage, consumer, business, state and federal debt together).  

Based on the last 17 Quarters it was found the debt grew linear over time with a speed of 575 billion a Quarter.

Today we do exactly the same but we include the 17 trillion of the debt US financial sector has upon herself:

Start = 2005 Q1 = 37124,6
End = 2009 Q1 = 50952,9 (all in billions unchained dollars, FED source

 

On average this climbs a whopping 860 billion every Quarter.
Does this look like a credit crisis to you?
It might be that some sectors of the US economy have some debt restraints but the overall debt growth is by far not in a crisis.

Just like the previous time we take a look at the differences with the linear growth model and just like the previous time a cubic model for the differences is plotted:

  

I also plotted the linear model for the differences, since the linear growth was filtered out it is 100% logical you observe a horizontal line. 

The cubic model has R square above 0.80 so that is a good fit, remark it does not make much sense to extrapolate to the future because a cubic model is handy to use in the neighborhood of inflection points.
I could also have used some kind of sinus model or a linear plus a sinus model but that would involve much more labor only to get similar results... 

Conclusion: With or without the US financial sector debt the results are similar; still not much of a real crisis observed, only a credit shift.

The estimated standard deviation for the difference is about 350 billion so a 95% likelihood bandwidth is about plus or minus 700 billion; only the last observation is not in that bandwidth. (That is only 1 of the 17 observations.)

Item 2) The 24h Afghanistan update from yesterday.  

The picture below is from yesterday evening (at the moment of writing the score for August still stands at 27). 

So 7 freshly filled coffins observed:

   

In case you don't think the Afghan government is not a puppet government you should read this WP file:

U.S. Officials Talk New Post With Karzai Rival, Aide Says  

Also funny:

Deaths from Afghan IEDs rise sixfold 

Till updates. 

(10Aug2009) Just some links & just some bla bla talk from me.

Barry posts some good graphs about 'total USA debt', it is important to understand there are plenty of ways to measure 'total debt'. If you include all the promises made to the USA baby boom generation it could be as high as 71 trillion, if you think that is not a realistic approach you can concentrate on actual debt obligations that could be hold up in a courthouse or so. 

Important is the fact that whatever measurement you take; debt growth is always a multiple compared to GDP growth or total profit growth or derivates like total tax revenues. Furthermore the graphs validate my view that we don't have a credit crisis yet since total debt growths proceeds it's own path and ignores everything else.
This credit crisis is a fake, we only have a credit shift. Link:

Comstock: Indebtedness May Cause Two Lost Decades  

The Hill is reporting that the US Federal deficit grew another 181 billion in July to reach 1.3 trillion for this US fiscal year. It will be very interesting to see if indeed the 1.8 trillion estimate will be reached on 30 Sept this year when the fiscal year ends.
Again these large numbers only validate that we have a credit shift and not a credit crisis. Link:

Deficit grew by $181 billion in July  

More on US investment bank Goldman Sucks; I still don't understand why there are no hedge funds out there having similar results. I don't buy into the hypothesis that at Goldman Sucks they are that smart, that is a nonsense hypothesis.
Tech Ticker has a funny video:

Maybe Goldman Sachs Really Is a Giant Vampire Squid  

Bloomberg has a short video interview posted with Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, if you are a regular reader of this infamous website you know that I often disagree with this particular Noble prize winner.
I think Paul is just another debt hugger that thinks more borrowed money will save the day year in year out. Lets waste no more words on this wise guy, link:

Krugman interview

Economicpic data is telling us that consumer credit is down sharply in the USA. Oh oh the poor consumers cannot borrow anymore to pay for the daily things like food.
Don't forget that when it comes to foreign nations that USA is always the first to point out that a prosperous middle class in society is the best thing to have.
On the USA home front rich got richer & poor got poorer & the middle class only had inflation compensation for many years.
When you talk crap you get crap. Link:

Consumer Credit Down Sharply 

Drugs and the USA...
You know there is some kind of theory out there that says societies often fall in the same trap as 3 to 4 generations ago. The rationale given is that there is no one around to explain the dangers. It's a charming theory; when your grandparents tell you as a kid the faults they made and how much damage it did to your family, you will take notice.
The next MSNBC link is just that; it is about 100% the same when it comes to opium and Indonesia one century back.
Didn't I say only yesterday that we still have a severe danger of a 'pesticide solution' to the Afghan drug problems?
Media files like the next are only a path to 'solutions' like that, mark my words: in 2011 or so we could see more 'final solutions' to Afghan poppy stuff:

Opium addiction ravages Afghan families (Second title: Scourge of remote villages leaves even babies hooked. But when in the USA a 4 year old shoots his 2 year old sister you never see 'gun addiction' or so.)

The last link is a repeat from yesterdays 'empty item', it is about that captured US soldier named Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl. Let me quote:

Maulvi Sangin, an insurgent commander for eastern Afghanistan, said the Taliban's governing body was awaiting a response to demands it made to the U.S. for his return. 


"The American's fate is in the hand of (leadership), which is waiting until a response from the Americans to its demands," Sangin told The Associated Press. 

Sangin would not elaborate on the demands or say if any deadline had been given. A spokesman for Sangin had previously said the soldier would be killed unless the U.S. stops airstrikes in two areas of eastern Afghanistan. 

Comment: Now wow wow wow, I have deep knowledge when it comes to trying to influence air strikes. As a matter of fact, didn't I year in year out declare so called Military Bloody Days and didn't I tell Western air forces exactly how much air ammo they were allowed on those days?
Did the fuckheads from the Westen air forces listen to my demands?
They never did so in the end I was forced to allow biochemical attacks to be used against the population, this still stands for a few decades by the way.
Let me keep it short to the Taliban leadership:

Execute Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl this week, make sure his body is never found & embrace yourself for at least another decade of war.  

 

And the link again:

Taliban: Awaiting US response on captured troop 

These were the 7 links of today, till updates my dear reader! (By the way, it is now 2009 and the next link only feeds my insights that we will have 'pesticide solutions' in, lets say, 2011. The new nigger prez is a nonperformer just like Dubya! The eight link:
U.S. to Hunt Down Evil Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban (NY Times)) 

(09 Aug 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit.
Item 2) Is data mining a bad thing?
Item 3) Afghanistan could take 40 years, says new UK army chief.
Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update (actually a 48h update).
Item 5) The empty item.

 Item 1) Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit.

And another US fiscal year where the debt limit needs to go up.
It's a funny read but the reason I post is is again explaining how those fake US Federal Funds work. Reuters source, quote:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit on Friday, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October.

"It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations," Geithner said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that was obtained by Reuters.  

Comment: The 12.1 trillion statutory debt limit is something completely different compared to the official Federal debt of 6.7214 trillion the Federal Reserve is publishing (FED source). The difference is found in those Federal Funds like Social Security or that bank rescue fund from the FDIC.
All these Funds are only accountancy vehicles that measure inlays minus outlays, but don't think there is actually money in it!
The US government uses a 'cash in cash out' accountancy system and surpluses in for example Social Security inlays are simply spend this fiscal year, the 'surplus' goes in the form of non public tradeable Treasuries into the SS Fund.

All talk that Social Security funds will be 'depleted' in 2037 is utter nonsense, but year in year out at least once a month you see stuff like that coming along.

Why American journalists year in year out refuse to understand their own Federal financial system is something I only partly understand; on a nation wide view you can classify this as 'suicidal behavior', may be suicide is not the right word. But 'stupid' is also not a right word to use; a lot of people who write on that are not stupid.  

May be it is best to compare it to an entire decade of Media writing about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; also a decade of nonsense. 

Just like their present day talk of 'depleting Social Security funds', dear assholes: These funds were depleted years ago, you assholes just never understood... 

Item 2) Is data mining a bad thing?

To be honest, I never went to one of those 1500 Euro for two days of lessons in data mining. I also never tried to get a crack of very expensive software that uses data mining for big databases for big business...

I only thought, naive as I am, that now we have bigger computers we can crack the secrets hidden within larger databases with just a few clicks of the computer mouse.    

Just like the mining of metals like gold or copper is very different now compared to 1500 years ago.

To my surprise a Wall Street Journal writer named Jason Zweig says:

Data Mining Isn't a Good Bet For Stock-Market Predictions   

Ok ok Jason has some points; you should not use data mining in a dumb way just as you don't mine for gold in fresh clay soil. But when I think further while recognizing the 'weird things' Americans have, let speak the next quotes for themselves, quote 1:

Mr. Leinweber got so frustrated by "irresponsible" data mining that he decided to satirize it. After casting about to find a statistic so absurd that no sensible person could possibly believe it could forecast U.S. stock prices, Mr. Leinweber settled on annual butter production in Bangladesh. Over an 13-year period, he found, this statistic "explained" 75% of the variation in the annual returns of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.  

Comment: R square being 0.75 is surprisingly high, it all gets more bizarre when you read quote 2 on US money managers:

Mr. Leinweber still gets inquiries from money managers who want him to share his data on Bangladeshi butter production so they can get the latest numbers and build a trading strategy around them. "A distressing number of people don't get that it was a joke," Mr. Leinweber sighs. 

Comment 1: Without much data mining my hypothesis is that having money managers like that is pretty normal when your country has the world Reserve Currency Status. It only breeds fools who think they are masters of the universe. 

Comment 2: Scroll to the previous update item 2; the cubic model for future USA non financial debt growth also has R square of about 0.75.
The linear model has R square at 0.997 so I think the USA will go on collecting huge chucks of debt, about 575 billion a Quarter...

We'll see how this all pans out, until now there is still 'strong international demand' for US government debt. Who knows if the Federal Reserve has opened some outlays at the Cayman islands (Maiden Lane CI) to ensure the international demand... 

Item 3) Afghanistan could take 40 years, says new UK army chief.

Lately, without consulting the Afghanis, I stated to that shithead that leads the USA military that the shithhead could have another decade of war if that is what this shithead wanted. 

So with great fun I observed the new UK leader of military stuff talk about 30 to 40 years of involvement. Lets quote:

Richards, who will become Chief of the General Staff later this month, told the Times: "I believe that the UK will be committed to Afghanistan in some manner – development, governance, security sector reform – for the next 30 to 40 years."

He said British troop involvement should be needed only in the medium term and that the role of the army would evolve, adding that the focus should now shift to the expansion of the Afghan national army and police.

"Just as in Iraq, it is our route out militarily, but the Afghan people and our opponents need to know that this does not mean our abandoning the region," he said. 

Comment: Well Richards it is not that hard to solve the drugs problem and the economical development problem in Afghanistan at the same time. Little problem: In the year 2002 it was the same and when you now in 2009 talk about 30 to 40 more years I can only tell you this: 

Do you want 400 years of war if you proceed as stupid as you have in the last 8 years?
If you want it you can have it! 

Item 4) The 24h Afghanistan update (actually a 48h update).

With only 2 more reported dead coalition military slime it will be hard to reach a 100+ filled coffins this month!

But compared to Iraq, Afghanistan was always a hard thing!

This does not take away I wish the Afghanis luck in staging attacks; live well and fight well! (And never forget you have to do the fighting while I am only tracking statistics, again: good luck & use you God given brain!)   

 

 

Item 5) The empty item.

Empty as the vacuum of space... Please use your own brain!

 

 

  

Not empty enough?

Ok ok, it was years back when I advised to use all captured soldiers for biological experiments. May be it is a favor of Muslim religion this did not materialize, but my dear Mullah Omar what will be next? Source:

Taliban: Awaiting US response on captured troop   

But advises like that are not given without reason; there is still a high likelihood that Western military forces will go for the pesticide thing to solve the drug problem in Afghanistan and you Taliban might be honorable guys by refusing the biological path of warfare so it's best to put an end to the discussion with a simple execution of the honorable Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl.

Furthermore: The USA does not negotiate with terrorists, so execute the Bergdahl guy and let his body never be found.  

Till updates. 

(07 Aug 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Is USA unemployment down?
Item 2) US total debt growth; update.
Item 3) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 4) USA Federal tax revenues plummeting.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Is USA unemployment down? 

Right now US stock markets are up 1.7% on the 'better then expected' non-farm payrolls and the 'fact' that unemployment was down to 9.4%. 

All the television coverage presented this as good news and with broad smiles spattering from their stupid faces they brought the 'good news'. 

Lets look at what the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes from this, link:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm  

And look in the first table (table A) to observe (all in thousands):

Civilian labor force .... 154,504| -422 
Employment ............ 140,041| -155 
Unemployment .......... 14,462| -267 
Not in labor force ...... 81,366| 637 
  

You see those not in the labor forces climbed 637,000 while the labor force itself shrank by 422,000. If you think that's good news, it's fine by me.

And the statistic 'unemployment' is measured in the next way, quote: 

They were not counted as unemployed because they had 
not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. 

 Item 2) US total debt growth; update.

This updates 03 August (see below), I was curious what the differences were with that weird linear model (for total non financial sector debt, see below).

The differences are as next, all in billions of US bucks of course:

  

The largest difference is the latest at minus 340 billion compared to the linear model. Why a variable as total debt would behave like a linear growth model is unknown to me, that falls into the category 'strange' because there is completely no relation between GDP growth and debt growth. 

The diff variable is now without the linear growth estimate, does it now fit another curve at relatively high significancy? (This is a tricky technique for only 17 data points!). It turns out a cubic model fits very good (but to be honest cubic models like these usually don't live that long...)

Tricky or not, the cubic looks very promising: 

 

Item 3) The 24h Afghanistan update.

Three more dead military coalition slime observed while in the meantime and as usual year in year out: 

NATO denies killing civilians in Afghan strike 

 

 

Item 4) USA Federal tax revenues plummeting.

Of course tax revenues are down in almost all countries. But some countries have some filled coffers waiting for economical turmoil like this, for example when they have an unemployment fund it is usually filled with real money from real taxes. 

In the USA they us a 'cash in cash out' and as such there are no coffers filled with value. According for the Federal accountancy rules, no cash is in these funds. 

So here we have these fools once more (source):

Social Security tax receipts are down less than a percentage point from last year, but in May the government had been projecting a slight increase. At the time, the government's best estimate was that Social Security would start to pay out more money than it receives in taxes in 2016, and that the fund would be depleted in 2037 unless changes are enacted. 

Comment: This is perfect Orwellian talk, in fact the funds are filled with debt and if this debt is 'depleted' in 2037 that means hidden debt is paid off at last. What in the meantime happens to those dependent on SS is still unknown. 

Item 5) The empty item. 

Empty empty empty, will the cubic rule diff? Make up your own mind. 

Till updates. 

(06 Aug 2009) Only one item; Afghanistan.

Item 1) Afghanistan, drugs and the 24h update. 

Item 1) Afghanistan, drugs and the 24 h update.  

After 8 years of waiting there has been about zero point zero progress in the Afghanistan so called 'drugs problem'. It is absurd to read with every dead coalition member that they are always there 'to help the people of Afghanistan' while in fact the mess goes on year after year.

This is all a circus and the Media works along with keeping this a circus by interviewing so called 'experts' who are lost in the war on drugs and still think in 'evil versus good'. Always we are told Afghanis should harvest wheat so they can feed themselves...  

The only way out is turning illegal opium into legal opium, you know that stuff used as a basic ingredient in for example pain killers. Of course the 'experts' are the first to kill reason and declare 'illegal opium is higher in price then legal opium', they forget always to mention that the high prices are only an artificial construct and a result of the war on drugs.

Beside this wiping poppy growth from Afghanistan will not dent the supply of heroin; just like marihuana you can grow it indoors. (In this country almost no marihuana is smuggled in; almost all is produced locally.) 

A good read is the next (it starts with a village where there is no paper money but only opium as money):

No more opium, no more money for Afghan villagers  

A nice quote that show the official anti drug policies will never work when executed as stupid as now: 

On a hill flanking the highway in Argu District, a four-hour drive southeast of here, a thin farmer is bent over cutting wheat with a hand-held sickle. Abdul Mahin says he is several hundred dollars in debt to the man who sold him fertilizer.

"If we plant two bags of wheat, then we'll have just enough money to buy the seeds to plant another two bags of wheat," says the gray-bearded farmer. "We're going backwards. Of course we're angry at the government."

A small number of farmers in other towns are planting opium despite the ban. Most are seeing their fields destroyed, as government agents intensify patrols. 

Comment: There is no use destroying Afghan poppies, if the Afghan supply declines at some point in time drugs money will be used to create indoor growth.
Of course the USA and NATO ignore this elementary boundary condition; they prefer to fight windmills in the mountains of Afghanistan...

A quote from one of these idiots:

"These poor farmers are going to get stepped on and get hurt in this effort," says former Drug Enforcement Agency official Doug Wankel, who organized the U.S. counternarcotics effort here in 2003. "But it's a pain that has to be endured for the good of the masses."   

Comment: This quote sums up the USA; arrogant to the bone and stupid to the bone! 

And what about the Afghanis who don't have a clue that the USA is using them to fight war on drugs while this will not change a single thing in the Western countries? Quote:

Zainuddin, the head security officer for Darayim district in Badakshan, says he feels awful every time he uproots a poppy field.

"Sometimes I cry as I am hitting the poppies," says Zainuddin, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. "Because I know these are poor people and I am taking away the only thing they have."  

Comment: No comment, I feel sorry for these misguided people. 

__________________________ 

The 24h Afghanistan update; a strong decline in reported numbers because we had only 6 reported dead military slime in the last 3 days.
Without links; also police leadership was attacked, rockets on Kabul observed and sadly enough a family going to some wedding festivities too.

 

 

Lets end this update with a funny note;

Suppose you want to grow indoor opium to make heroin, where can you get seeds?

You can buy them from http://www.bouncingbearbotanicals.com/opium-poppy-p-152.htm 
They ship from the USA...

(May be these seeds produce next to nothing in quantities of opium, just like all other USA products it could have lousy performance.)  

Till updates. 

(03 Aug 2009) Two items: 

Item 1) This credit crisis is a fake, until now it is a credit shift.
Item 2) Afghanistan 24h update. 

Item 1) This credit crisis is a fake, until now it is a credit shift. 

Something strange is going on: Every Quarter total debt in the USA grows by about 500+ billion. Lately there has been talk about some kind of 'credit crisis' but this is not a crisis!

As you see in the graph below the 'American way of life' is still preserved (the linear model spits out R square 0.997 and that makes future predictions of total debt highly predictable). Source (See the first column without the 17 trillion fin sector debt):

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/d3.htm 

Start = 2005 Q1 =  24969.2 billion
End = 2009 Q1 = 33931.9 billion (about 2.25 trillion a year).

 

Total labor force in the USA is about 130 million workers, lately minimum wages in the USA were put higher lets say 7.50 $/hour.

What is the total of wages to be paid in a 40 hour a week in a year? That's simple:

130 million times 7.50 times 40 times 52 = 2 trillion. 

Make up your own mind:

Is this credit crisis only a fake where small bubbles collide into bigger ones only to burst too? All we have seen is a shift in total debt to government and FED balances and that's about it. 

Item 2) Afghanistan 24h update. 

No fresh coffins reported, but July was upgraded from 75 to 76. 

 

Till updates my dear reader. 

(02 Aug 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update. 

Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update.  

This item is, as you might have guessed, a 24 hourly Afghanistan update. The slimy military forces had some more coffins to fill and that always brings joy & pleasant feelings around here. (Five more coffins reported: yesterday was upgraded from 4 to 6 and today 3 more deaths so the statistics are right on track to deliver a triple digit death toll to the slimy militaries!)

You know today I suddenly realized that a lot of the present soldiers were only 10, 11, 12 or 13 years of age on 09 Sept 2001. They were kids back then and now they are soldiers because of the large payments they can get.

Dear Afghanis and Taliban, we have serious matter to discuss: The boycott of the presidential elections this month. As far as I know reality the Taliban want a boycott of these puppet elections; that is fine by me. 

Historical footnote: Every time when there were elections, let it be Afghanistan or Iraq, and I asked to withhold attacks on that election day, this actually happened and more or less zero attacks were observed. End of the footnote. 

(Of course the slime from the US military always explained the lack of attacks via 'beefed up security' and more of that bla bla bla talk. It is well known that USA economists don't understand their own economy and the same goes for the US military: They don't understand their own wars...) 

This time it is different: attacks on election day are allowed while as usual the advise is given to minimize civil deaths. It is far more important to reach a triple digit death toll for the military forces while elections for a puppet regime are not that important.

I hope I am clear and I wish the Afghan fighters good luck in staging attacks.
May be it is best if election day is just an average day, not more attacks and no less attacks. 

Graphic of today (for the US military: the number five refers to the five more coffins filled, I am sorry to make this explicit but after 8 years I know perfectly how stupid you folks are...): 

 

At last a CNN link confirming today's reported dead military slime:

At least 9 NATO troops killed in weekend fighting  

And the Ass Press makes this from the info available:

3 US troops killed in ambush; 9 NATO deaths in Aug 

From the last link this quote:

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also said he expects talks to help end the Afghan conflict. But Mullen said the time was not yet right for negotiations. 

Comment: Hey you fuckhead Mullen, do you understand your own war? Have you ever heard of the so called 'zero-one project' that maximized US death toll in Iraq?
Over 400 US slime dead in a 3 months time span and two years later the US military still does not have a single clue... Congratulations!
I bet you never heard of the 0-1 project, you are only one of the perfumed princes talking low level insights. You are a leader of shit, similar to Donald Rumsfeld.
By the way, do you want another decade of war? You can have it my dear fuckhead! 

Till updates. 

(01 Aug 2009) Two items:

Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update.
Item 2) Just a few links. 

 Item 1) The 24h Afghanistan update.

Both yesterday as today 4 coalition slime died in Operation Revenge the Twin Towers (oh, sorry, it is Operation Enduring Freedom). 

Based on the time frame 2002 - 2008, on average the August casualties were double compared to July while July 2009 has been the most deadly month for the entire war in Afghanistan.
July 2009 closed with 75 coalition slime killed, I don't expect this number will change.

If conditions are more or less the same this year, we might expect up to 150 coalition slime deaths in August. But lets not put the bar at unreasonable heights; any triple digit number will do...  

Here is the graphical stuff, above table is from yesterday and the lower from today: 

 

Item 2) Just a few links. 

EconomPic argues that the annualized USA Q2 gross domestic product likely is minus 2.3% instead of the reported minus 1%. Link:

Q2 GDP Closer to -2.3% Accounting for Revisions   

Barry arrives at a similar contraction but he leaves the changes in imports/exports out because the decline in imports is far bigger compared to the decline in exports. (Declining imports give rise to a higher GDP.) Link:

Falling Imports versus Falling Exports (GDP = -2.38%)

Yesterday the Bask separatists group ETA was formed 50 years ago, on the two days before that there were two attacks leaving dead two paramilitary police. I really don't cry for the dead Spanish police slime; in my house it is well known the Spanish police is very corrupted by drugs.
In Spain it is pretty standard that if you get caught with 50 kilo of high quality weeds, your courthouse documents will say it is only 35 or 40 kilo. Since your courthouse punishment is always related to the amount you smuggled, you will never say 'Dear judge, in fact it was 50 kilo'. Spain is a corrupted country on this detail, by far not as bad a Mexico but Spain definitely carries a lot of dirt.

ETA attack link (the file reads like a copy of the Indonesian hotel attacks; two bombs went of and a third did not):

Two Spain police killed by new bomb blamed on ETA   

The Indonesian attacks could have been claimed, I say 'could' have been claimed because a lot of observers think that some UK soccer team was the target. Since attacking sportsmen or sport events is 180 degrees against all what I wrote on target selection for al Qaida International, I only write 'could have been claimed'.  

'Al-Qaeda' blog claims bombing as Indonesia hotels re-open 

And there is some Telegraph file that states that Manchester United was 'the target' because 'as Christians' they are the enemy of Allah... I think some details are lost in translation & at the Telegraph they think soccer players are just as important targets as their salaries are high... Please smoke more weed my dear Telegraph. Link:

Indonesia hotel bombings: Manchester United football team 'was target' 

The Financial Times reports that Manchester United would only check in on the 18th of July, bombing was done on 17 July so how could they have been a target?
In short: The claim for the attacks could be true, but the emphasis on Manchester United is strange and weird for an al Qaida International affiliate. FT link:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f8529b8-7ca0-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0.html   

Musings on the US shadow housing inventory: Not only banks hold shadow inventory (stuff not placed on the housing market because prices could fall further by that and as such the banks shoot themselves in the feet).
About 12% of US home owners would like to sell their house if conditions were better... The poor Americans; foreclosures will only rise and rise while this 12% figure will too. Link:

"Shadow" inventory lurks over U.S. housing recovery 

That's it for today, till updates.  

(31 July 2009) Two items: 

Item 1) USA GDP growth versus total debt growth.
Item 2) The 72h Afghanistan update from yesterday. 

 Item 1) USA GDP growth versus total debt growth.

Today the 2009 Q2 USA gross domestic product estimate came out, only -1% annualized plus a lot of revisions. See for example (Bloomberg)

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show 

Lets compare GDP growth versus total debt growth. For the GDP we use chained dollars (chained dollars are without inflation chained to the year 2000):

2000 Q1 = 11,043.0 billion,
2009 Q2 = 12,892.4 billion or 16.75% in 8.25 years.

That is 1.9% real GDP growth a year.
Remark that total profits of the US economy will grow more or less like the GDP grows. (Source: bea dot gov, chained dollars)

Now for total debt levels:

Begin 2000 = 17305.0 billion,
End 2009 Q1 = 33931.9 billion or 96.08% in 9.25 years.

That is 7.55% a year. So debt growth is about four times the real GDP growth.
Remark that this 34 trillion in debt needs to be serviced from the total profits of the US economy, this is simply not possible...
(Source: FED Z1 flow of funds d3.htm

Item 2) The 72h Afghanistan update from yesterday. 

Although I was away a few days there were only 2 more military deaths reported.
Of course the monthly totals can change a bit, but we had over 70 coalition deaths this month (Reuters):

U.S. soldier killed as deadliest Afghan month closes 

The picture below contains yesterdays screenshot, today 4 more deaths were reported. 

 

Till updates. 

(27 July 2009) I won't update for a few days, so this is the last 24h Afghanistan update.

Two more UK folks got killed, one 'whilst on foot patrol' and the other 'whilst on vehicle patrol'. Could happen... (MoD release)

In the Afghan drug trade I found the next unbelievable quote (NYT source):

One short-term solution being urged by senior Defense Department and military officials would be to pay Afghan farmers not to plant poppies in the next growing season.  

Comment: After 7 or 8 years the Western forces still haven't figured out that illegal opium can only be replaced by legal opium.
This all is a ridiculous circus: In 8 years time zero realistic replacement plants have been observed.  

Lets proceed with:

 

And, just like yesterday: 

 

 

Till updates. 

(26 July 2009) Only a link & the 24h Afghanistan update.

Link: 

I see burning water run uphill with this next Bloomberg file:

Accountants Gain Courage to Stand Up to Bankers  

Just a quote: 

The FASB’s approach is tougher on banks than the path taken by the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, which last week issued a proposal that would let companies continue carrying many financial assets at historical cost, including loans and debt securities. 

Comment: No comment, the article speaks for itself. 

__________________________ 

The 24h Afghanistan update (that is 24 hours late by the way):

Yesterday 2 British reported dead, today an attack on Italians but no dead reported.
So it was a kinda boring day...

 

From the above 'thing with 2' via a few mouse clicks you can make the next picture, but is that art?

 

Of course it is not art you silly!

Till updates.

(24 July 2009) A short Indonesia hotel attacks update + the 24h Afghanistan watch.

After a full week still no responsibility has been claimed, so this gets more interesting by the day. The lack of responsibility creates a void and the void is filled with speculation and educated guesses.

A nice read is written by Stephen Coates (Asia One news), link:

Indonesia attacks: random carnage or surgical strike?   

Funny quote:

Analysts have been puzzling over why the Marriott bomber, whom police believe was as young as 16, descended from his room on the 18th floor to the lobby and walked straight into the small meeting room rather than the closer and more crowded main restaurant.

"In this case they penetrated the hotel and reached the heart of their target," Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna told AFP.  

Comment: No comment beside this; Info on the two Dutch killed is amazingly sparse. Why this is I don't know, or may I do know but prefer to keep the mouth shut...  

 __________________________

In Afghanistan another 2 US slime got killed today, for the Pentagon boys & girlz: That explains the use of the '2' in: 

 

 

Till updates. 

(23 July 2009) Just a few links + some bla bla talk of me.

Like expected the DOW tested 9000 today, for me this is good proof the FED is flooding liquidity again with their ZIRP stuff. This also means the only thing keeping consumer inflation low is the under utilization of the productive part of the economy.  

The 'Media reason' for this climb was the increase in sales in existing US homes; the financial press still hasn't figured out housing has strong seasonal components.
Stating that sold volumes are on the rise month on month is about the same level of stating more apples are ripe in October compared to August. 

U.S. existing home sales rise in sign sector healing (Reuters.)

In this world there is never ever a shortage of fools (Tech Ticker): 

Dow 15,000, Here We Come: Stocks Going to New Highs, Lemonides Says 

It is important to understand why people that are clever tell foolish words like the DOW going to 15 thousand or so.
That is because they are inside a very complicated system that has a 375% debt to GDP ratio. The debt levels simply keep on growing much faster compared to profit growth, this credit crisis is still a fake (the real one still has to strike).  

Total Credit market Debt as a % of US GDP 

Financial Profits and Rising Debt Era (Barry) 

William C. Wheaton is explaining via reasoning along the supply side that US housing will bottom out soon. He forgets important 'supply side' factors like the shadow inventory (no one has a clue about the size) and the fact 30% of US houses is without a mortgage so all that mortgage debt is concentrated in the other 70% of houses.
Needless to say, foreclosures will only rise...

How far will US home prices fall? (VOX) 

Did you know that at the Bank for International Settlements (the Central Bankers Club) in Basel they have economists? And even chief economists?
Dumb as I am I always thought they went there to party...
But serious, the next is a nice but long read about William White

THE MAN NOBODY WANTED TO HEAR (Der Spiegel) 

And last but not least; only one American killed today in Afghanistan, a pity. Amen.  

 

Till updates. 

(22 July 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) Nice 24h update from Afghanistan. 

 Item 1) Nice 24h update from Afghanistan. 

This item is about, as you might have guessed, a nice 24h update from Afghanistan. Only 24hrs back we observed 59 killed coalition slime in Afghanistan, now it is 62!

 

Today some Dutch Media outlet reported that the month of July was the most deadly in the entire war in Afghanistan.

They forgot to mention that for every year since 2001, August always had more coffins filled.  

Till updates. 

(21 July 2009) Only one item:

Item 1) Nice 24h update from Afghanistan. 

 Item 1) Nice 24h update from Afghanistan. 

This item is about, as you might have guessed, a nice 24h update from Afghanistan. Only 24hrs back we observed 52 killed coalition slime in Afghanistan, now it is 59!

What a difference a day makes...

 

Till updates. 

(20 July 2009) Five items:

Item 1) More evidence the moon landing was in fact a hoax...
Item 2) Two bombed hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Item 3) Total dead US slime in Afghanistan & Iraq stands over 5000.
Item 4) The news from 1930.
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) More evidence the moon landing was in fact a hoax...

It was 40 years ago today... Man oh man I am getting old!
I remember sitting at the right of my parents black & white television and my father tells me to keep my mouth shut because 'they are landing on the moon'. 

There are still groups that think it was a faked; a giant hoax, filmed in the desert or inside a big movie studio. (Just like AIDS is a military invention to kill blacks and gays & the World Trade Towers came down via remote controlled air craft and controlled explosions.)  

It is not that difficult to find some clues it is all a hoax:

Just study the US health care system and ask yourself if such a nation could have put a man on the moon 40 years ago.   

(Ok ok, may be that kind of reasoning is not very valid because you can also start with USA military techno and work back 40 years...) 

Item 2) Two bombed hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Three days back luxury hotels the Ritz & the Marriott got bombed, until now there are no claims of responsibility observed.

A lot of Media attention goes to Mr. Noordin Top; if only half about what is claimed about him is true, he definitely is a remarkable guy. Just a source file:

Bomb mastermind Noordin Top may have checked into Marriott 

After 3 days it was confirmed 2 Dutch were among the 9 dead, it was told identification was very difficult so the Dutch couple must have been close to the bomb. 

For the time being I cannot comment very much on this attack (see for example what I wrote on 29 June below) so we wait and see...

Item 3) Total dead US slime in Afghanistan & Iraq stands over 5000.

A few weeks back I was stupid enough to think that total US military death in Iraq & Afghanistan stood at 4950. Dumb as I was I did not check the usual source and as for today total US military deaths:

War on terror; US mil death until now.
Theater of operations # dead US slime
Afghanistan 742
Iraq 4327
Total 5069

So I was dumb (or late) with checking total dead slime, on the other hand now I find it stands at 5069 the news could have been worse...;) 

In the table below you can see how big this spike in Afghanistan is (all coalition countries together): 

 

That's an amazing upswing! Congratulations my dear Afghanis! 

Item 4) The news from 1930.

Just a link to assorted Media headlines from the corresponding day back in 1930: 

http://newsfrom1930.blogspot.com/  

Item 5) The empty item.  

Lets fill the empty item with some empty wallet: 

Biden: U.S. Must 'Spend' to Avoid Bankruptcy 

Till updates. 

(16 July 2009) Only fun stuff today!

Today we ponder the question about who or what kills most Americans.
Of course when it comes to killing Americans all normal people instantly get a smile on their face, that's normal. I too like it when Americans die, the slower the better & the more pain and suffering the better! 

To keep it simple you can choose from three categories:

What kills most Americans? 

Cat 1: The evil al Qaida network, or
Cat 2: Investment bank Goldman Sucks, or
Cat 3: The wonderful health care system they have over there. 

For category 1 I will post no links because total still stands below 10 thousand well deserved filled coffins. It is a pity it is still that low, on the other hand the al Qaida scare preserves the 'American way of life' and that detail does wonderful things for category 2 and 3.

Real funny in category 2 is a YouTube vid as found at ZeroHegde, link:

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/max-keiser-goldman-sachs-are-scum.html  

The direct YouTube link: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwWy4E6I04&feature=player_embedded  

To be honest I never thought about the number of people that die because the Goldman Sachs folks suck such a lot of money out of the system. The Goldman Sucks folks use that money to buy expensive cars, high quality chocolate, expensive whiskey & of course a lot of political donations but all in all that kind of luxury economy does not bring much benefit to the rest of the US society.
Lets say the skew wealth and income distributions gets about 100 thousand Americans killed every year. (It's just a rough estimate based on nothing.)
Compared to al Qaida they are much better, but it is still peanuts compared to Cat 3.
(Never forget: The Americans are always very willing to pay such a Goldman price because that is 'the American way'.) 

Category 3 is the best; Healthcare the American way!
How they ever created a healthcare system like that is far beyond my knowledge, if you tie health care insurance to employment you only get what you deserve.

For example, quote 1:

Average monthly COBRA payments for a family typically exceed $1,000, while the average monthly unemployment insurance payment, calculated from weekly average payments, is $1,425.15.   

Comment: This is soo much better compared to anything al Qaida could do...  

For example, quote 2:

Sham plans, or “fake” insurance The National Association of Health Underwriters warns that rising price tags on health insurance has paved the way for the creation of more sham plans, often which offer lower cost and coverage than the market standard. These plans, it says, are “created to look like authorized health insurance plans but are never intended to pay benefits or abide by state insurance laws.” 

Comment: Once more we observe the benefits of 'deregulation', in my home base nation we also have health care problems; they are known as the 'waiting lists'.
Yet selling fake health care insurance is many lightyears away from the problems we have.
It is a clear signal of an entire nation in disarray; fake health care insurance...
I love it; it gives Americans what they deserve!

And in order to kick ass, what about quote 3:

High out-of-pocket costs The New York Times recently profiled a couple whose health insurance provided for $150,000 a month in “hospital coverage,” but excluded nearly all the routine care that hospital patients typically receive such as tests, medication, and operating room care, essentially meaning that the insurer treated hospital stays like hotel visits, covering room and board but very little treatment. In the Harvard study on medical bankruptcy, the average out-of-pocket medical costs incurred with those who had private health insurance was close to $18,000.    

Comment: What can I say? It is so many lightyears away from European practices we can only conclude that Americans deserve this kind of stuff.
That whole of America is just one big fake, it is a fake nation, at best a paper tiger.

Sources:

Insured ... and broke (Economic Policy Institute.)
Over 60 Percent of All US Bankruptcies Linked to Medical Problems (Cambridge.)   

Weighing all in all:

I love the amount of suffering the fake US health care system gives to their own population, the suffering of this blatant stupidity is huge. This USA nation is clearly not a world leader when it comes to basic stuff like health care, the USA is only a collection of weird stuff sucking out the savings of the rest of the world.

(My advice, as usual in the last 8 years of this website; Kill that nation because humanity as a whole is/are better of without them.) 

Till updates. 

(15 July 2009) Two items:

Item 1) And the Joseph Goebbels prize for war propaganda goes to...
Item 2) The math of Paul Krugman. 

Item 1) And the Joseph Goebbels prize for war propaganda goes to...

Today an interesting report came out about Israeli war crimes committed a few months ago, it contains stuff like using Palestinians as human shield, bombing houses without any kind of military need and of course the use of white phosphorous in densely populated area's.  

I have not read the report because I did not have time but lets recall a few details from just a few months ago:

--About 1300 to 1400 hundred dead Palestinians, on the Israeli side about 13 deaths. That gives a ratio of 1:100 and this ratio is ten times as big as comparable ratio's as we have from the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the Warsaw ghetto uprising 10 Jews died for every German soldier.
--About 55 thousand Palestine houses destroyed, zero on the Israeli side.
--And the white phosphorous bombs had widespread use, as far as I could see it the Israelis have 'clusterbombed' this kind of weapon & any fool could see it was not used in accordance of the very limited international rules we have for stuff like that.  

A few quotes from this CNN file:

"In some cases a civilian would be forced to walk in front of soldier while the soldier places his gun barrel on the civilian's shoulder," the report states.  

Comment: No comment. 

Phosphorus shells can be used to create a smokescreen for troops. In creating the diversion, the element ignites when exposed to oxygen and can cause severe burns. International law calls on militaries to limit the use white phosphorus in civilian areas.

Comment: Worldwide armies love this stuff because a white phosphorous grenade of just a few hundred grams produces an awful lot of smokescreen smoke. From a military point of view such weapons make sense because infantry can use this in a meaningful way in war as it was fought, for example, in the Vietnamese war.
The Israelis made it artillery fun and may be air fighter fun; when used inside civil area's it is simply a war crime.    

_____

Now who has won the Joseph Goebbels prize for the best war propaganda?

With head and shoulders above all her peers it is the Livni lady that compared pictures of wounded and killed Palestine children to pornography.

When it comes to dead corpses from Jews or children from the holocaust you never hear the Israelis complain about pornography, on the contrary these pictures are always used in order to validate the right of existence of Israel.
But when we see Palestinian kids without arms or legs it is suddenly 'pornography'.

 

At last I am not going to post a bunch of maimed Palestine children. I only speak out my amazement of the support our European political leaders give to Israel. 

Why should we support another apartheid regime committing war crimes? 

I only wonder... 

Item 2) The math of Paul Krugman.  

A few days back I challenged Paul Krugman to cough up some validation about why running giant deficits would save the US economy in the long run.

More precise I asked for a theory that insures that every borrowed government dollar today would give at least one dollar in future tax income for the US government.  

My problem with the US economy is very very simple:

Debt levels are so high on all levels of the US economy and in all sectors that the interest obligations always outstrip the total profits of that level or sector of the economy. If interest obligations are larger compared to your profits you will hit the wall.  

It's as simple as it is Paul... 

I also informed my honored audience with the fact that Paul is rather lousy in math... 

The honored audience can check for herself who is in the right in the long run by looking at some math from Paul.  

In the next graph from Paul it is very important to understand the reasoning behind it, as usual the concept of 'default on debt' is not there. Here is Paul's math:

 

The source file is:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/deficits-saved-the-world/    

Again: It is important to study the reasoning behind it because in case Paul is in the right the USA will be the dominate military for the next decades and in case my simple minded vision about debt levels is the main scenario, the fucking US military will loose her dominance. 

And please don't get fooled: Public sector deficit is at a record level right now so we are at the very right side in the graph of Paul Krugman.  

Till updates. 

(14 July 2009) Only two items with only one link in it. I am sorry because a good and comprehensive update would need at least 12 to 15 links but I am lazy & you have to find the missing links for yourself. 

Item 1) Whatever happened to Basel II?
Item 2) More on Goldman Sucks. 

Item 1) Whatever happened to Basel II?

For years it has been in the making and 2009 was supposed to be the year of implementation of the Basel II accords so banks would become more transparent and we were promised parts of the shadow bank system would come to light.

It is now the second half of this year 2009 and I have observed zero point zero information on this detail in the first half of this year.

It is well known that Central bankers are very good in hiding the fragile parts of the financial system, you must not view this as some 'evil thing' but as something that comes naturally with running fiat money systems.

Under the Basel II accords, plans were to include some of the balance fun in the shadow bank system (the 'off balance' items of our beloved banks). This all does not materialize and we ponder the question: Have the Central bankers something to hide? 

Or do you think Central bankers are always strait shooters?

Just an easy example from my own country:

For months our Dutch Central bank knew about problems in Iceland, yet they never warned the public because that would 'trigger' the problems in Iceland.
As a consequence the bill for Dutch tax payers was much higher, this all with thanks to our local Central bank and Dutch Central banker Nout Wellink.

So when stuff gets serious, Central bankers keep their mouth shut.

Does the same go for the Basel II accords?

Central bankers only keep their mouth shut because a lot of the toxic waste is concentrated in the shadow bank system and as such outside official bank reporting.

My guess is; it looks that way. 

In case you as a reader don't have a clue what shadow banking is, you can read the next file (found via Barry):

Shadow Banking: What It Is, How it Broke, and How to Fix It 

Shadow banking was encouraged in the USA although I don't know if it originated there. It is more or less a way to get cheaper credit, inside a fiat money system cheap credit is a powerful thing; it easily explodes the whole thing because our human brain is not wired for fiat money. 

From a history point of view shadow banking is about the same as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; cheap mortgages only blow up house prices. 

Item 2) More on Goldman Sucks.  

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank with the smartest folks on board is what common folklore tells us. Is it true? Is it the best and smartest of what investment banking has to offer? 

Or are they collectively just a bunch of suckers, only good at sucking out dead corpses? 

Since I am always eager to learn more from really smart people, lately I did read some news about how Goldman Sucks changed her so called 'Value at Risk' or the VaR model banks use.
I was not impressed, any idiot can come up with the fact that small caps on the S&P 500 are not liquid when the entire markets go down down down. They had more of that commonsense that even my granny could have pumped up if she would be alive.

So what explains the large profits they posted today?  

Is it the giant selling of US government bonds (GS is a primary dealer)?
Is it because on average they are so smart? 

If they are so smart, why is there no hedge fund out there repeating profits like this? 

Make up your own mind: I think it is mostly front running on a large scale.
If your mind thinks otherways, good luck with it. 

End of this update. 

Till updates. 

(13 July 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Were last weeks cyber attacks coming from North Korea?
Item 2) What's a Supplemental Liquidity Provider? Is Goldman Sucks one?
Item 3) More fun on banks.
Item 4) Arguments against a bankslaughter law.
Item 5) The empty item.  

Item 1) Were last weeks cyber attacks coming from North Korea?

Last week there were some cyber attacks (a distributed denial of service from a bot network they say) in South Korea and the US of A.  

The South Koreans blamed the North Koreans, the US of A did not blame anyone and even denied to confirm websites like those from the White House were part of the dds attack too. 

I don't have a clue if it was North Korea or a distributed club of computer hobbyists that wanted some fun.  

Now scroll down please to the 4th of July update:

If everything is ok you see two pictures:

--On the first you see a screenshot of a North Korean beer commercial.
--On the second you see a pint of beer I brewed myself + some blackberries from my garden.   

For pictures I mostly use the jpg file format, you can make them sleek and slender so even deep inside Africa you still have reasonable download speed of this page. 

A few days later I remarked that the picture from my own beer did not display right; that's strange, after 8 years of always the same work procedure this time the picture did not display at all. 

Removing the picture from the server and uploading it again also did not help, so instead of a jpg I turned it into a png file (almost 500 kB instead of 88 kB) and this time it was properly to see.

So I don't know, lets try the old jpg once more:  

 

If the above is still a blank, my mind is too. (But hey you don't hear me complaining, anything is better compared to those nasty cyber attacks that wipe out all files five directory layers deep within one second. I had stuff like that and that's definitely not coming from the NK but with a high degree of likelihood from the USA cowboys.)  

Item 2) What's a Supplemental Liquidity Provider? Is Goldman Sucks one?  

The story of the stolen Goldman Sachs source code doesn't have much follow up the last days while after my humble opinion a source code that could disrupt markets is a highly interesting thing. 

A long time ago I have complained a few times about automated trade; robot trading is up to 50% of all transactions on for example the NYSE and as usual it's completely unregulated, there is zero point zero oversight and nobody knows exactly what is going on.  

On Barry's hangout was found the next (King report source):

For the past several years Street operators have assumed that the computer jockeys who were being employed by proprietary trading departments on The Street were developing algorithms that would find other algorithms that represented buyside orders so prop desks could trade against those orders.

Another trading prop that has been occurring for years is certain firms feed their electronic trading systems into prop desks so traders can see in real time money flows into and out of stocks and groups.

However recent revelations are forcing the Street to consider the possibility of automated front-running on an unfathomable scale. The two ‘front-running’ issues are: 1) ‘queuing’ [of orders] – finding orders loaded into a system, particularly limit orders, and trading against them; and 2) ‘latency’ – discovering and then front-running electronic orders or a penny or more by exploding the latency or lag in execution.

Comment: Lets first correct the latest words from the quote, it likely should read:

discovering and then front-running electronic orders at a penny or more by exploiting the latency or lag in execution. 

For the rest I have no comment, it could very well be true because the judiciary in the USA works very simple: as long as it is not explicitly forbidden, it is allowed.  

And since it is allowed, stock exchanges like the NYSE do this.  

If you still think that for every stock sold there is a buyer and vice versa, let me wash your ears with the next utterly bizarre quote:

Exchanges will pay firms ¼ of a penny if they ‘provide liquidity’ when an order appears in their system. This is extra incentive to front run order flow… Theoretically a firm could ‘scratch’ all day and profit. The NYSE Euronext (Oct.24, 2008): A newly announced pilot program will establish Supplemental Liquidity Providers (SLPs), a new class of upstairs, electronic, high-volume members incented to add liquidity on the NYSE.

The program will reward aggressive liquidity suppliers, who will complement and add competition to existing quote providers.  

Comment: So far for the fairy tale that for every seller there is a buyer; when you sell or buy stocks you only trade against the margin of a 'Supplemental Liquidity Provider'. Needless to say the SLP has a complete insight in the order book of a particular stock; they can see all buy and sell orders if the article is correct.
And if they can see all buy & sell orders on a particular stock like Goldman Sucks, do you understand how much more info the SLP's have?
In the USA anything goes, just anything as long as it is not explicit forbidden... 

One quote more for the road:

When a firm has an 87.5% trading accuracy record, something unnatural is occurring. And we wonder why the buy side has been so docile and malleable when the money is being derived from them! 

Comment: Of course the buy side is docile, don't forget the buy side is mostly Americans and Americans worship the rich. Goldman Sucks is rich and as such has the right to be worshipped.

Further funny reading (Bloomberg)

Ex-Goldman Programmer Described Code Downloads to FBI (Update1)   

Item 3) More fun on banks.

Some time ago I did hold the US chick Meredith Whitney in some kind of esteem that was higher compared to other US chicks & dudes.

Little problem: chick Meredith now thinks that solvency of US banks is no longer a problem because accountancy rule 157 is no longer with us.

So chick Meredith is now downgraded to whore Meredith.  

Solvency of US banks no longer an issue? My dear whore Meredith, accountancy gimmicks that suddenly make an entire industry becoming solvent again only raises questions about the solvency of the Federal parts of the USA.

It might have slipped the attention of your wonderful mind, but all in all debt levels are still growing like they used to; only a nation that is insolvent can come up with accountancy gimmicks like scrapping rule 157. That is the main flaw in your analysis & I won't forgive you: From now on you are 'whore' Meredith.

Check the stuff from whore Meredith out at 8.58 minutes of the first video in this link:   

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/07/is-meredith-whitney-bullish-now.html  

Item 4) Arguments against a bankslaughter law.

When bankers or Central bankers behave irresponsible and blow up a few banks or the military might of entire nations (like the Greenspan idiot), they always come away with it. 

But when you replace 'Bank company' with 'Water company' or 'Milk company' or 'Fireworks company' it is all very different: water, milk and firework CEO's easily find themselves in front of court if they sell poison water, milk, or fireworks that have malfunction.

When it comes to banking, no such restrictions are there: In the first place laws and regulations are such nobody understands them and in the second place there is some weird need to worship bankers because nobody understands exactly what they do.
Trust me: Even the bankers themselves have no clue what they do.

I myself am very much in favor to courthouse cases against idiots that blow up banks that are vital for the entire system, I also know this will not happen because at the courthouses they are far too dumb to deal with bankers. Bringing in the expertise is also impossible because folks with brains usually don't like to work for those kind of institutions.

The most dumb arguments against bankslaughter laws are found with this (source):

"In the first place, Collier doesn't seem to have given much thought to the costs of over-deterrence. Bank executives faced with the prospect of a criminal investigation and possible conviction would likely be overly cautious. We'd lose a lot of socially beneficially risk taking by criminalizing bank failure. 



There's also a serious fairness issue. Only those executives whose risky bets blow up get investigated, prosecuted and punished. Those whose bets pay off are untouched. This means that being unlucky in the markets becomes a criminal matter. Criminality becomes a kind of lottery." 

Comment: Come on people, what goes for water and milk companies also goes for banks. As far as I know reality, no milk man has ever been before court because he was unlucky in the markets... 

Item 5) The empty item.   

The empty item is always here so you can use your own brain. 

If it is not empty enough you can see the US Federal deficit for the month of June: Only minus 94.4 billion or about 300 US$ for every citizen for just one month of government work... 

You never hear the Geithner thingeling on statistics like that when he is abroad explaining 'the US dollar is safe'. 
Oops: On the currency markets there is also front running so the US$ is always 'strong enough'... You never hear the Geither thing upon that.

Till updates. 

(08 July 2009) Today a new entry to the Nightmare files (about the incompetent IMF predictions on global and local economical growth that came out today).

And, with an amazing speed, in the Chinese ethnic troubles all murderers simply get a death penalty. (Dutch source file: Iedere moordenaar krijgt de doodstraf )
Death penalty is regardless of ethnic background, so
Uighur or Han Chinese, all killers get the death penalty.

I have to say this brings some relief to my mind, I wish the Chinese government luck & wisdom in keeping ethnic troubles at a minimum.

Till updates.  

(07 July 2009) Only a few links + my usual bla bla talk. Here we go:

This morning Dutch business channel RTL7 reported that Bloomberg reported that mortgage insurer PMI Group reported that US house prices would bottom out only in Q1 2011!
And that is supposed to be 'news'??? After my humble opinion for at least a month or six I am telling US house prices bottom out at the end of 2011.
(Bloomberg files this under Personal Finance, from this we can conclude PMI sells mortgage insurance at the household level to individual house owners.) 
Check the stuff out at Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=aWJ1aTFKp35E   

The Goldman Sucks source code theft takes a new detail: The Goldman programmer is bailed out for 750 thousand US bucks. What do you think of the bailout practices in the USA? Is the law equal for the rich versus the poor?
When you walk out after a few days (meaning you can pay for your bailout) the simple minded public thinks you are innocent, when you cannot pay you stay in jail much longer. Beside this outside of jail you can work on your defense much better compared to the poor guy that stays in jail.
Make up your mind: Does the USA worship the rich yes or no?
Check the Goldman Sucks details in:

Ex-Goldman programmer out on bail in theft case   

A few weeks ago I explained that a full blown civil war inside China could lead easily to up to 50 million deaths making it comparable to World War II in absolute death toll.
A short time back there was some fighting in a factory resulting in 2 dead Uighurs, after that a demonstration that started peacefully ended in over 150 dead Uighurs (they are mostly Muslims by the way).
And today the Han Chinese mobs tried to make good revenge but they only got tear gassed.
Conclusion: The Chinese government is full throttle towards chaos.
Why kill Uighurs and only tear gas the friendly Han?
Bloomberg source:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axMWjrga0LnI   

Remember combatant enemy Dubya and his vice pres Dick Cheney?
Cheney is the idiot that is famous for stating 'deficits' don't matter and indeed now the USA is into a situation where one more trillion of Federal borrowed or printed money indeed doesn't matter at all.
I moved earth, heaven and hell to get the idiot Dubya reelected a second term. It all panned out fine, may be the Almighty was on my side or may be it was the other way around.
One more for the road: here is an old file saying the 'deficits don't matter' crap from the Cheney crap:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_52/b3914021_mz007.htm   

Just a laugh at how Goldman Sucks views 'fat tail risk' these days:

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/06/24/58871/on-goldmans-fat-tail-risk/   

In case you are completely bored with all that old Michael Jackson stuff, why not enjoy some better music? I could post hundreds of better music, but selected is something from a guy I never heard from before, his (artist) name is Peter Fox: 

 

Till updates. 

(06 July 2009) Wow, five items! Why not only two? (Answer: I needed to offload some tabs in my browser.)

Item 1) Quants here quants there.
Item 2) FED senior economist: USA lurching towards debt explosion?
Item 3) Honorable judge: These bankers are guilty of bankslaughter.
Item 4) Paul Krugman: More stimulus needed, just trust me because...
Item 5) The empty item. 

Item 1) Quants here quants there.

What's a quant? I don't know exactly but it is someone coming from a honorable study like Quantum Physics working for the financial industry creating 'financial innovation'.

You can also argue that quants build the first atom bombs before that became a specialty in itself. More general you can say quants come from a real academic study like physics, math, chemical studies and later work for a bunch of idiots with too much cash on their hands.

Two links to quant stuff, link number one:

Revenge of the Nerd (a four page newsweek file). Quote from page 3: 

The optimist in Wilmott thinks that people realize these models don't work. But he's not really an optimist. "What I think is going to happen is that people will forget and we'll just keep going on the way we have been with nothing really changing," he says. Wilmott is encouraged by President Obama's proposals to tighten regulation of derivatives; he thinks it'll keep quants on a shorter leash. But he's also stunned by the lack of outrage over the financial mess. The violence that erupted at this year's G20 summit wasn't anywhere near what he thought it should've been. "Where the hell was everybody? If people aren't angry now, they'll never be."

Comment: Of course people are not angry, they don't understand the troubles and to them it is like a curse of nature. Their pensions might vaporize but like the sheep they are they don't kill in return.
For example nobody has asked for the execution of Alan Greenspan and or Jean Claude Trichet. The populace, or the sheeple, they just do not understand... 

Link number two: 

Is A Case Of Quant Trading Sabotage About To Destroy Goldman Sachs? 

The link above is quant stuff in a pure form, stuff like high frequency trading and trying to get an advantage on the nano second.

It might be yes or no some evil guy has stolen computer source code from Goldman Sucks. The story might be true, I don't care if it is or not.
All I know that I consider Goldman a bunch of suckers.  

The story is a nice read, but what counts is that up to 50% of all trades on the New York Stock Exchange are automated trades. Welcome to the robot world; if you want to make some money as a human trader you must understand the robots because the robots don't understand fundamental analysis. 

On the contrary; robot trading is constantly used to prop up the USA stock markets leaving the rest of the world constantly wondering why those markets go up up up at very strange times on very bad news. 

Item 2) FED senior economist: USA lurching towards debt explosion?

The UK Telegraph has some simple article about how the USA will be torn apart under her debt weight she could easily suck in because of her reserve currency status.

Link:

US lurching towards 'debt explosion' with long-term interest rates on course to double   

Quote:

Mr Congdon said the study illustrated the “horrifying” consequences for leading western economies of bailing out their banks and attempting to stimulate markets by cutting taxes and boosting public spending. He said the markets had failed to digest fully the scale of fiscal largesse and said “current gilt yields [public debt] are extraordinary low given the size of deficits”.  

Comment: We observe exactly the same problem as in the item above: The markets just don't understand and they are too stupid to price US Federal debt at the right price.
Right now the USA Federal budget is about 50% borrowed money, there is no theory that explains every Federal borrowed dollar now will generate at least one dollar in the future.
But dumb idiots hold on to a dogma from many decades ago: USA Federal bonds are a safe investment.

I can't help it; if they want to loose their money it is fine by me.

 

Item 3) Honorable judge: These bankers are guilty of bankslaughter.

Do bankers and Central bankers come away with their crimes because we lack the lexicon? A guy named Paul Collier argues that way and he is very convincing.

When I drive irresponsibly in traffic and a busload of people die there are always prosecutors going for manslaughter (no intend to kill but the irresponsible behavior was so bad that it was logical people could die).  

When I go out on the street to buy some milk and vegetables and I meet an old enemy, we get into some argument and a few seconds later one of us is dead. Again manslaughter is the courthouse thing. 

Yet when bankers and Central bankers blow up the thing, there is no equivalent like bankslaughter.

Link:  

A law to tame wild bankers 

Item 4) Paul Krugman: More stimulus needed, just trust me because...

My vision on rewarding Nobel prizes for economics is very simple:

This is only some incest clique shoving the prize hin und her inside their incest clique.  

It has nothing to do with building economical theory that helps humanity as a whole, it mostly serves the USA economy and if we wait another decade we can see who is more on the right:

Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman or moi, Reinko Venema.

What's the case?

Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman thinks the present US economical stimulus package of $787 billion price tag is inadequate to lift the country out of recession. 

So Paul, as the fake economist you are, I challenge you on the size of the 'stimulus needed'.

All you have to do is craft a clear cut theory that explains every extra Federal borrowed dollar today will create at least one extra dollar in tax revenues in the future.   

If you can do that Paul you deserve at least 10 more Nobel prizes! 

I think the 'marginal tax return' on present US Federal borrowing is negative (meaning it costs more than future tax returns will give back).  

It is well known Paul is bad at math and good at speaking words, I don't buy your stuff Paul. Please give the Quants what the Quants need: 

A solid theory to back up your crap. 

Item 5) The empty item.  

Empty empty empty, the empty item is always there so you can fill it up for yourself. 

 

 

 

 

Till updates. 

(04 July 2009) The weather was lovely today & North Korea (test) fired seven medium range missiles (Bloomberg source). Lets enjoy the weekend and the weather with a positive note:

After North Korea tested another nuclear bomb some weeks ago, I wrote that there would be ramifications. Ramifications in the sense of new branches in diplomatic / political / military thinking & acting.

Yesterday the journo's from the local business channel found a North Korean commercial for beer. They said it was the first beer commercial ever in North Korea and although it has nothing to do with military or political thinking, you could classify this as some ramification. 

Link: 

http://www.rtlz.nl/miMedia/2009/week27/vr_1100_bierfilmpje.avi_plain.xml 

At RTL7 they did not have the entire clip, luckily on YouTube we have the 2.45 minute long thing:

 

So I felt the hefty desire to photograph my own beer; below you see a white beer with 10% of smoked malts and without the usual herbs for white beer. 

It tastes perfect. (In the background you see a few blackberries, although the Summer is just a few weeks old you can eat them already.)  

 

Before we close this update, two links on US debt. One very simple and one that exploits future scenario's under GAAP.  

MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising debt may be next crisis (the simple version, for example for bankers or political folks) &

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/06/means-of-deficit-reduction-medicare-and.html (for normal folks)

From the last article an important quote is placed, very often you see people doing difficult on the television explaining more US Federal debt is a good thing. They always forget to mention the so called 'quality of the deficit'. Quote:

The U.S. government reports its accounts on a cash basis. That means it matches the cash that comes in the door against bills it must pay in that current year. This is how small businesses run their accounts.  

Comment: Lately there was some talk about 2016 and that was important and so because Medicare outlays would be larger compared to money received. Most people think there is no problem because prior to 2016 there were decades of Medicare surpluses...
Little problem: These surpluses are gone and not inside the official deficit, why do the so called 'analysts' always forget that? 

Till updates. 

(30 June 2009) Two items:

Item 1) Ben Bernanke the new bubble blower in chief?
Item 2) More on the fucking police here in Groningen. 

 Item 1) Ben Bernanke the new bubble blower in chief?

Without offering any kind of proof; P/E ratio's for the US stock market are about the same as they were on the 2007 high. 

A few weeks after the 2007 high I did a second activation of the NightmareOnWallStreet, it took some time but eventually the DOW was cut in half from 14000 to 7000.

You might think the USA folks have learned their lessons on the P/E ratio's but this is not the case and we wonder why.

To focus the brain, here is a screen shot of market behavior that is so commonplace lately: without any news or against all negative news the US stock markets only climb:

   

It only climbs without any reason; it is well known that large parts of money like pension fund money is still sitting on the sidelines. So where is all this new money coming from? 

Is it the US Federal Reserve with her zero interest policy?

Having P/E ratio's like this, what other party has the power of prop up the markets like this & it makes you wonder: will they ever learn it over there in the USA?

Please remark that the FED interest rates have to be defended on a daily basis; only when the FED is overflooding the markets with 'enough liquidity' short term interest rates can stay that low.

All in all the DOW Jones levels look like another bubble so Ben Bernanke is doing exactly that what made Alan Greenspan famous.

Don't get me wrong: I applaud this bubble. I know that if the USA tries to get back to the interest rates a healthy economy needs that in just a short timespan the entire nation would go bankrupt.

So there is nothing new under the sun: bubble bubble bubble & without the bubbles and the printing of money the military hegemony will vaporize like an eskimo in the sahara. 

Item 2) More on the fucking police here in Groningen. 

I have been thinking about the latest fantasies of the local police as if I was some kind of drug dealer, how they arrive at stuff like that is easy to understand:

The Dutch nation needs a Madrid size of bombing, only after that the local police will stop her strange ways of thinking. 

I cannot organize stuff like that for myself; without doubt my phone is tapped, email always read by persons of limited brain capacity & so on & so on.

My dear local police: since the year 2001 you are highly interested in me while I am not interested in you. I am sorry that when the Muslims tried to kill me prior to the 911 attacks in America, I did not call for your help.

Don't you still get it? Prior to 09 Sept 2001 I already considered you a bunch of shitheads and now in 2009 (and all the years in between) there is only more validation of that.

Don't you remember Theo van Gogh? Theo was also very good in insulting Muslims, please remark Theo is dead for years and I am still alive. Theo deserved his killing, he thought that hanging out the clown would save him from what he deserved.

Did I act like the clown Theo van Gogh?

Of course not, on the contrary I explained to the thing known as 'international terrorism' what kind of attacks are helpful and what not.  

As a result (just an example) I explained I had lack of insight about what would happen if terror strikes just before elections. A few months later we had the Madrid bombings, only 200 deaths and about a thousand wounded & or handicapped. 

Even on the 'doctors attack' in Great Brittany I can tell you a nice story with a lot of deep knowledge in it.

How do the fuckheads of the local police react?

After so many years now in 2009 they only investigate if I am some kind of drug dealer...

I think I smell coffins...

Till updates. 

(29 June 2009) Today I am in a good mood, yeah yeah a very good mood. In a few months time it will be inevitable I will pass the 'zero mark' meaning my net debt position will be positive after two decades of having a net negative debt position.

You might argue that a positive debt position (for Americans: more savings compared to debt) is 'very normal' for a 40+ year old guy, but my enemies have large powers and since 2001 they have done their stinking best.

Just a few examples:    

Year 2001: Police constantly tracking where I am in the city, they did that because I was supposed to 'stalk females'.

Year 2001: I am working in Germany, Dutch military police is doing stuff like checking if I am in my hotel room yes or no. Furthermore I had the impression like I am followed everywhere, it was easy to measure: If you leave the high speed Bundesbahn and drive to some village, criss cross the village for no reason at all, return to the high speed Bundesbahn & why this car constantly in your neck?

Lets skip a few years, not because the local police stopped spreading weird rumors but because we had second derivate stuff:

Year 2008: The child abuse case. This time I was supposed to abuse my kids, at first I thought this was just set up number 1007 of the local police. But after reading selected parts of the 7 to 8 month investigation I could find no direct link to the local police.
Rather likely it was a weird family member, the family member is in relative close contact to the local police.
That is why I consider this a second derivate thing. 

Last year I was only waiting: Without doubt the shitheads from the local police would find 'something' for the impending year 2009.

Year 2009: Last week two fucking police officers rang my doorbell. It seemed that I, Reinko Venema, was the subject of an investigation into selling drugs...  

On the one hand you can argue that being a child molester last year to being a potential drug seller this year is some improvement.

On the other hand I smell coffins, not a few but a lot of them.

If the local police does not clean up her act, they are invited to smell the fresh coffins too in a relative short time. I will only act if this is needed, yet for the time being it is forbidden for international terrorism to strike against Denmark because they pick up NATO leadership and the Dutch cannot run away from their lousy political leadership of NATO. 

I think I smell coffins...

__________________________  

After the above words it is important to link the Goldman Sachs revenues. No difficult stuff on the 'Value at risk' model banks use to prevent damage.

Just the good stuff, Goldman Sucks is extremely good in sucking in 100+ million profits a day during the present market conditions. They are good, I will not deny that!

In case you don't know what P&L is, P&L is profits & loss. Good stuff:

VaRy complex 

Lets leave it with that, may be I am bragging with future coffins in the Dutch landscape, but can you count on that?  

Till updates. 

(25 June 2009) Two items only. 

Item 1) US durable goods up?
Item 2) Two cops gave me a visit this week (mostly in Dutch).

Item 1) US durable goods up?

Yesterdays big ticket news was the fact US durable goods were surprisingly up. It was only some month on month improvement, the year on year stuff says we might be into an L-shaped recovery. 

A few times, long before the DOW 7000 was breached, I told you a few times I expected the DOW to go down to 7000 and flat after that.

At present times, now we approach the half 2009 mark, most long term economical data suggest more some L-shape and not some V- shape. Others talk about W-shaped stuff.  

Anyway to make a long story short: 'Stabilizing' in these weeks/months only means the L-shape wins in significance. While the fact that US stock markets are still far too expensive is nicely reflected in a graph at Barry's hangout.

It looks at historical total market cap to GDP ratio's; a rather cold shower for the green shooters I might say...:

Market Capitalization as a Percentage of GDP   

Nice stuff. 

Item 2) Two cops gave me a visit this week (mostly in Dutch).  

Two days back I was doing supermacho things like folding the laundry and hanging out the wet laundry to dry. The doorbell rang and from above I looked out of the window:
Two fucking cops at my front door!

(The rest is in Dutch)

Dus ik kijk naar buiten en zie daar twee coppers staan, er was geen peloton ME bij dus ik denk 'Die gasten komen vast niet voor het zero-one project' dus maak ik maar geluiden als 'Hee hallo'.

De coppers kijken omhoog pal tegen het zonlicht in en geven aan behoefte te hebben aan het voeren van dialoog. 'Als het u schikt' zeggen ze nog als ik boven sta maar zodra ik de voordeur opengedaan heb is het van 'Moet dit nou op straat?' en 'Mogen we even binnenkomen?'   

Tja, daar moest ik even over nadenken want mijn woonkamer is bezaaid met allerlei opengewerkte computers, gereedschappen en materialen (ik ben een roer mechanisme aan het bouwen). Bovendien moest ik nog stofzuigen, al met al nouwelijks een omgeving om tot zinvolle dialoog met de Groninger Politie te komen...

De ene agent was zelfs de officieële wijkagent en die ander was wat vager; het leek op een leerling maar was duidelijk z'n pukkels al lang kwijt. De wijkagent probeert zich naar binnen te lullen met 'Moet dit nou op straat' en hij projecteerd allerlei vriendelijke lichaamstaal.

Na wat heen en weer kletsen mogen de heren dan toch naar binnen, het hoge woord komt er snel uit: Is er sprake van drugshandel, is er niet veel aanloop naar deze woning en hoe zit dat met Jacqueline D. en nog een persoon?

Ik spreek mijn verwondering uit over deze lage beschuldigingen en ik adviseer de wijkagent om te solliciteren bij het weekblad Privé. Want daar zijn ze ook heel goed in het volgen van roddels, wie heeft deze roddel opgezet wil ik weten?
Vreemd genoeg, hoewel mijn vraag toch heel duidelijk was, kreeg ik een heel vaag antwoord van de wijkagent.   

Toen wilde ik wat meer weten over Jacqueline Drenth en ik wou weten waarom zij zo belangrijk was. Vreemd genoeg was Mw. J. Drenth ineens 'totaal irrelevant'.

Om van de gelegenheid gebruik te maken en omdat ik toch een drugs dealer was (in hun ogen dan) begon ik uit te leggen dat de Nederlandse Staat ongeveer 350 jaar lang opium verkocht in Indonesie. Dat de Nederlandse Staat vlak voor Wereld Oorlog nummer 1 voor ongeveer 10% van haar total financiering afhankelijk was van opium opbrengsten ging er nog wel in.

Maar toen ik begon over belasting zegels op opium pakketjes (net als de tegenwoordige belasting zegels op tabac), gaf de lichaamstaal van de agenten aan dat ze wel genoeg gezien hadden.   

Met net zoveel plezier als ze binnen kwamen gingen de dienders weer weg.

Ik even later naar de dikke man verderop in de straat: Wie is JD?

De dikke man wijst en alles is helder als glas:

De coppers hebben de huisnummers verwisseld...

   

Tot opdatums.  

Till updates. 

(22 June 2009) Five items:

Item 1) Almost 5000 US slime dead in the war on terror.
Item 2) Econbrowser: How to lose on a sure-fire bet.
Item 3) US workers loosing unemployment aid.
Item 4) US consumers saving like Hercules?
Item 5) The empty item.

Item 1) Almost 5000 US slime dead in the war on terror.

Right now about 634 US military slime has died in Afghanistan and 4316 slime in Iraq. Since 634 + 4316 = 4950 we are now about 1% of the 5000 target. 

Compared to Vietnam, where about 60 thousand US slime got killed, it's still peanuts for the US military. I don't know how much Vietnamese died during those long lost years, but as a percentage of the population it might be the same as Iraq (around 4% of the entire population). 

Non of the war objectives have been met; al Qaida leaders still safe and because of the use of Iraqis killing Iraqis the US military almost succeeded into civil war in Iraq.
The weapons of mass destruction are still only found in the hysterical imagination of the US folks; strange to see that nation time in and again thinking weird stuff.

From the war on drugs, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or house prices; only the USA will fight in a way that makes the problems only worse. And if in the process a few hundred of thousands die, you must never blame America because they never did something wrong...

Sources:

US military deaths in Afghanistan region at 634

US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,316 

Luckily broken marriages, alcoholism, suicide rates, homeless rates and so on are still on the rise for these slimy people. It is a pity no sons and daughters of US Senators / Congress folks are among these deaths; America recruits her shit mostly among the trailer trash people (the lowest social classes).  

Item 2) Econbrowser: How to lose on a sure-fire bet.

The most funny financial file from last week was written by James Hamilton from Econbrowser dot com. It is about credit default swaps, CDS is a way to insure yourself against the default of some credit.
Only you might not name it 'insurance' because in that case reserves are needed and it is well known what Americans think of non productive money like reserves. 

Here is the funny quote (source):

It appears from the WSJ account as if little Amherst Holdings of Austin, Texas was happy to sell the big guys like J.P. Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Bank of America something like $130 million notional CDS on a $27 million credit event, used the proceeds to buy off and make good the underlying subprime loans, and pocketed $70 million or so for their troubles. The big guys, on the other hand, paid perhaps a hundred million and got back zip.

Said big guys, naturally, are screaming bloody murder, trying to bring in the lawyers to show that Amherst wasn't playing by the rules of the game.  

Comment: The US judicial system works rather simple: as long as something is not explicitly forbidden, it is allowed. So those big banks are rather dumb to bring in lawyers trying to show this wasn't played by the rules of the game because there is nothing that obliges you to play by those rules.
It is weird to observe big banks react like this; isn't the non regulation of free markets the highest good in the world? 

Item 3) US workers loosing unemployment aid. 

Last week the green shooters had a new green shoot: The number of unemployed US workers getting aid was dropping for the first time in many months...

The green shoot smokers instantly understood reality: The economy is recovering and so the number of unemployment aid people decline. That is simple to understand.

Barry has a nice graphic explaining that a nice 47% of unemployed folks leave the unemployment aid without finding new work. Link:

Continuing Claims “Exhaustion Rate”  

Why the green shooters constantly talk that strange and explain the financial & economical news in such strange ways is easy to understand: 

They don't know what they are talking about. 

Just like weapons of mass destruction, or that weird statement that US house prices are only a reflection of a strong US economy (Ben Bernanke), these guys just don't understand reality.  

Item 4) US consumers saving like Hercules?  

One of those green shoot smokers is a lady named Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. She sees a recovery on the way and this chick is a chief investment strategist!

Liz Ann thinks the US consumers have made a Hercules effort in saving 5.7% of disposable income. What a lovely dumb chick; the USA needs to save about 5% of the entire gross domestic product and not a lousy 5% of consumer disposable income!

Dumb dumb dumb as only Americans can be.

Liz Ann had this to share, quote:

Even as the U.S. savings rate has risen from negative levels to 5.7%, household debt as a percent of disposable income has only fallen to 131% from 133% last September, she notes.

"The pace consumers are attempting to shore up their situation is unprecedented," but it's a long, long way to go before spending and income growth reach a "normal relationship" below the 100% mark, Sonders says. 

Comment: This looks like shaky calculus at best, suppose you have exactly 133% of your disposable income in some forms of debt like credit card debt or car debt. At an interest rate of 5% you need almost 7% of disposable income just to stabilize your debt... I don't see a Hercules at work here, much more likely the decline from 133% to 131% is more related to folks defaulting on their debt. 

Tech Ticker has a video with the chick, her legs ain't bad (at least compared to her brains): 

"Herculean Effort" by U.S. Consumers Only Making Small Dent in Debt Mountain 

 Item 5) The empty item.

As usual this item is for using your own brain, I know it will hurt but if you take some pain killers you can actually use your own brain for yourself!

So will North Korea fire a missile against Hawaii on the 4th of July and will Iran disintegrate towards civil war? 

Try to think for yourself and check in the future if you were more right then wrong.
Good luck with it! 

 

Till updates. 

(15 June 2009) Sorry for not updating for so long, but a lot of financial news is taken over by the green shoot smokers who constantly ventilate their hallucinations. And I did not like it to comment on so much accumulated stupidity every day.

But here is another update, lets go to the items:

Item 1) IMF: US banks still need to write down 1600 billion US$.
Item 2) Do you smuggle drugs or US Treasuries?
Item 3) An Israeli coyote promotes eating vegetables while keeping the meat himself.
Item 4) Do you believe the USA would listen to international regulators?
Item 5) The empty item.  

 Item 1) IMF: US banks still need to write down 1600 billion US$.

Less then two weeks ago the IMF stated that globally about 2.5 trillion US$ needs to be written down, about 1600 billion in the USA and 737 billion here in Europe.

So that is one side of the spectrum: 1600 billion to go...

On the other hand we have the US Obama administration stating that if banks raised 89 billion fresh capital they all have passed the stress test...

(Remember the Goldman Sucks boys? Constantly telling everybody they never needed the 10 billion in TARP aid but, ha ha ha, needed 5 billion in new stock offerings to pay back 5 billion.)   

It has to be remarked that very often I do not agree with the IMF; I think their view on the US housing market is far too optimistic. US house prices will likely bottom out at the end of 2011 after falling about 50% from their 2006 top. (Strangely enough the US stress test uses a 48% house price decline, how they rhyme that with only 89 billion in fresh bank capital is one of the mysteries of the USA.) 

The views offered by the IMF & team Obama are highly conflicting, ok ok the mark to market rule is no longer with us so we will observe all kinds of funny accountancy gimmicks to the tune of countless billions in 'true profits' but shave away 1600 billion with the mark to model rule? 

You can judge for yourself who is in more the right: the IMF or team Obama.

Source (Reuters Factbox):

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLT97136420090604   

Item 2) Do you smuggle drugs or US Treasuries?

In the Italian/Swiss border town of Chiasso the Italian police stopped two Japanese men and searched their luggage. They did not find any drugs like heroin or green shoot weeds, instead they found:

--249 US Treasury bond certificates - undeclared - with a value of $500m each &
--10 Kennedy bonds at $1bn. 

Only $134.5bn of US Treasuries & that is 2% of all outstanding US public debt (see for example this Federal Reserve file, two before last column & scroll down). 

Is all this stuff for real? 

A Bloomberg file has this to say:

The seized notes include 249 securities with a face value of $500 million each and 10 additional bonds with a value of more than $1 billion, the police force said on its Web site. Such high denominations would not have existed in 1934, the purported issue date of the notes, Mecarelli said. Moreover, the “Kennedy” classification of the bonds doesn’t appear to exist, he said. 

Comment: A pity the story likely isn't true, Kennedy bonds from 1934 are definitely a collectors item. So it is actually not true that two Japanese men drove around with 2% of all US public offered debt, but it makes you wonder:
What were these Japanese men thinking? 

Item 3) An Israeli coyote promotes eating vegetables while keeping the meat himself.

Yesterday on the television CNN was on and the CNN reporters spoke of some 'important' speech to be done by the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. The CNN journo's pretended this was all very important because it was about 'peace' and a 'Palestine state'.

My interest was aroused because Netanyahu, dumb & arrogant as he is, would propose exactly what the former apartheid regime of South Africa would propose:
A Homeland for the Palestinians... 

In case you don't know that detail of history: The SA apartheid regime created a few homelands for the niggers to live in. These homelands were actually inside South Africa but they had all the stuff niggers liked: A homeland King that fucked a whole lot of female niggers, a lot of corruption and although I cannot proof it beer and booze for cheap of course.   

Netanyahu had it all figured out; a demilitarized zone where Palestinians can live in peace. Netanyahu had some talk about democracy and as usual forgot to mention that Arab political parties are not allowed in the apartheid country known as Israel.

Netanyahu had more things figured out: The holocaust was a main driver in getting an Israeli state, but according to Netanyahu: if there would have been a Jewish state, the holocaust would not have happened! Netanyahu did not elaborate on his superior knowledge: how exactly would a holocaust have been prevented given the military equation of those years???

For me life is simple: Israel is just another apartheid regime and for that you must not look at the Gaza strip or the West Bank but simple stuff as found inside Israel. Just a few details:

--Minimum wages, lots of Arabs work below the minimum wage.
--Medical stuff, Jewish folks get the best, second hand stuff is for non Jews.
--Prisons; do Israelis lock up pure Jews together with others?
--Medical treatment in prisons; get Jews a better treatment?
-- And so on and so on. 

You only need 30 minutes and the Google thing to get some answers, yet our political leaders in Europe and the USA constantly support the Israeli apartheid regime. 

Why this is I don't know, all it takes is some Google searches and you can validate for yourself that Israel is just another apartheid regime. 

Why our leaders support this is something I still don't understand.

And if you would do a truly 'democratic thing' and hold a referendum in Israel and her neighbors about Israel's right to exist, would Israel win this?
Or would the neighboring countries spit it out as the collection of whining Jews they are?
Therefore I say monsieur N is keeping the meat to himself. 

Item 4) Do you believe the USA would listen to international regulators?

Lately there is talk about new international regulators to prevent a new meltdown of the entire financial system.

I never commented upon that because this talk is mostly coming from our political leaders and as such has no weight. 

Look at Item 1) above: The IMF stating there needs to be about 1600 billion more in write downs while in practice the USA changes the mark to market rule & all troubles are over and it's rulers come with idiot stuff like 89 billion in fresh capital will save our banks.

Therefore my proposal is to make US citizen Peter Schiff the new international financial regulator. The next video is from the past, but in the future a real international regulator will be treated exactly like that. 

I mean, I understood for myself back in the spring of 2004 what could happen on the US housing market. Suppose in the autumn of 2005 some international regulator would inform the USA of dangers to housing bubbles.

How would the USA folks react?  

More or less exactly as they reacted towards Peter (it's a Daily Show vid via Barry):  

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/06/peter-schiff-on-tds/  

Item 5) The empty item.  

Empty empty empty; use your own brain to fill this empty space... 

 

 

 

 EMPTY

 

 

 

Till updates. 

(05 June 2009) No items, only one link:

Just in: US Bureau of Labor Statistics release (unemployment to 9.4% but NFP numbers only 345,000 down). Link:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm   

Till updates.
Update from 15 June:

At the end of the table you find that average weekly income = $613.67 while average hour salary equals $18.54. That means the average US working week is only 33 hours. Of course there are many part timers but there are also plenty working two jobs and still cannot afford healthcare...
Only 33 hours a week, that ain't much.

End of the 15 June update.   

(04 June 2009) Two items centered around US stupidity and arrogance.

Item 1) Green shoot: unemployment benefits fall.
Item 2) Hillary has guts: China tell the truth about Tiananmen square!

 Item 1) Green shoot: unemployment benefits fall.

The USA green shooters had good news today:

For the first time in 20 weeks the total number of people getting unemployment benefits fell!  

Upon inspection it is only 15 thousand and the numbers are 'seasonally corrected' without telling what seasonal correction model is used: If it's a multiplicative version you can get huge downshooting corrections in this time of the season. 

It is very easy to understand how someone falls out of unemployment benefits:

1) This person has found a job.
2) This person has come to the end of the benefits. 

At Yahoo finance they never get tired of posting dumb stuff, here is how they portray it: 

Jobless benefit rolls fall, initial claims dip 

As a matter of fact, total numbers in unemployment benefits is much more a race between those who get unemployed and those that come to the end of benefits without finding a job. And no longer a race between those who loose their job and find a new one... 

For every job opportunity there are five or more job seekers, check it out at Barry's hangout:

Job Openings vs Unemployed  

The graphs offered look reliable, here is Jake's version: 

Can We Inflate Our Way out of this Mess? 

Item 2) Hillary has guts: China tell the truth about Tiananmen square!

Two decades back we had the (student) uprising in China, it is well known and well documented and official death toll numbers are between 200 and 300.

Very likely real death toll was far higher and runs into a couple of thousand. You can argue the Chinese authorities were too hard handed but with all the knowledge I have accumulated I too would have ordered for a crackdown.  

May be you have heard of the breakdown of Yugoslavia; a very violent process that killed in far bigger numbers compared to the Chinese uprising.
And that is the problem of the one party regime in China: if from one day to the other you allow multiple parties and it all goes wrong, deathtoll could lie between 10 to 50 million people. And that is a whole lot of violence, comparable to World War II or so.

So I can understand that the Chinese authorities are a bit cautious on this detail, on the other hand one party systems just like king & emperor systems never survive in the long run.

What does the American Secretary of foreign affairs makes of this?  

Just a quote (UK Guardian source):

She urged the regime to "examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal". 

Comment: That is a very big mouth from a power slut from the USA. In Iraq we had so called 'excess death toll' of about one million directly related to US war policies of using Iraqis to kill Iraqis. We see zero point zero 'learning & healing' in the USA because of that.
Oops, now I remember, weren't the economical sanctions against Iraq not also in the order of one million extra deaths? Just a detail: Iraqis could not buy water pumps because in theory you could also pump biochemical war stuff with that; how many died from the lack of simple water pumps & how many times Tiananmen square fits in that hole? 

Did we observe any 'learning & healing' on that?
No we don't, this time evil Iranians are supposed to nuke Israel away in a very short future...  

After my humble opinion power slut Hillary Clinton should shot up her stupid mouth and better tell the truth about secret prisons around the world, tell exactly what happened there so both the Muslims & the USA could start a 'learning & healing' curve. 

Till updates.

(03 June 2009) Just a few links.

To be honest I do not understand all the 'positive news' from lately; housing was the biggest asset class in the USA, it will shrink by 50% or at least 10 trillion US$ and all these fools think it is a matter of months before the damage is undone...

I just don't get it; one of your legs is amputated, you see green shoots at the end of your stump and that is 'good news'. 

Here is one of these media files:

Pending home sales rise 6.7 percent in April  Quote:

Home sales appear likely to head upward this summer, potentially to levels not seen since the stock market collapsed last autumn, but prices are expected to keep falling well into next year. Layoffs, which are causing foreclosures to soar, coupled with rising mortgage rates could dampen any real estate recovery.  

Comment: Beside the fact that sold volumes rise going into the Summer for lets say the last 20 centuries, you can also explain this rise in volume via the rise in foreclosures...

__________________________  

In the US healthcare fun I found a strange statistic that was unknown to me.
Source link:

White House frames health care as economic problem  

Quote of unknown statistic:

The report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers says that health care costs -- now about 18 percent of the gross domestic product -- will rise to 34 percent in 30 years if left unchecked, wreaking havoc on the federal deficit, businesses and working Americans.  

Comment: 18% of the GDP? Congratulations! But what's the problem? As long as the nurses and doctors have money in their pockets they can put food on the family and as usual the economy will boom in no time (anyway that is how Dubya, Cheney & the Paulson clown always looked at economical stuff). 

__________________________  

The Geithner thing in China. Reuters source link:

Geithner tells China its dollar assets are safe  

Quote:

"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home. 

Comment: Now the US money press is in full swing, why does the USA bother to calm China on this detail? If the Chinese sell AAA rated Treasuries, the Federal Reserve can always 'mop it up'.
The Americans themselves started printing, when one says 'A' one also has to say 'B'.  

__________________________  

Not all board members of the US Federal Reserve are of 'vomit eating quality', just look at the ancient words as spoken by Philadelphia Fed's Charles Plosser.

Source link:

Philly Fed's Plosser Not Keen re PPIP, Fed's Quasi-Fiscal Role   

Quote:

The Federal Reserve should not be involved in financing toxic assets that date from the bubble era, Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed, has told the Financial Times.

“I think it is a bridge too far,” said Mr Plosser, arguing that such proposed Fed loans would expose the US central bank to credit risk and tie up a sizable chunk of its balance sheet in long- term assets that would be hard to price and liquidate. 

Comment: This Plosser guy smoked too much green shoots, that's obvious. Now the money printing machine is on, all credit risks are gone monsieur Plosser! Why this 19 century talk when it is now century number 21?
Just print money, make sure it does not reach ordinary people & live happily ever after... 

Till updates.

(01 June 2009) Two items: 

Item 1) The General Motors bankruptcy is a nice laboratory study for the future. 
Item 2) The Federal Reserve does not understand her stuff once more. 

 Item 1) The General Motors bankruptcy is a nice laboratory study for the future. 

Today it emerged that GM will go for the Chapter 11 thing, this is of interest because the whole USA has similar stuff.

As far as I know the details, GM has about 90 billion in assets and 160 billion in liabilities. The actual numbers are not important, all it matters is that liabilities outstrip all assets, just like the future of the entire USA.  

For every GM worker today, there are 2 or 3 workers in retirement. The GM bankruptcy will affect those elderly very much, via the bankruptcy GM will no longer need to pay for these non productive people. 

In the past GM never ever set aside the savings needed for the future payments for retirement, the workers never complained about that. As a whole the USA has done the same; there simply is no money to give the future elderly a reasonable standard of living. All that is left is the money printing press...

All in all the GM retirement folks simply deserve their fate; that is simply the price to pay for your stupid 'American dream' so sell your car, sell your house and please go live on the streets where you folks belong. 

On the street is where you belong, on the street you can dream the American dream...
Good luck with it! 

Item 2) The Federal Reserve does not understand her stuff once more. 

The US Federal Reserve is well known for standing outside reality when it counts for real. Remember the Greenspan conundrum? Long term interest rates as set by the markets dived below the short term stuff the idiot Greenspan controlled, yet nobody sounded the alarm.

Remember that famous video where Alan Greenspan told how much money American households 'saved' by using adjustable rate mortgages?
Remember that under Alan's rule the short interest stuff was raised to 5.25% while at that point in time debt levels in the USA were already so high, holding on to a historical 5% level would only lead to bankruptcy of the USA?  

Yesterday I found a nice Reuters file, here is the source link:

Federal Reserve puzzled by yield curve steepening  

To understand how deep the FED does not understand elementary future developments you must read this quote:

Do rising U.S. Treasury yields and a steepening yield curve suggest an economic recovery is more certain, meaning less need for safe haven government bonds and a healthy demand for credit? If so, there might be less need for the Fed to expand the money supply by buying more U.S. Treasuries.

Or does the steepening yield curve mean investors are worried about the deterioration in the U.S. fiscal outlook, or the potential for a collapse in the U.S. dollar as the Fed floods the world with newly minted currency as part of its quantitative easing program. This might be an argument to augment to step up asset purchases.

Another possibility is that China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt, has decided to refocus its portfolio by leaning more heavily on shorter-term maturities. 

Comment: It is hard to comment upon so much accumulated stupidity, if the small shifts in the China portfolio are seen as a serious cause of the steepening I think I cannot comment on such idiot stuff.  

Quoting on:

"I'm in wait-and-see mode," said one Fed official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We laid out the asset purchase plan and we're following it. That is going to have some affect on various interest rates, but together with a hundred other things. So I don't think we should be chasing a long-term interest rate," the official said. 

Comment: It is well known what 'asset buying programs' are; the FED buys garbage against far too high prices (otherwise it does 'not work'). Just like in all those borrowing programs where collateral is accepted at say 41% of face value but the 100% of face value is still on the books of the banks.
As a rule of thumb you can say: If the FED buys it or borrows you money against it, it has to be garbage.
And now these idiots from the FED are buying AAA rated US Treasuries, doesn't this imply Treasuries are garbage?
Did not the US Federal Reserve themselves decide to buy 1250 billion in mortgage backed shit and on top of that 300 billion in Treasuries? 

Seldom you see weird stuff like that! 

Till updates. 

(31 May 2009) There was lots of good economical news out last week, lets split it up along tactical and strategy lines. Why split it up like that?
Just for no reason at all, why should anything always have a reason?

Tactical news:

US housing volumes sold news: The fraction of foreclosure sellings is 45%, of course this is the statistic without new houses. Lets hope when this fraction climbs above 50% the 'greens shooters' have found a new green shoot.  

When over 50% of second hand houses are forced sellings, this has to be a green shoot. Let me explain: 

When it's above 50% the 'room for improvement' is far bigger compared to further deteriation to 100%. When 65% is a forced sell, don't forget that 65 > 35 and as such we have more 'good news' from the USA.

Both tactical and long term strategic:

Now it is 100% clear the USA cannot finance her recovery via savings or taxes, the money printing press is the main vehicle. How much money will they print?
Nice quote from this Bloomberg source:

“The Fed has to step up the purchases just to keep rates from rising further,” McBride said. “As much buying as the Fed is doing this year of Treasuries and mortgage-backed debt almost exactly equates to the amount of new Treasury debt being dumped onto the market.” 

Comment: We are talking about 1250 billion in mortgage backed shit and another 300 billion in US Federal debt. As far as my figures for Europe are correct; 80 billion for weird stuff and zero government bonds...
Given the content of the quote we can also wonder if it might make a difference:

1) FED buys 1250 billion MBS & 300 billion Federal debt, or
2) FED buys all Federal debt produced this year in the land of the debt huggers. 

I don't think it is much of a difference, constantly the real levels of debt are not talked about and as such the actions of the FED are more or less insignificant. 

Both tactical and long term strategic:

Another Bloomberg file (source) and another quote:

This time it’s different because the Congressional Budget Office projects Obama’s spending plan will expand the deficit this year to about four times the previous record, and cause a $1.38 trillion shortfall in fiscal 2010. The U.S. will need to raise $3.25 trillion this year to finance its objectives, up from less than $1 trillion in 2008, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of 16 primary dealers of U.S. government securities that are obligated to bid at Treasury auctions. 

“The deficit and funding the deficit has become front and center,” said Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research LLC in Chicago. “The Fed is going to have to walk a fine line here and has to continue with a policy of printing money to buy Treasuries while at the same time convince the market that this isn’t going to end in tears with fits of inflation.” 

Comment: For the short term inflation is not much of a problem, given the US population size of about 300 million inhabitants the 1.38 trillion shortfall is only about 4600 US$ for every inhabitant. (And that only to keep the government working.)
If every US citizen would receive 4600 US$ from the FED, consumer inflation would be rampant.
And a possible inflation on the US Treasury markets? I don't see it happening; all idiots that still hold 30 year long Treasuries and still work with a 'value in = value out' model only need a clean hair cut.

And strategic: 

On USAToday they threw all debt from the past combined with future obligations into a big mixer. Source file:

Leap in U.S. debt hits taxpayers with 12% more red ink 

I don't think it is wise to portray it this way, better is to differentiate between debt contracts that already exists (about 3.5 time the USA gross domestic product) and the future obligations.   

It is well known that at an annual interest rate of 5%, oops 5% of 350 still equals 17.5% of GDP needed to service interest on the debt only.
Conclusion: Authorities try to lower the rates for a long longtime. 

Funny quote from the 'mix it all up' article: 

Bottom line: The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion. 

The numbers measure what's needed today — set aside in a lump sum, earning interest — to pay benefits that won't be covered by future taxes. 

Comment: It is just my particular opinion but fools picking up long term US Federal debt in these times are only fools. Why doesn't the FED try a new program? Something like the GBMP progam? (GBMP = Gimmie Back My Profits.)

Till updates. 

(27 May 2009) Two items:

Item 1) The problem with Moody's and the Aaa rating of US government debt.
Item 2) Bloomberg and the openness of information.

 Item 1) The problem with Moody's and the Aaa rating of US government debt.

The problem with rating companies like Moody's, S&P or Fitch is they are all American companies. There is no reliable international rating agency, there are only profit driven rating companies.

The conduct of these companies in the present crisis is also well known; in fact if you were a large enough institution you could buy all the AAA ratings you needed on your products. (An internal email once said "If they structure it with cows, we can rate it".)
Far more worrisome is the fact the rating companies need computer software to 'rate' the stuff involved, this means the rating employees cannot give a rating using only paper, pencil and a hand held calculator.
To put it simple: Just like bankers selling options or using the 'value at risk' models, these employees simply have no clue about what they are doing.

Last week S&P put the United Kingdom on a 'negative watch list', that gave some turmoil in the markets. Strangely enough people started wondering if what goes for the UK will also go for the USA... 

Ok ok, the UK runs a 12 to 13% deficit of GDP, have no explanation why this borrowed money will 'do the trick' (bring in more future taxes and give GDP growth that will last a long time) and has no savings of any significance.

In short: With or without S&P any idiot can see this cannot have the highest rating.
Same goes for the USA; 50% of all Federal spending is borrowed and printed money and there are zero economists who can explain if all the borrowed money will be paid back (or represent similar kinds of wealth).

In the past short sighted idiots at Moody's defended the USA as follows:

The USA has tremendous taxing capabilities, if they raise taxes only 1% of GDP in just a decade you look at over one trillion in extra taxes.

The Moody's defense is nonsense in many ways; just try to raise taxes 1% of GDP and see what happens... Beside this the rating companies only comment on 'public traded debt' and neglect all internal debt in the US government; that is why the rating companies are utterly irrelevant. Just as in the past when they rubber stamped AAA on every product that came along, their analysis of the US financial situation is a joke too. 

Lets look at some nonsense Moody's came up with today (from Bloomberg), source:

U.S.’s Aaa Credit Rating Is Stable, Moody’s Says  

And one of those quotes that usually go without proof:

The U.S. rating is supported by “a diverse and resilient economy, strong government institutions, high per-capita income, and a central position in the global economy,” New York-based Moody’s said in a statement. At the same time, the firm warned that any “reassessment” of long-term growth prospects could put pressure on the rating. 

Today’s announcement may help soothe concern among investors who sold U.S. assets in the aftermath of Standard & Poor’s cutting Britain’s rating outlook, spurring concern about a similar fate for the U.S. The Obama administration has committed to reining in the budget deficit once a recovery is under way.  

Comment: This is just stupid talk, just looking at what is always table number one in the Federal Reserve Z1 release (debt growth by sector, source) simply says: GDP, profit or tax growth is always a tiny part of debt growth.
One thing is clear with today's statement from Moody's: Just like the rest in the US financial sector they don't have a clue. 

Item 2) Bloomberg and the openness of information. 

Many months ago Bloomberg started a judicial case against the US Federal Reserve; they wanted more insight in where all that tax payer money went in all those programs to support the financials.

After some time the FED gave in and now we have monthly updates like the last one:

http://federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_ratesetting.htm#3a  

Doesn't it clearly say:

Collateral pledged = 1226 billion US$ while
Credit extended = 503 billion?   

Doesn't this mean the FED gives only 41 cents for every dollar collateral pledged? 

So the courthouse stuff from Bloomberg did pay off; how could we ever know the FDE pays only 41 cents for every pledged collateral dollar? 

Now how about splitting up the statistics along printed money yes or no?

There are persistent rumors that the FED buys more and more US government debt directly at the auctions of that debt. I think that is of interest because Central Banks buying government debt directly when it's auctioned is one of the most pure forms of printing money.

You have to read a bit between the lines, but even in dumb headed Yahoo files there is nothing found to the contrary:  

Slumping Treasury bond prices send stocks lower 

Here in Europe it is pretty simple: the European Central Bank is not allowed to buy government debt so a failed auction is a failed auction as the UK folks might have observed. But those USA folks, you simply cannot trust them; you don't know how much government debt goes to the FED. You just don't know...

Till updates.  

(25 May 2009) Finally another green shoot, it's a perfect one: a green shoot about the relation between unemployment and rising foreclosures in the USA.

Barry's source file:

Rising Job Losses = Rising Foreclosures  

The article does not quantify it but as a rule of thumb you can say about one third in unemployment numbers 'relates' to foreclosures, quote:

Over the period when BLS was reporting 500k plus job losses a month, from November’08 to February ‘09, the numbers of distressed properties “increased more than 473,000, exceeding 1.5 million.” Total loan value = more than $224 billion. (Sources: The Times, First American CoreLogic).  

Further reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/economy/25foreclose.html?_r=1   

A case of shaky statistics was found yesterday at Bloomberg, it is one of those slap happy stories where dumb journo's that know nothing of statistics 'proof' the situation get 'better'. Quote:

Combined sales of new and existing homes likely advanced to a 5.02 million annual rate from a 4.93 million pace in March, other figures may show.  

Comment: This is stupid in many ways, in the first place the US housing market has strong seasonal components where prices & volumes usually climb until deep in the Summer. In the second place, it is only 1% more and as such the reported number falls within all confidence intervals around the five million number.
Source: 
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&
sid=aaLCktFTN9XE&refer=home
 

Nuke stuff. 

North Korea tested today another nuke, according to the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation the Richter scale numbers were (source):

Russia, which called the test a threat to regional security, said the blast was about equal in power to the U.S. atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in World War Two, or about 20 times larger than the North's one kiloton test in 2006.

But the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation contested that, saying the magnitude of the latest test was "slightly higher than in 2006, measuring 4.52 on the Richter scale, while in 2006 it was 4.1." 

Comment: If the Vienna based organization is correct with the Richter numbers, in that case since 4.52 - 4.1 = 0.42 the second blast has 10^0.42 = 2.6 more shaking amplitude and if this wikipedia file is correct you need 2.6^1.5 = 4.3 more energy released in the second nuke.
On the other hand the Russians are in the right if the next info is correct (source): 

"The magnitude of the quake, measured at 4.5 on the Richter Scale, was more powerful than the past one which was measured at 3.6," Yoo Yong-Gyu, a senior researcher at the Korea Meteorological Administration, told AFP. 

Comment: This looks more like the Russian version of the numbers and if I dig in my own memory I am not sure but the number '3.6' rings a bell. So lets stick to the Russian projection of reality for the time being.

Political ramifications. 

I don't know what to think of this, may be the words of a Chinese analyst came most close to the truth: May be after all they want to become a nuclear power.  

Last year we observed the destruction of a cooling tower and now this. 

The only conclusion can be that indeed North Korea tries to become a nuclear power, there is no evidence found for other explanations of their behavior. 

So there will be some political ramifications needed, going on as in the past is not reasonable any longer.  

Till updates, as an antidote you can read boring stuff like a brief history of money

(21 May 2009) Financial markets were just so boring all of the last 7 days, I did not feel commenting on all idiot things going round.

You know one of the things standing between a real economical recovery and all that fake stuff from lately is the fact there is still much too much money into the system. In the USA alone rumors say about 4 trillion $ is sitting on the sidelines and most of that is still borrowed money, these are not savings looking for long term investments, it's mostly borrowed stuff going for the fast buck.

All that money needs to get destroyed & what is better then new fresh investment opportunities in US banks? Just like Goldman Sucks did; stating they never needed the 10 billion in TARP bailout money but ha ha ha they offered 5 billion in new stock to pay it back... Of course the sucker investors coughed up the five billion...

As long as there are sucker investors out who are willing to invest in magic I think it is best to let run God's water over God's acres.

By the way, not from God but from the FED, today the expected came out (Yahoo AP source), quote: 

Under the Fed's new projections, the economy will shrink this year between 1.3 and 2 percent. The old forecast said the economy could contract between 0.5 and 1.3 percent.

The unemployment rate may rise as high as 9.6 percent, higher than the old forecast of 8.8 percent. The jobless rate bolted to 8.9 percent in April, the highest in a quarter-century. 

Comment: On unemployment I still can't say much because I still don't know if folks without government unemployment aid still count in the official unemployment figures. But GDP estimations are a joke, now about half of the Federal 3.6 trillion budget is borrowed printed money, most prudent folks don't believe the US GDP statistics. 

__________________________ 

In another development Barry posted some very stupid graphs about the US Federal deficits or surpluses. In the graphs all borrowing from the US government to herself is missing; all US Federal Funds, let it be the FDIC bank insurance fund or the social security funds are so called 'pay as you go' funds.
Trillions in social security surplus taxes are spend already, this is not found back in the graphs as Barry posts it (it has to be remarked that Barry's post is around comparing Democrats to Republicans, but even then it is a stupid post): 

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/budget-deficits/  

Better writing from Barry is found in US housing starts (only 50% from a year ago while unsold house inventory is still large):

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/housing-starts-2/  

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/new-construction-falls-54-less-is-more/  

You can argue that housing starts are a lagging statistic in the present economical environment, but ha ha ha why were they a leading statistic in the past? 

Lets leave it with that, till updates. 

 

Previous: history/index03  

Next: history/index05   

-Food for thought 1:

My dear reader, now the band of brothers known as the US Lehman Brothers investment bank is going for the Chapter 11 thing we can conclude that the band of brothers are broke. 

This is good news and there are some ripples on the 62,000 billion US$ so called 'credit default swaps' market. CDS is an instrument to pump risk through the entire system, it maximizes system failure.

But I don't want to talk about small markets like a 62 trillion market. I have a habit of going after the real stuff and you can find the real stuff at the Swiss Basel based Bank for International Settlements. (Source)

That bank has real stuff to tell, for example in Dec 2007 we only have 596,004  billion US$ of total derivative contracts. This is no problem; the USA gross domestic product is 14 trillion US$ a year and when this 600 trillion joke of the USA banks goes wrong they can always borrow more money from China, India or Vietnam. 

Here is the link to the Basel stuff & I hope you have enough to think about this 600 trillion joke.

In case you want to know what OTC derivates are, OTC means 'Over The Counter' and thus there is no registration and no regulation. It is just 600 trillion in free market stuff, please trust the US banks and go to sleep safely. 

Dated 16 Sept 2008   

__________________________

-Food for thought 2:

And it makes me wonder, it makes me wonder so much...

If at the end of the second quarter of this year, the total US financial sector that is about 20% of the US economy, has 16507.5 billion of debt on herself;

Why does nobody sound the alarm?

In the last decade this debt has always expanded exponentially by 9% a year.
As a comparison, the US gross domestic product has grown just over 3% in the last decades after we left the golden standard and hugged fiat money.

Don't forget 16.5 trillion is far above the US GDP that is around 14 trillion US$ a year.

This is elementary math: you can explain it to 16 year old high school pupils that the US financial sector is doomed.

But if 16 year olds could understand this, why did the US government not understand this? And most of all; why did the Federal Reserve not understand this?

It makes me wonder; why full throttle drive towards the big cliffs?

It makes me wonder so much...

(Source, look at the one before last column.) 

Dated 19 Sept 2008. 

____________________

Nice video, a tribute to the Baghdad snipers:
The Baghdad sniper

____________________

And here is nice pdf file for my fellow scientists stating we had hundreds of thousands so called 'excess death toll' inside Iraq compared to a non invasion model. (The so called Lancet file that says that on average we likely have 650 thousand excess civil death toll.) 

____________________ 

This is funny: on one of those lefty antiwar US websites I found a very small Java Script and from now on I can check my own website upon the number of dead US slime inside Iraq. Here's the counter: 

 

____________________

Some old math I wrote about 13 years ago, it is very simple to understand: you can differentiate and integrate all geometrical objects. And when you triangulate a landscape or a movie scene properly you can later in a computer change the position of the camera. Of course you need a new file format because the goody good mpg format won't work.
This might be of future interest for police or stuff like that (you can change the camera viewpoint to that of the victims or that of the criminals. Of course this is not a miracle; missing information can only be repaired at a certain level but anyway... The math is there and it is waiting to be used!
(Ok you also need geometrical integration but that's a cakewalk, some geometric projection theory, lots of self repairing codes and very very difficult: a good camera device. But if these conditions are met you can later change the camera viewpoint...)

____________________ 

(17 Oct 2008) This morning I finished a very simple and non technical article about statistical testing of poisons in food. It is so horrible non technical that even political leaders can understand it's content; only seldom I have sunken so low...

Here is the pdf file.

____________________ 

A very old (25 years old) booklet transformed to the pdf format about home made shaped explosives. I don't think it is of very much use to the Iraqis but it is fun reading. They even used a Martini glass to penetrate 3 inches of steel! And all home made... Have fun reading it (it has lousy graphics).

____________________ 

I found a very nice booklet named 'Explosives from common materials', it is field study from the Americans. It covers a lot:
How to make improvised detonators, high explosives, primary and secondary explosives. It is very good only the procedure for making alcohol is not handy in Iraq; if the Iraqis need pure alcohol they should use the wine method for making pre distillation alcohol and use sugar, some kilo's fruit (about 10% of total batch produced), yeast and a lot of water.  

____________________ 

Sayings from famous and unknown people that shed light on their insights and their emotional daily running system:

Phrase nr one (from Dubya or the present lame duck president of the USA):

"The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war!"
--The first Presidential debate

Phrase nr two, also from Dubya but I have to pump it up from my memory so there might be some little faults in it (it was some weeks after the 911 attacks on the USA):

The enemy is so evil that most people in the USA do not know what they do why they do!

Phrase nr three from the former USA secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (if my memory is correct he spoke these words in the week from 16 to 21 October 2001, at that point in time we were on the height of the anthrax scares): 

And it makes you wonder; How does he do it? And we would like to ask this person to come on over to our side and together fight the war on terror.

Phrase nr four is from me myself & I:

To understand your own 'logical thinking' you must know that logical thinking is only the first derivate of emotion. That is why all attempts towards artificial intelligence have failed: computers do not have emotion build in but we humans, like all other animals,  do.
The above mentioned three phrases of my enemies only expose their emotional system, lets destroy that system...

Phrase nr five is from US celebrity Donald Trump. A few weeks before this the famous Lancet report was published calculating Iraqi civil death toll at 650 thousand (this with a relatively large but acceptable standard deviation):

For myself I use 400 thousand killed.

Phrase nr six is from CNN's Larry King (CNN is received in 200 countries so therefore the CNN management thinks it's wise that Larry King can parade every day one or more American celebrities). When King was asked why he did not use the internet he responded:

There are a billion things on the internet.

Phrase nr seven is one more from the former US secretary of defense. After a few years in the war on terror he was asked what it all boiled down to. He said:

Can we kill the terrorists in a faster rate than the massandra's spit them out?

Phrase nr eight is from Osama bin Laden. The phrase is very worthwhile mentioning because the US CIA folks were in the past very satisfied with 'Just a few weapon deliveries and we lured the Russians into Afghanistan'.

When America needed us to fight their proxy war against Russia they supported us. The moment the Russians left Afghanistan we were irrelevant. 

Phrase nr nine is from US four star general Peter Pace, he made it during a memorial speech on 11 Sept 2006 (exactly five years after the 9/11 attacks from 2001).
At that point in time total US military death toll already stood above the number of civilians killed on 9/11/2001.

Right now the total amount of killed US military members is approaching the civil death toll from nine September 2001.

Phrase nr 10 is again from me myself & I. It is around the rebuilding of the organization after the military campaign in Afghanistan.

Make sure to imitate the way the German army was organized after world war one; That is make sure that every member can function properly until up three hierarchical layers higher. If you do that you can grow with an enormous speed in the future when this is needed.

Phrase nr eleven is also from me myself & I. It is to proof that I can be stupid too. I do not know when I wrote it but it was a long time ago.
I asked the Iraqis the next:

Can you hold on one more year? After that things will get better, I promise.

You just don't imagine how much I have regretted those words, after that the US military came with bonuses of up to 70 thousand dollars for enlisting / reenlisting and how could I have been so stupid as to not have foreseen this?
I mean the Americans run their country on the greenback & why was I outside reality? Why?

Phrase number twelve is from a peace loving female neighbor of mine, her name is Geertruida.

We people we can speak, so we should not fight war but speak with each other until our differences are solved.

Of course I had to remark: Because we have speech we are much better in making war compared to other animal species. 

Phrase nr thirteen is from the present al Qaida leader in Iraq. I mention it because I think it was a very important detail, it was made in his first statement after he took over from Zarqawi.

We need help from scientists, let it be in the field of communications, chemistry, medics, biologicals or whatever what. You can live your dream and kill the Americans on a large scale inside their bases. You can fulfill your scientific dreams.

Phrase nr fourteen is from CNN's war whore Christiana Armanpour. Why do I call a whore where in fact she is a respected senior correspondent?
That is because she understands the difference between a 'commodity driven war' and one that is not driven by that.
In the entire Iraqi war no CNN reporter has emphasized that Iraq is very much 'commodity driven' (read stealing the oil) but when Tony Blair resigns she says:

He wanted military assistance in Bosnia although there are no commodities over there.

(Or words of similar phrasing, I do not recall her exact words but they boiled down to the above.)   

____________________ 

Not all my hobbies evolve around war, death and destruction, or financial markets. No, I also like to cook food and stuff. There will not be many recipes but here is the index to some food I made, it is just a small fraction of what I cook. A very small fraction but the goal is to come to a feast meal for the Iraqis and Afghanis. So it likely will take a few more years...

____________________ 

 

 

 

 










 

 

 

 

 

 

 









 

    

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Title: A 2008 condolences card to the US dollar.