Monday 30 May 2011

farmville vs Animal Farm

[the scourge of modern society. People who follow politicians and Fox News]

Farmville

[nice, orderly, small, square plot- totally unrealistic]
[if you build it, they will come]

We have the phenomenon of Farmville. It looks like a harmless passtime. We have thousands of kinds of real and computer games to keep us busy when we're not working like oxen.
It's not too realistic, since most farmers need 100 hectares just to make enough money to survive, what with Sainsbury and Tesco squeezing them to lower prices, and the government get funding from Sainsbury and Tesco, turning a blind eye to survivability of the food supply, two years before prices go through the roof, and shortages begin. Also, there's no allowance for smelling the waste from a 3000-head pig farm, and watching it pollute the water table, poisoning the nearby citizens, just for profit. What about the use of pesticides with the cancerous growths on illegal Mexican workers? How about the Monsanto cows with bloated bags shooting out puss all over the place?
wait a minute. I dare say, I'm gonna checkitout and see if I can do that.

You can argue that Farmville is a waste of time, but that would exclude most passtimes, and frankly, pretty soon, we won't have time for any passtimes.
Grandpappy Farmer will have his shotgun on the porch, looking to head off any police or robbers. Daddy Farmer will be out in the field guarding the cow with a shotgun to stop any rustlers. Mommy Farmer will be taking the kids to school and shopping, with a shotgun to keep from getting car-jacked. I mean real farmers. All hell will be breaking loose in a couple of years.

[cunning, socialist, smoking animals]
Anyway, let's compare that harmless story with the evil of socialism revealed in George Orwell's Animal Farm, his novel from 1945. In this book, Orwell tells us about a farmyard with cunning beasts playing the roles of famous Soviet personalities, Marx, Lenin, and so on.

Political Allegory
"wickedness, indifference, ignorance, greed and myopia
destroy any possibility of a Utopia"
You could run with that during any period in history. Today, it would have Tony the Pig Blair, George the Resus Monkey Bush killing the brown animals and stealing their....stuff. As you know, we are currently living through a period of socialism again,
corporate socialism.

[there's a lot of mileage in this anthropomorphic stuff, and no defamation suits]


checkitout: from Wikipedia

Animal Farm is a dystopian allegorical novella by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist,[1] was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, especially after his experiences with the NKVD, and what he saw of the results of the influence of Communist policy ("ceaseless arrests, censored newspapers, prowling hordes of armed police" - "Communism is now a counter-revolutionary force"),[2] during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel "contre Stalin".
....
Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005);[4] it also places at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is also included in the Great Books of the Western World.

The novel addresses not only the corruption of the revolution by its leaders but also how wickedness, indifference, ignorance, greed and myopia destroy any possibility of a Utopia. While this novel portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution (and not the act of revolution itself), it also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen if smooth transition to a people's government is not satisfied.

and I thought banksters were the most corrupt people

[williambanzai7]
It turns out that the Prime Minister of Greece
whom I thought of as a gunslinger, 2 days ago, for staring down the ECB,
is apparently benefitting from Greece's demise, and thus promoting it.

This is getting nuts. Gotta check into a clinic.

There's a court case going on in Greece but it could take years.
see stopspeculators.gr (in English)
I'll find the Keiser video for this soon

checkitout:

Coveringdelta
Accusations of Treason in the Greek Parliament
May 29, 2011
Leaving aside for a moment the obvious questions of criminality and treason that have arisen from the details of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Greek government and the Troika (IMF/EU/ECB), which concedes total sovereign authority of the Greek state over the fate of its own citizens to foreign banks, let us turn to recent allegations made in Parliament against the Prime Minister of Greece himself, George Papandreou.
Recently, in an interview on Greek television, Member of Parliament for New Democracy, Mr. Panos Kammenos, made allegations that if true, could very well constitute treason for the Greek Prime Minister, members of his staff and possibly members of his own family. These allegations were repeated by Mr. Kammenos on the floor of parliament and given support by the leader of LAOS, Mr. George Karatzaferis. These allegations are therefore, not made lightly, and have now been plainly put forth before the Greek people. They can no longer be ignored, and the Prime Minister is obliged to respond to them.
The gist of the allegations rest on the charge by Mr. Kammenos, that the Greek Prime Minister, Mr. George Papandreou and members of his team, presided over the sale of 1.3 billion dollars worth of credit default swap contracts (CDS on Greek sovereign debt) on or around December of 2009, shortly after coming to power. The 1.3 billion dollars worth of insurance protecting against a Greek default was bought during the spring and summer of the same year, by the Hellenic Postbank, a public banking arm of the Greek government. It is unclear what the intentions of the Postbank were when it purchased the credit protection. Clearly, the previous government that was in power at the time (New Democracy or N.D.) understood that Greece was headed towards a fiscal crisis, otherwise they would not have purchased the insurance. However, we do not know if the move was initially made with the intention of reaping private profit, or simply as a hedge by the government itself against it’s own default.
Leaving this uncertainty aside for now, we know that, so long as the credit protection remained at the Hellenic Postbank of Greece, the CDS contracts would function as insurance against the type of “credit events” that would transpire over the following twelve months. Indeed, the very insurance that was being held in public coffers by the Hellenic Postbank, is today worth approximately 27 billion dollars. Considering that Greece is now under duress to raise collateral for its “bailout” money, 27 billion dollars would go a long way towards preventing the privatization and sale of the nation’s assets to foreigners. Unfortunately, the Greek government is no longer in possession of this 27 billion worth of CDS, because it sold them in December of 2009, for a paltry 40 million dollar profit. The contracts were sold to a private firm for “high net-worth individuals” founded in 2009, by the name of IJ Partners.
IJ Partners, based in Geneva, has a number of well-known Greeks who serve as either managing partners or members of the board, including former IMF economist Miranda Xafa (who intermediated Greece’s dealings with the IMF), former CEO of Piraeus Bank (one of the banks named in a law suit as shorting Greek government bonds during the period in question) and Theodore Margellos, the infamous exporter accused of falsely passing off imported corn from Kosovo as Greek produce. I should also note that the firm’s Vice President, Mr. Jose-Maria-Figueres, shares board membership on a separate NGO with none other than the Prime Minister’s own brother, Mr. Andreas Papandreou Jr.
Unfortunately, the story gets much worse. Around the time that the Hellenic Postbank of Greece sold these CDS to IJ Partners, the Prime Minister’s office was consulting with the International Monetary Fund about how to proceed with what eventually would become the notorious 110 billion dollar Greek bailout package. News of these discussions had not yet leaked, and the Prime Minister had yet to address parliament on the matter. In addition, credit markets had yet to uncover the extent of the impairment to Greece’s national balance sheet, as the country’s bonds were still trading at below 200 basis points spreads from German bunds. In practical terms, this meant that anyone fortunate enough to have bought Greek CDS during this period would be in a position to make an absolute fortune. It also means that anyone who owned, or had a stake in Greek CDS stood to benefit directly from either a Greek default, or the perception that a default was increasingly possible, since this would drive up the price of credit protection, and thus the value of Greek CDS.
Implicit in these most recent and quite damming accusations therefore, is that the Prime Minister not only arranged for, facilitated and possibly forced the sale of a national asset (the 1.3 billion in CDS that would turn into 27 billion – a roughly 2,700% gain) to a private firm that he or members of his family had a personal stake in, but that he also did so during a period where he knew that the value of this asset would rise substantially. In fact, his own words and actions had the potential to positively affect the outcome.
If you will recall, it was during this time that George Papandreou decried the role of speculators in driving up the yields on Greek debt, by trading the very CDS contracts that he has now been accused of selling (and possibly buying through IJ Partners). Rising bond yields caused by such speculation single-handedly pushed Greece into the clutches of the IMF. If it were not for being priced out of the bond market, Greece would not be in the position that it finds itself in today.
And yet, in addition to all the things that I just mentioned, during this period where Greek bonds were being sold short (in some cases using naked short selling) by the major banking institutions in Europe and the United States (including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, RBS, HSBC, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Societe General, etc.), the Central Bank of Greece quite curiously decided to change the legal settlement period for shorting government bonds from 3 days to 10 DAYS. This had the ostensible effect of aiding naked short sellers who were able to keep their positions against Greek national debt open longer, thus driving down the price of the country’s bonds, spiking it’s yields, and pumping up the price of Greek CDS.
The criminal implications of this accusation are so immense that I cannot begin to contemplate what the punishment should be if it were proven to be true. What I can say is that Mr. Kammenos, despite the fact that he has put himself in a very precarious position by exposing this fraud in the public domain, is NOT THE ONLY ONE MAKING THE ACCUSATION. In fact, I had first read about the role of the Central Bank of Greece in this entire affair from a legal document produced by Dr. Kyriakos Tombras and Mr. George Noulas over 1 year ago. Unfortunately, the allegations seemed so damning that, at the time, I had a hard time coming to grips with their implications.
Normally, I would not proceed to give an opinion on this matter, considering that it is an issue for the courts. However, given the extent of corruption in Greece, and the urgency of the moment (new terms are being negotiated as we speak that could lead to further destruction of the Greek Nation), I must concede that I find the accusations more than just plausible. I find them highly probably, for all the reasons that I have cited above. The implication of false accusation by Mr. Kammenos, Dr. Kyriakos and others is far too damning, the details far too lucid and the silence of Mr. Papandreou all too deafening for these allegations not to have merit. As I said before, this is not the first time that we have heard of these accusations, and in all that time, their substance has not once, to my knowledge at least, been addressed by the Prime Minister, George Papandreou. At the very least, something feels very wrong here. If Mr. Papandreou himself was not involved in these actions, then he should know who is. Transactions of this magnitude do not simply go unnoticed to senior members of government.
This is a very urgent moment for the country. Terms of national surrender are being negotiated abroad as we speak that have existential implications for Greece herself. Her borders, her mineral and resource rights and the social and culture lining of her very womb are at stake. The Greek military budget is being gutted under the terms of the memorandum, just as Turkish ships are reportedly increasing their oil and gas exploration efforts off the Aegean coast and as the EU has moved to, yet again, challenge the national borders of Greece with the recognition of the European Federation of Western Turks of Thrace. The groundwork is being laid for the existential destruction of the Greek nation through diplomacy, debt, and who knows, even physical occupation at some point in the not too distant future.
This cannot stand. Greeks cannot and must not allow this treason to stand any longer. The memorandum signed in May of last year is null and void. It was treasonously conceived and illegally passed in direct violation of the Greek constitution. Our government cannot be trusted, and many of our “leaders” may very well be working on behalf of their own best interests and on behalf of the interests of foreign agents intent on stripping Greece of the VERY SOVEREIGNTY that her founders worked so tirelessly to ensure during the revolution against Ottoman rule and subsequent German occupation.
I don’t know what else to say. There is nothing left to say. Defiance is the only course of action left at this point. Greeks cannot trust their own leaders to protect that which is rightfully theirs. George Papandreou wishes to return from this weekend’s negotiations bearing “gifts” from the Troika that are nothing but ticking time bombs. The man is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Our country is being sold down the Rhine for morsels of bread.
I cannot stand to watch this continue for any longer.

Friday 27 May 2011

I can't live on 4 million pounds. whatamagonnadoo?

Pounds of what, potatoes? or as we say :"badaydas"

Another sad Brit chick star is all wobbly about having to give up half her money to stoopid
public services that don't work.

She's right. The banks and big stores that offshore their profits guarantee that public
services will always suck, until they stop.

[the Guardian was kicking the piss out of her today]

checkitout:

Guardian Rob Fitzpatrick
Adele's tax grievances won't resonate with fans
The singer claims she wanted to 'buy a gun and randomly open fire' when she saw her recent tax bill – but her gripes are as tired as the most moat-friendly Tory grandee
Tax needn't be taxing, the advert simpers, and while that might be true, coughing up your hard-earned will never be anything less than grievously unpleasant. Yet hearing Adele complain about being taxed on the great tidal wave of cash generated by her multi-million selling albums, it's hard to feel much sympathy.

Speaking to Q magazine, the Rolling in the Deep singer said, "I'm mortified to have to pay 50%! [While] I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

Now, I love Adele. But that doesn't exactly endear you to her, does it? Let's look at it again.

"I'm mortified to have to pay 50%!" The Beatles had to pay 95% - as did all the highest earners under two successive governments (Wilson and Heath) in the mid-60s. George Harrison wrote a song about it, can't remember what it's called, sorry.

"I use the NHS." Keep paying your taxes then or it'll be gone.

"I can't use public transport any more." The rest of us plebs still have to. Adele, however, will never be short of the sponds for a private car to Shoreditch House from now until the end of time.

"Trains are always late." What does that matter when you don't use them? And they're not anyway.

"Most state schools are shit." Actually, according to the most recent Ofsted report for the UK, "Just over two thirds of schools at their most recent inspection were providing a good or better education for their pupils. Pupils' behaviour was good or outstanding in 86% of schools." Of course, if rich people stop paying their taxes then they will become shit.

"When I got my tax bill in, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire." Now, you have to assume this was a joke rather than the first bitter taste of a full-blown psychotic episode, but it's still upsetting to hear this musician I admire seems as greedy as the most moat-friendly, port-stained Tory grandee.

Journey to the Centre of my Mattress

It turns out that HG Wells was quite the prophet
of the sexual revolution.
He had them waiting out the door, and around the corner.
Women, that is.

Forget all the popular pseudo-science novels that he wrote like:

Journey to the Centre of the Earth, sorry that was Jules Verne
5000 Leagues under the Sea, and this one. I don't know books, really
* The Time Machine (1895)- how to find time for sex
* The Wonderful Visit (1895)- goes without comment
* The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
* The Wheels of Chance (1896)- take a gamble on a chick
* The Invisible Man (1897)- you wouldn't that nickname from your mistress
* When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)- and presses charges
* Love and Mr Lewisham (1900)
* The First Men in the Moon (1901)- a euphemism for a woman's butt. They didn't have fake tan then, and they were a bit large.
* The War of the Worlds (1898)- nothing worse than a woman scorned
[radio interview with Orson and HG- Warheads]


Being an author left him plenty of time to get it on with all sorts. And apparently, he wasn't the DSK of the party. Women were hitting on him.

Mighty gentlemanly was he, I must say.



checkitout:
HG Wells: prophet of free love
HG Wells, author of more than 100 books, was also a prophet of the sexual revolution. David Lodge delves into his many affairs and, below, DJ Taylor considers his literary achievement
* David Lodge
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 March 2011 10.00 GMT


Wells was also a prophet of the sexual revolution of our own era. He believed in free love and practised it tirelessly. He was married twice to women he loved, but neither of whom satisfied him sexually, and had several long-term relationships, as well as innumerable briefer affairs, mostly condoned by his second wife, Jane. Of particular interest because of the scandal they aroused were his relationships with three young women half his age: Rosamund Bland, the secretly adopted daughter of Edith and Hubert Bland, who was actually fathered by Bland on Edith's companion and housekeeper, Alice Hoatson; Amber Reeves, a brilliant Cambridge undergraduate, also the daughter of prominent Fabians; and Rebecca West, whom he invited to his Essex country house in 1912 to discuss her witty demolition of his novel Marriage in the feminist journal The Freewoman, a meeting that led in due course to the birth of Anthony West on the first day of the first world war, and a stormy relationship that lasted for some 10 years. Reeves also became pregnant by Wells, by her own desire, with dramatic consequences. There were interesting liaisons with the novelists Dorothy Richardson (who portrayed Wells in her novel sequence Pilgrimage), Violet Hunt and Elizabeth von Arnim. Then there was Moura, Baroness Budberg, a Russian aristocrat who survived the Russian revolution as the secretary and probably mistress of Maxim Gorky and with whom Wells slept when staying in Gorky's flat in Petrograd in 1920. They met again after Jane's death in 1927. Moura was the great love of his later life and his acknowledged mistress, but refused to marry or cohabit with him. Wells has the reputation of being a predatory seducer, but in all the relationships I investigated, with the possible exception of the always inscrutable Moura, he was initially the pursued rather than the pursuer.

farmville vs farming

Humans have been farming for around 14 000 years.
Most of us have stopped. In fact, it's becoming impossible, in many countries,
for farmers to make a living. Something's wrong with that.

the instinct to farm is obvious from Farmville.
Talk about your f%^&&*8king stupid wastes of time,
but it does prove that farming is in the DNA.

So, start a farm.
With any means you have.
Illegally, even.
Everybody breaks the law (as per Stone St Advisors)

The world will need food soon, and if you're unemployed,
so do you. Du-uh


[don't mix those fertilisers, now!]

"Hoing" will take on a whole new meaning

stay tuned



consider that a divorce

Arnie takes on the Kennedy clan: His wife (Du-uh)
The last guy to do that was Onassis.

Let's watch.



In case anybody's been in a coma, the former Governator was divorced by his wife,
and the Old Dogg stories are coming out of the woodwork.
Apparently, Arnie had the CHiPs cops' Dignitary Detail ferry
hookers to him at a hotel. REGULARLY
[copyright Joe Heller]

checkitout: Zerohedge
California AG Launches Criminal Inquiry Into Schwarzenegger's Misuse Of Taxpayer Funds To Cover Up Affair
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/25/2011 23:32 -0400

And just as Wednesday appeared it would be (mostly) surreal news free. Radar online has just broken that "The Californian Attorney General will conduct what’s being termed an “inquiry” into former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s alleged misuse of tax payer funds to cover up sexual liaisons. In a bombshell exclusive, RadarOnline.com has learned the Office of the Attorney General, a branch of the Department of Justice, is conducting a preliminary evaluation into the scope of Schwarzenegger’s double life, which allegedly included using his state-funded security details to cover up women being escorted into his hotel room." That's good news: following the earlier S&P report that massive state debt overhang is not really helping economic growth, the funds saved from not buying hooker hoodies will go straight to the state's already broke educational, infrastructure and every other system.

More from Radar:

Veteran hotel security officer William Taylor said he witnessed the “Governator” using California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers and vehicles to ferry scantily-clad women in-and-out of his suite at the Sacramento Hyatt Regency where he and wife Maria Shriver often stayed.

“It makes me very angry just to think of what was going on at that time,” Taylor, who passed a polygraph test about his claims, told the latest edition of the National Enquirer.

"On three differed occasions after the governor arrived alone at the Hyatt Regency, CHP Dignitary Protection Services arrived in their official vehicles, black Ford Crown Victoria sedans - about one to two hours later with one or two young females.

"They'd hurriedly escort the women through the service entrance on the second floor parking garage to the elevator that went to the governor's private wing... the women would usually stay for two to four hours and either leave through the hotel's main entrance or be driven away by the CHP in the same official vehicles."

The Attorney General's office told RadarOnline.com "there will be no comment" about the probe, a criminal matter, however multiple department sources have confirmed the decision.

Taylor was head of security at the hotel and is almost certain to be interviewed.

Thursday 26 May 2011

there's gonna be a gunfight

[Showdown at the Plaza del Sol-ucion]

It looks like Greece vs the big boys.
they're fighting it out in the media, but someday,
they're gonna have "words", out in the street
with guns at the ready.

For now, the Greeks are out in the streets

having been woken up by the Spanish.

Despite culpability for alot of the mess in Greece,
I kinda like G-Pap (Greek PM's rap title)
and the fact that I think he's actually
staring down the big boys.
Takes balls!

I think that both sides will be overtaken by the events of the day

the whole system is about to implode, whether they kill off Greece or not
[2:30 "from now on, all the fights are fair." That's so Hollywood]

tune in tomorrow for all the blood and guts

Educationally stacked

This is not news, but it's importance has just come to me.

It's another example of blonde engineering.
If a woman can inflate her breasts (they're now adjustable),
emote reasonably well, in a bathing suit,
and defend poor, sweet animals, then she deserves to go to Oxford.
She's all blonde ambition. No airhead, she. She's had a good Canuck education.

Pammie Anderson went to Oxford, last year, I believe. She went to speak about vegitarianism.
She's the most prominent member of PETA. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...and Animalistic Lust
Her motto: "Try a vegetarian", er, "try vegetables, ok?"


This was one of the PETA posters. I suppose if the dons in Oxford were interested in
engaging her mind, rather than her boobs, they might have had a few questions
about the symbolism of said poster. So, just leave it to me.
Suspend your disbelief, if you will:
Q: are you trying to say that eating meat is akin to eating humans? Cannibalism? By the way, we're all agreed, your rump cut is scrumptious, except for Nigel. He has a foot fetish.
Answer? Uuuhm
Q: We're sure you're delicious, but you do realise that you are not 100% all natural, having those breast implants?
Answer? Uuuhm
Q: are we indeed little more than animals with our nakedness shamefully covered?
Answer: Yup
Q: If it helps, would you like to know that we're imagining you naked right now?
Answer? Uuuhm
Q: well, was it Cartesian dualism which separates us from the beasts, or Occam's Razor?
Answer: I do Double Cartwheels all the time, until I get dizzy, but I don't use a Razor. It burns. Especially the Brazilian ...area
Panel & Audience: ghasp!
Panel: I think we'd all like to be alone now. I think we're all in agreement.
Thank you and we'll see your Brazilian, er, we'll see you in Ipanema.

-Cos67 ¬(%^D>
checkitout:
Oxford mail
Pamela Anderson talks vegetarianism at Oxford Union
9:10am Tuesday 26th October 2010
PAMELA Anderson signed autographs and posed for photos with students after addressing the Oxford Union about vegetarianism yesterday.
The Baywatch star spoke to about 200 students and introduced documentary Glass Walls, narrated by Sir Paul McCartney.
The 43-year-old former Playboy model said she took up the cause after seeing her father hunt. She then persuaded him and his friends to give up the sport.
She spoke on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).
After the talk she spent half-an-hour answering students’ questions.
Omar Asfar, a 19-year-old Regent’s College student, said: “She sounded committed to what she believed in.
“She was looking well and afterwards she was very happy to sign leaflets and pose for photos.”


coming soon

Saturday 21 May 2011

sex twitter therapist, meet banker pervs

Further to my 'bald FACE lie BOOK', it seems others are bullsh*tting
on the web, and enjoying themselves, just like me.


There's the story of the Twitter doctor Dr. Thraft

-he's actually a comedian, with an audience of 5000, who wait
with bated breath for his next tip (it's good to wait)
[Relax. where's the money shot?]

some of Dr. Thaft's best sexologising:
"Make love tonight like you mean nothing to one another. Make it hard, make it fast, make it animal. (Afterwards hug each other)"
"Get to know your new partner. Spend an evening cleaning one another."
"Do not underestimate the female nipple."
"slowly licking each other's face is an exciting way to begin foreplay"
- He's so funny because the Net is so full of self-important people who have
nothing in the world more than some blogging skills. And because folks are gullible.

But, I wish a real sexologist would get to grips with these turds from Germany:

and there's the story of the German bankers who had a private party,
and paraded Hungarian hookers with colour-coded armbands
and then stamped them on the arm for good behaviour,
if you know what I mean.
[I've been keeping busy tonight]

This was a prize night for their best performing staff.
I don't think any other nation's men could be all at once
this perverted, yet
this orderly,
and so utterly without guile or shame.
"Ve heff to keep order mit ze fokkink"
"how can ve heff fokkink vithout order?" - Goebels
[I got stamped just above my butt! Bummer]

checkitout: 3 things
1 the movie up there is Body Double. Melanie Griffith is about the only good thing in the film, other than the Frankie show. As you can see, the film has more jumping around than all the 'Back to the Future' movies put together.
2
Twitter sex therapist exposed
Tweeter behind earnest yet explicit sensation Dr Peter Thraft, who prompted speculation he could be Steve Coogan, revealed
* Ben Dowell and Vicky Frost * guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 May 2011 18.36 BST
3 on maxkeiser.com
Munich Re unit made women wear colored armbands at reward party to indicate availability for sex
Posted on May 18, 2011 by stacyherbert| 36 Comments
Stacy Summary: Was Dominique Strauss Kahn one of the 100 guests? And what is a German corporation doing forcing women to wear colored arm bands and stamping them on the forearms? The Nazi imagery is not a mistake; it was no doubt planned to look the most incriminating should the videos of any of these 100 men ever be needed in the future.
* Munich Re Says Prostitutes Attended Reward Party
Women wore color-coded armbands, the newspaper said, citing unidentified guests, with red for hostesses, yellow for those available for sexual favors and white for women reserved for executives and top agents. After each trip to beds set up near the thermal baths, a woman would receive a stamp on her forearm, the paper reported.

Friday 20 May 2011

history is cyclical with occasional downward spirals

except the cycle we're on is headed straight off a cliff



[enjoy THIS ride, not the other ones]

For all of you who still believe:

in better living through technology, and then chucking it in the trash

in lower oil prices brought to you by foreign invasions

in growth through the expansion of credit

happiness is a cheap Chinese-made product

paper money is real money

in allowing pollution as long as it doesn't affect you (as far as you know)

that all the bad guys are the non-English speakers (cuz life is like the movies)

our democracy is better than living in China
etc.

... should all be aware that the amazing growth in rights and median
income which has occurred over the last 150 years is quickly being
reversed, and then we've got a poor economic situation that doesn't
seem to have an end.

Since you're likely unemployed, you can take time to look
objectively at the times we live in as just another
period of history.
We assume that progress is normal, and progress is always
forward and upward.

Now, instead, look at the history of humankind. There have been periods of progress
and periods of WTF times, like WW1 and WW2.
There are Dark Ages, there are periods of mass starvation.
And , we'll see those again.
There were periods in ancient times with a form of democracy.
and Lots of periods without democracy, with lots of slavery
and misery. We will see those times again.

Now, how's that for a History lesson?

checkitout: a man who sees the BIGGER, BADDER picture
Guest Post: This Too Shall Pass. So Will This, This, This, This, And This Too
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/18/2011 12:32 -0400
From Simon Black of Sovereign Man
....
Take a moment and conduct a mini thought experiment. Imagine that you're from the future many hundreds of years from now, researching what life was like in the early 21st century. You pull up an archive of newspaper headlines from the year 2011 and read the following:
"US Congress To Vote On Declaration Of World War 3 -- An Endless War With No Borders, No Clear Enemies"
"Blackwater hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together a secret force of foreign troops"
"10 killed in US drone attacks in northern Pakistan"
"US Officials Warn Terrorism Threat Remains Post-bin Laden"
"TSA Pat Down of Suspicious Baby Is No Big Deal"
"Treasury taps federal pensions as Uncle Sam hits debt ceiling"
"Fed chief Ben Bernanke says he's not worried about inflation"
"Global Food Prices Hit New All Time High After 8 Consecutive Months Of Gains"
"Over-50s suffer a lifestyle crash: Millions less comfortable than a year ago"
"UK And US Data Shows Stagflation Threat Deepening"
"Greek riot police, protesters clash over austerity " &&&
"IMF: Greece needs more austerity measures"
"IMF Chief no stranger to sexual assault allegations"
"Portugal on brink of bankruptcy"
"Contagion fears high as Italy drawn into crisis"
"Italian PM Berlusconi Faces Prostitution Trial in Italy"
To an observer who is not part of our time, it must all look like a really bad joke, like it just couldn't possibly be true. In the same way, we look back upon history and wonder with skepticism and incredulity how our long-lost ancestors have possibly allowed the Inquisition, the Dark Ages, genocide and slavery to occur.
We fancy ourselves so advanced and enlightened... but my guess is that history will view us in the same way that we see those unfortunate brutes of medieval times: misguided, misled, and totally self-deluded. ....

Thursday 19 May 2011

the big syndicates

drug kingpins

[Villareal- promoting the tax haven of choice]

banksters


How are they similar? Let me count the ways.

1 they operate outside the law
2 they are sociopaths. they don't care what harm their activities do
3 they shift toxic, deadly stuff around the world
4 they do it all for their commission, or cut. that's it. they create nothing
5 they have government help and work on behalf of the government


They work together
Since banks are leveraged around 30:1. they need cash.
If you look at the Wachovia story, the ones who supply the liquidity
are none other than the drug kingpins.


Wednesday 18 May 2011

bald FACE lie BOOK

None other than Julian Assange said that Facebook, Yahoo and Google are great spying tools for secret services anywhere.
That's why I'm anonymous. No pic. Not much to look at. Guy who writes blog entries to himself. uuh, wow
I'll be on cctv if anybody's curious.

I think that a new website should just be designed for people to
promote their own fake avatar lives.
Oh, I've just been told that's what Facebook is for.
Narcissistic, innit?
Facebook buddies are not friends, but it still gives some idiots
a warm fuzzy feeling.

Have you ever noticed now that anybody who is being sought will be found in a matter of minutes because most of those idiots, even criminals have their mug and details on Facebook?
You don't even need GPS and mobile phone tracking. And you can find out what they've been doing for the last 7 years.

I have a cartoon somewhere where it shows how Facebook has changed
High school reunions.
It's not "what have you been doing the last 20 years"
it's "what have you been doing the last 20 minutes"

[Granny's high school reunion]

Especially with 3G phones and instant updating



Facebook Faux-pas: How I can F%$^&k my life using Facebook
- the list is now too long to mention. Just google "because of Facebook"
from memory:
Teacher loses job due to nudey photos on Facebook
Facebook insults lead to assault
Facebook leads to married couple divorcing. Label yourself 'available'
Employee loses job because of addiction to Facebook
actual titles:
Robbed because of Facebook posts
Student expelled because of Facebook placenta photo
Man killed wife in Facebook row (fight)
Teenager committed suicide because of his status
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos
I could go on...


[from Stars of cctv- Hard Fi. Nice tip of the hat to the Clash, I say]

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Police thriller. How to catch an IMF bureaucrat

from Trade with Dave website:


Update: From the “can you hear me now?” file of global positioning systemic risk, here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal regarding how Mr. Strauss-Kahn was apprehended:

New details emerged of the scramble to detain Mr. Strauss-Kahn in the hours after the alleged incident Saturday. A key moment came, police said, when Mr. Strauss-Kahn called the hotel to ask if he had left his cellphone there. A hotel security official fibbed and said he did have the phone—then asked for Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s location to meet him and return it. Police made the arrest at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where Mr. Strauss-Kahn had boarded a flight for France.

more later

Invest in US dollar, get free wars

[by william banzai, Zerohedge]
It seems the US dollar has been rising of late, after falling for 6 months.
Why is that? Some would say that it's because the stock market is rising.
Well, they'd be wrong. It's a bubble.
P/E ratios are down, employment is down, confidence is down.

The precise beginning was the day that the US Marines broke international law
and took 80 guys to stage a bit of theatre in Pakistan.
The presentation of the dead Osama, Boogey man. [created a job opening]

What has kept the dollar up?
The killing of more brown people, this time, in Libya. Once again, against international
law. forget the UN thing, it didn't authorise bombing or political decapitation.

Never has been it been more clear (thanks Keiser) that the US dollar is just paper with
an army behind it.
"take this as your international currency, or die"
more later

New gameshow: Bank or Dare

[Now, testify!]
Reminder of my 'free houses for everybody', and 'death of a thousand cuts' story, where I said that banks should be sued to death. It's all coming true! and I was just bullshitting,er, um, prognosticating.

Follow me into an alternate universe, won't you?

Voiceover guy:
"It's the new gameshow, Bank or Dare, where we challenge bankers to dare....
and act like human beings,
show guilt and let the Public off the hook,
as a gift to humanity.
Fat chance, you say? Just watch."

Contestant number 1: Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan
Prize behind door number 3:
House in suburban Baltimore,
valuation $500 000 (pre-2008)*hint*

Gameshow host: "Alright. We have this home. 85% is owed on it."
Contestant 1: "Foreclose!"
Host: "Just a sec, son. The family with 3 kids haven't paid a penny in 15 months"
Contestant 1: "Foreclose, foreclose, godammit!"
Host: "Hold your horses, my friend" "The parents were both laid off, a teacher and and plant manager."
"Chances of the house selling for $250 000 are..."
Overdub: "15% over the next 5 years."
Contestant 1: "I'm bound by my shareholders to foreclose."
Host: "If you don't listen, you'll be bound and they'll have your hide. Okay?"
"Monthly bill for water, electricity, lawn upkeep, police protection, civic taxes...."
Overdub guy: "$2 000 per month"
Contestant 1: "If I foreclose, I get a commission."
Host: "You'll get committed alright, if you don't shut it."
"Or you could let the family have it free and clear for $80 000, its 1980 value"
Overdub guy: "which is what the price would be if it weren't for the housing bubble."
Contestant 1: "but, we are too big to fail. TBTF!"
Host: "Look, if you crash the economy again, and you will, it will be a sovereign crisis."
"Then you'll get zero, and people will hunt you to put your head on a trophy."
Contestant 1: "enough, enough""what do I get for all this niceness?"
Host: "Life.the mob, that is, the audience, will let you live."
Contestant 1: "I'll take it.""can I go now?"
Host: "we're not done with you yet" SHOUTS:"release the sled"
Host (to an old lady in the audience): "who are you betting on?"
Old Lady: "anybody who will whup that contestant's butt. He tried to foreclose on me!"


or http://youtu.be/7KQVmUTwx2k (the sled part)


Remember those houses with fraudulent mortgages (without papers) that were
cut up into 10 000 pieces?
Well, now! It's come to be that the housing market is so bad, because of banker malfeasance,
that banks see it's not worth their while to break the law, to
get their hands on a house. In the end they will be paying municipalities
for the taxes and upkeep of the properties. So, they'll be losing money.
The houses will not be sold for a good 5 years. So, they're walking away.
Those municipalities are themselves often close to bankruptcy, largely because
of the death of private credit markets, and fraudulent derivatives
that they bought from many of those same banks.
The banks are trying to get their money back by signing a deal with the federal gov.
They want to pay $5 billion for this (borrowed money) when it's worth $30 billion.
Nice try.
and this is just the beginning of their legal problems. They're a "litigation sinkhole", and they
can't cover their losses.

Epilogue:
I was wondering when all this blogging and networking was going to start paying off.
Now the mainstream media gets its reporters to occasionally steal a story
from the new media. Not me, but the sites I cite. I'm just a spinner.

I've been busting my skull wondering how it is that the banks can always win.
Well, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone just wrote the article that may have
turned the tide. I heard on Keiser today that Goldman's stock lost $6 billion TODAY!
This guy named Bovey in NY has told his clients to sell their Goldman stock!
People seem to think that it will become an embarrassment to the government
if they don't get their fat arses off their banker-funded chairs, and put one of the
big sharks in jail, even for a year. Look, DSK is in Rikers.

checkitout: 1 Dateline Bloomberg
Foreclosures Prompt Four U.S. Cities to Sue Banks for Mowing, Home Repairs
By Thom Weidlich - May 12, 2011 5:00 AM GMT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/foreclosures-prompt-four-u-s-cities-to-sue-banks-for-mowing-home-repairs.html
Four major U.S. cities that pay for the upkeep of foreclosed properties are trying to recoup the costs of services including lawn mowing, repairs and security by suing banks they claim contributed to their “urban blight.”
A federal judge in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 4 and another in Baltimore on April 22 denied Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)’s request to dismiss the predatory-lending lawsuits brought against the bank. A lawsuit by the city of Cleveland against JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Ally Financial Inc. is also pending before an Ohio judge.

In one case, Deutsche Bank AG, described by Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich as one of the city’s “major slumlords,” may be found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars, including restitution for current and former tenants, according to a statement by the city.

“We started out looking to sue as many as 16 lenders,” Webb Brewer, a lawyer who represents Memphis, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a tall order to fight all those banks at once. We never alleged that Wells Fargo was alone in employing these practices.”

The cities’ lawsuits invoke various legal theories, and some have targeted the banks as bundlers of mortgages into securities rather than as lenders. The cases brought by Baltimore and Memphis, which will now shift to pre-trial evidence gathering, are similar. They both accuse San Francisco- based Wells Fargo of violating the Fair Housing Act by so-called reverse redlining -- targeting black neighborhoods for predatory lending.
Buildings in Disrepair

Los Angeles sued Deutsche Bank May 4 as trustee of mortgage-backed securities and is seeking reimbursement for costs of property repair. The city accused the bank of buying more than 2,200 properties through foreclosure and letting vacant buildings fall into disrepair. The day before, the U.S. government alleged in a lawsuit seeking $1 billion that the Frankfurt-based bank lied to qualify thousands of risky mortgages for a government insurance program.
......
[GET THE WHOLE STORY, IT'S GREAT]
2 Reggie Middleton on Zerohedge: [27 April, this year]
I have warned of this event. JP Morgan (as well as Bank of America) is literally a litigation sinkhole. See JP Morgan Purposely Downplayed Litigation Risk That Spiked 5,000% Last Year & Is Still Severely Under Reserved By Over $4 Billion!!! Shareholder Lawyers Should Be Scrambling Now Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011. [I'd put more of the text, but frankly, I don't understand it. Thankfully Reggie, Keiser and some others do.]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/there%E2%80%99s-something-fishy-house-morgan

Sunday 15 May 2011

Cultural mission to Afghanistan

This is a call to all fans of art.
This was a really big Buddha, in Afghanistan.
Bigger than usual. Buddha was a fat bastard.
Anyway, this statue was carved out of a hillside,
over a 1500 years ago.
b4


after the Taliban blew it up

Some good old souls want to put Humpty Buddha back together again.
I hope they've got some Sooper Gloo.

But, I have to ask. What makes them think they can do this, and
not get blown up themselves? The Taliban is not exactly gone.

A fringe benefit for any venture could be the old Kabul Museum black market,
with lots of stuff ending up in the British Museum. Go look!
There's also the Baghdad Museum black market
and the Cairo Museum Tahrir Sq market.

Seeing a trend here?
Squash, support, loot, deliver to Western museum.
Collateral 'damage' of the Western desire for warfare.

Peace,

-Cos67 ¬(%^D>
checkitout: from Defense.pk
German experts: rebuilding Bamiyan statues possible
I google translated this from persian, so it might contain some errors.
German experts: rebuilding Bamiyan statues possible
Technical University of Munich, Germany, experts have said that at least one of two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan can be reconstructed.

Moderators repair of antiquities at the Technical University of Munich on Friday (25 February) were informed that their research over the past eighteen months to come to the conclusion that reconstruction of massive statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley "very difficult but possible" .

Two giant Buddha statues in March 2001 were detonated by the Taliban. Taliban militants had intended to destroy Buddha Statues to destroy the signs of Shirk and Budhism.

United Nations Cultural Organization (UNESCO) giant Buddha statues as part of the world's cultural heritage was considered so experts can check the University of Munich has asked to help rebuild statues.

Reconstruction Board of Antiquities at the Technical University of Munich has said that rebuilding sculptures is very difficult, because "the overall destruction of statues and the bulk rock and sand, they have become."

To rebuild the statues to traditional methods of restoration Antiquities latest computer to be used.

Experts believe the figure could Astkhvanbndy any new silicon building and then index it with the remaining pieces of original sculptures filled.

Statue of a three-dimensional model that has made pieces carved in their original location shows.

Munich University of experts to rebuild the statues of the Bamiyan Valley, or workshop should be established, or more than two surviving pieces of the statues are carried to Germany.

Remaining parts of the sculptures are held under the supervision of UNESCO.

Taking the cultural intercourse

Two giant Buddha statues, 55 and 38 m height, around the fifth and sixth centuries AD over the Bamiyan valley along the highway historical "Silk Road" were established.

The area to the tenth century AD Buddhism was one of Zyartgahhay Kish. In ancient caves and holes in countless thousands of Buddhist monks living around the statue and they worship.

New research shows that the two giant Buddha Mjms·h Bamiyan Valley in primary color and luster away from the intervals have been impressive.

Figures with garments of dark blue color to pink and was clad in orange. Different periods larger sculptures in red and white statue was smaller.

Experts to painting the statue of the impact of Hellenistic culture has been, since its Greek sculptures were always color. Likely that this tradition by Artshyan Alexander the Great is the area found its way.

Experts in the Bamiyan region of ancient times until about the fourth century AD mixture of Hellenistic and Iranian culture has been dominant. But the Bamiyan statues in the fifth century, and six deaths have been openly Pykrsazy style Chinese and Hindi have effect.

Decisions about the reconstruction project of the two large statues of Bamiyan, the Afghan government and UNESCO will be.

Just yesterday, he was the most feared man

I was just doing like the American SEC (SEX), and watching French-Maid porn,
but now it turns out that one poor Mexican maid, didn't not want to get made,
French-maid style.
Unfortunately, she ran into the latest little Gallic potentate.

Just yesterday, DSK made goverments sh*t their pants,
giving Sarko a tick, because he wanted to become
le President de la Republique.
and today,
he's just another Napoleonic-style bureaucrat with a Clinton itch.

I'm mainlining this sh*t.
Check this ode, below and the Strauss Kahn song, further below.



UPDATE:
As with all fun things in the schadenfreud game, this event may end up making things worse. Even though the IMF looks as rapacious as ever, apparently DSK was trying to encourage it to behave as a fair arbiter between governments, capital and workers. And apparently this has caused some animosity.
Apparently, DSK is the other nice guy from the evil IMF. Joseph Stiglitz was so nice, the IMF kicked him out. Now, he lectures on how to solve the crises. Unfortunately, he still thinks that money markets are basically a good thing, but nobody's perfect. Check the London School of Economics podcasts (it's an easy search).
Mike Whitney seems to think that the maid may have been a stitch-up job. It's been done before. Search Elliot Spitzer, former NY attorney general who was set up by the banks, with 'help' from the police.
ANOTHER UPDATE: THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Posted on May 17, 2011 by maxkeiser| 31 Comments
* IMF chief ‘feared political opponent would pay a woman more than $1m to allege rape’
The first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party – who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened. Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a ‘friend’ working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened.

The plot thickens
-Cos67 ¬(%^D>
checkitout:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20110516&articleId=24784
and here are a couple of paragraphs: by Mike Whitney
....
That push had been advocated by Western financial markets – and the Western finance ministries that serve them so loyally. Financial deregulation in the United States was a prime cause of the global crisis that erupted in 2008, and financial and capital-market liberalization elsewhere helped spread that “made in the USA” trauma around the world....The crisis showed that free and unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable." ("The IMF's Switch in Time", Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate)
So, Strauss-Kahn was trying to move the bank in a more positive direction, a direction that didn't require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital that moves in swiftly--pushing up prices and creating bubbles--and departs just as fast, leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries, and deep recession.
....
Here's Stiglitz again, this time imparting the "kiss of death" to his friend Strauss-Kahn:
"Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF.... As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund’s recent meeting: “Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.” [heart? I hear bankers puking- Cos67]
....
Strauss-Kahn broke ranks and ventured into no man's land. That's why he was set up and then crushed like a bug.
(Note: Strauss-Kahn has been replaced by the IMF's number 2 guy, John Lipsky, former Vice Chairman of the JPMorgan Investment Bank. How's that for "change you can believe in"?)
the end

Saturday 14 May 2011

the new Olympics for banksters

Since the banksters have taken all the money, there's none left to
juice up the athletes for the Olympics.
In future, we will just cut out the middle man, and let
the banksters compete against ? .... the public, who will have their hands and feet tied.
These are all sports, I assure you. They're actually life size.
These are no board games, they're real!
It's going on right now, in those towers in NY,
and those offices on Capitol Hill.

Sport 1 Monopoly, oligarchy version

Sport 2 Kleptocracy: A day at the office

Sport 3 the Longest Jump


sport 4: Greco-Roman wrestling


-Cos67 ¬(%^D>

the Chair of Satan

[the chair of the chairsatan-from FFFFound]
[Mr. Chairsatan, the Bernank]
[best ditch these before the expiry date 31/12/2010. oops. too late]

I'd better stop. The Chairsatan says that bloggers are to blame for the
lack of confidence in the US dollar.
Let me frankly say: "I'm sorry?" "Your arse says what?"
it has been said, though, that banking is a confidence game.
Well, then. Buy silver.

-Cos67 ¬(%^D>

checkitout: 2 things from Zerohedge
1
Central Planning Pavlovian Reaction: Chairsatan Speaks -> Dollar Plunges
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/02/2011 12:01 -0400

Call it central planning's Pavlovian reaction: the Chairsatan is speaking, which leads to an immediate plunge in the dollar. And as the flight to safety trade now means buy the dollar inversely with both hands, nominal assets benefit from the Bernank's third mandate: Russell 2,000 to 20,000, at about the same time as there are 20,000 representatives left of the US middle class.
2
Per Declassified Testimony, Bernanke Blames Blogosphere For Itemizing Disastrous Consequences Of His Actions, Says Goldman Is A Utility
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/15/2011 09:14 -0500

Following loud complaints by Zero Hedge over the weekend about the retention of Bernanke's FCIC testimony from the public's eye, yesterday the commission caved and agreed to release Bernanke's November 17, 2009 89-page closed session confidential transcript, in which, among other things, Bernanke complains about the... blogosphere. Arguably, among the most amusing comments are the circumstances which bring Bernanke to lament the surge of alternative media. On page 68, the Chairsatan, in responding to a question of why nobody could predict the disastrous consequences of Vissarionovich Jr's actions, we see another face of Bernanke - that of the man who deflects his gross incompetence which almost destroyed civilization as we know it... to those who worry too much: "I think there were people -- there were people saying -- including people at the Fed but others as well -- saying, in the year before the crisis, that risk was being underpriced, that spreads were very narrow, that markets seemed ebullient, that liquidity was, in some sense, excessive. There were -- you know, the way I would put it is, I think there were people -- not necessarily the same people -- identifying various parts of the problems. You know, there were people who were concerned about derivatives, there were people that were concerned about subprime mortgages, there were people concerned about the overall credit environment, there were people who were concerned about off-balance-sheet vehicles. But I think notwithstanding the claims of one or two people out there who are now sort of living on the fact that they, quote, anticipated in the crisis, I would still say that the interaction of these things, the “perfect storm” aspect was so complicated and large, that I was certainly not aware, for what it’s worth -- and it could be just my deficiency -- but I was not aware of anybody who had any kind of comprehensive warning. There are people identified -- and the trouble is -- and particularly in this blogosphere we live in now -- at any given moment, there are people identifying 19 different problems, crises." So there you have it: the next time the entire financial system collapses, which should be within a few years at most, and unless Mars bails the Earth out, this will be the last collapse, it will be the blogosphere's fault again, for identifying too many problems again, and for supposedly 'shouting wolf' when it has been right all along.

Some other highlights from Bernanke's declassified testimony which is a must read:

On the question of which banks were safe, and why JPMorgan, better known as the Fed's right hand and gold price suppression bank, was safe, when even Goldman wasn't:

Chairman Angelides: Can I ask a quick follow-up to what he said?

So what you said earlier, J.P. Morgan out of 13 was in a different position. Was there something that they saw or did that was definitively different in terms of market practice as an institution?

MR. BERNANKE: So J.P. Morgan was never under pressure, to my knowledge.

Goldman Sachs, I would say also protected themselves quite well on the whole. They had a lot of capital, a lot of liquidity. But being in the investment banking category rather than the commercial banking category, when that huge funding crisis hit all the investment banks, even Goldman Sachs, we thought there was a real chance that they would go under.

So I think the answer is that there were folks like Jamie Dimon, who -- you know, there is this classic thing that Chuck Prince said about having to dance when the music is playing. But that was exactly the wrong attitude. I mean, basically, if you were thinking about a longer-term -- a longer-term stability to your company, you want to think about what you have to do to make sure you’ve got plenty of reserves and protection against bad events and so on.

So there were some -- obviously, this -- to quote somebody else, Buffett: “When the tide goes out, you see who is swimming naked.” This was the thing that really separated the sheep from the goats. And the really strong people who really protected themselves came out better, and the ones who were relying on the general boom to sweep them along, they were exposed.

Most notable, is Bernanke's statement that any financial reform has to provision for the failure of Goldman, and more notably, says that Goldman is really a utility company under the current regime.

I just want to say this as strongly as possible -- the reform will be a failure if we could not contemplate the failure of Goldman Sachs. That is, there needs to be a system by which Goldman Sachs will go bankrupt and Goldman Sachs’ creditors could lose money. If we don’t have that, then we might as well treat them as a utility, because that’s what they are.

Odd: even "backward" Europe has that system now and it was just used. Furthermore, they don't bail out every single bank with the FDIC's assistance.... We do. Does that mean Goldman IS a utility? And if so, why did the bank just have a near-record bonus payout year?

Public transport gets a rise out of public

[copyright- Zach Hyman]

New York is trying desperately to get people back on the commuter trains.
Their latest gimmick is dancing. Thankfully, all trains come provided
with handy poles for such entertainment.

the basis of Scrooge is screw

/scroo/ge
/scroo/= screw
It's a story of the brothers named Koch.
A million is not enough. Nor a billion. They need to buy off politicians, and
astroturfing political groups, like the Tea Party to get Americans
to promote corporate policy.
Croneys. They fight for cuts to old age pensions, then petition
to keep their companies' socialist handouts. Hypocrits, writ large.
See . Learn

Friday 13 May 2011

Screw Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is Brokers of the Lost Aurum

[K Street cowboy]

JP Morgan is so full of itself from ruling the
US government, Federal Reserve, and the little people,
that it's going to take on Afghanistan's wiley tribesmen and the Taliban,
to get at the gold in them thar hills.

more later

checkitout:

J.P. Morgan's hunt for Afghan gold
By Fortune Editors May 11, 2011: 5:00 AM ET

A team of bankers starts to tap the country's vast mineral riches, with help from the Pentagon.

By James Bandler, editor-at-large

Villagers assembled for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the gold mine in Qara Zaghan. The U.S. government estimates that minerals worth nearly $1 trillion lie beneath Afghanistan's soil.

FORTUNE -- Qara Zaghan, Afghanistan: The four Black Hawk helicopters sweep down on this remote river valley, flying fast and single file. Snow covers the mountains' peaks, but the lower slopes look like rust -- dry, rocky, and bare. As we bank around the river bend, we see our first flash of green in the fields below and then the rectangular mud huts of the village, where hundreds of Afghans mass to greet us.

"That's the mine over there," one of my companions says, pointing to the cliffs rising above the village.

That's it? That's the gold mine? It doesn't look all that different from the forbidding country we've been traversing: just another pile of rocks and scree. The jet-lagged man in the seat across from me knows better. His sleepy eyes are suddenly alert. If anyone can wrest a fortune from Afghanistan's rubble, it is this man, Ian Hannam.

Arriving in a developing nation with his iPad and his enigmatic smile, Hannam personifies the soft side of Western power. He doesn't bend people to his will with weapons or threats. But there is no mistaking the dealmaker's impact: In his wake, mountains are razed, villages electrified, schools built, and fortunes made.

To Hannam, chairman of J.P. Morgan Capital Markets, Afghanistan represents a gigantic, untapped opportunity -- one of the last great natural-resource frontiers. Landlocked and pinioned by imperial invaders, Afghanistan has been cursed by its geography for thousands of years. Now, for the first time, Hannam believes, that geography could be an asset. The two most resource-starved nations on the planet, China and India, sit next door to Afghanistan, where, according to Pentagon estimates, minerals worth nearly $1 trillion lie buried. True, there is a war under way. And it's unclear how the death of Osama bin Laden will impact the country's political and economic environment. But Hannam is not your usual investment banker: A former soldier, he has done business in plenty of strife-torn countries. So have all the members of his team, two of them former special forces soldiers who have fought here.

Attending the ribbon cutting were (from left) mine owner Sadat Naderi; Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani; J.P. Morgan's Ian Hannam; and (behind Hannam) investor Pairoj Piempongsant.

As he flies to the mine for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Hannam thinks back over the past 12 months. This little mine, where operations have yet to commence, is puny by J.P. Morgan's (JPM) standards, but he knows it might be the project for which he is remembered. A lot of powerful people, including the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, are counting on him to demonstrate that the country is safe for foreign investors. Hannam has chafed at times under the pressure from the Pentagon, and the cold-eyed realist in him wonders whether unrealistic expectations are being placed on this business venture.

Hannam ducks his head and climbs out of the chopper, necktie flapping in the prop wash. As he trudges up the hill, even the jaded, 55-year-old banker seems swept away by the pageantry of the moment: the village elder in a ceremonial robe, the silhouettes of women watching from the ridges, the saluting Afghan soldier. Hannam is enveloped in a crush of local tribesmen chattering excitedly in Dari. One of them puts a garland around his neck. Another hands him a Ziploc bag containing a chunk of Afghan gold. A mullah utters prayers. Afghanistan's minister of mining gives a long speech.

Hannam and his local partner, Sadat Naderi, walk up the hill to pose for photographs. Naderi points to a narrow band of quartz that runs in an east-west line across the cliff side. It shimmers in the sun. That is the treasure, he says.

"Unless," Hannam mutters, "it's fool's gold."

Absurd risks vs. amazing rewards

Investing in conflict zones is often thrilling, but the great commodities rush that J.P. Morgan and the Pentagon are trying to spark in Afghanistan creates a risk/reward equation of a different magnitude. It's extreme at both ends.

When J.P. Morgan launched its Afghan initiative in 2010, violence was at its worst since the American-led occupation began in 2001. The Taliban have made a point of killing Westerners and have specifically said they would attack any companies involved in mining. Before our trip to the mine was done, our group would get a taste of the insurgents' ability to strike violently and unpredictably.

Then there's the Afghan infrastructure -- or rather, there isn't. Big mines need power, lots of it. Outside of cities, only 15% of Afghanistan is electrified. The mountain roads -- ungraded and often without guardrails -- are perilous, I learned the hard way, particularly in winter. Seat belts? No one bothers. You crash, you die.

If the brutal war and roads don't give a businessperson pause, the country's governance and corruption problems should. Massive fraud marred recent elections. Transparency International rates Afghanistan as the second most corrupt country on earth after Somalia. The last minister of mining was identified in a Washington Post report as the recipient of a massive bribe, an allegation he denied to Fortune. The current minister, who had been widely described as an honest reformer, has recently had his integrity questioned in State Department cables released by WikiLeaks. He, too, told Fortune he has done nothing improper.

But if the risks are absurd, the potential rewards are off the charts. Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of iron, copper, rare earth metals, and, yes, gold are buried beneath Afghanistan's deserts and mountains. This wealth has lain there mainly undisturbed for thousands of years as armies of Persians, Greeks, Mongols, Britons, Russians, and now Americans tramped above. Invaders have dreamed of exploiting it since the time of Alexander the Great, but no one has yet succeeded on a large scale.