Michael

In the following clip, Peter Schiff is Economics and the two Fox News neocons are whip_lash.



Gold, silver, and platinum are all bargains right now.

In this video, [Bad username: whip_lash> is the jackass arguing with Peter. <object width=]

Daddy has decided. It's the Audi S5 in blue:



Daddy likes.

Hat tip to whip_lash for finding this hysterical essay which explains that not only are the government's inflation statistics overstating inflation, but that your purchasing power is actually improving (The government states that inflation is about 2.7%)-- overthrowing the laws of supply and demand and setting the social science of economics back 10,000 years. Let's face it, if you can do this to the money supply and not negatively affect the value of your currency, then it would be immoral not to print as much money as the trees will allow and inject it into the banking system. (Don't lecture me about the material composition of the dollar, thanks.)



So there you have it: inflation is going down to the extent that it exists at all! (One must wonder what search terms Whip puts into google to find these comedic results -- "No understanding of basic economics but I write essays about it anyway"?)

I'm too muscular for the suit and my giant cock and balls wouldn't fit in there either.

Carry on.

Part whatever in a really long series of trying to educate whip_lash.

Courtesy of themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com, is this gem:

Is this what a bursting bubble looks like? It seems odd to me that, after having already burst at least two times this year, the commodities bubble would look like this on a chart:

What is ernunnos going to win from you again? Remind me.

And from The Daily Reckoning comes this hysterically funny item. A pure act of desperation. Of course, the worst is behind us, right?

U.S. Fed Now Accepts Credit Card Debt as Collateral

The Fed has become the mother of all credit exiles, accepting Wall Street's over-valued, under-performing, dead-beat loans. At least that is what it's done in a metaphorical sense. What did it do practically?

First the Fed increased by US$25 billion the amount of money it will auction to banks (commercial and investment) through its Term Auction Facility (TAF). Here banker people, borrow more. Please.

Second, the Fed expanded the list of collateral it will accept for asset-swapping through its Term Securities Lending (Facility). Remember, that's the one that lets banks and prime brokers swap mortgage-backed securities for Treasury bonds for up to 28-days.

The Fed is now expanding that list of asset-backed securities to include collateralized car loans, credit card receivables, and student loans. It's doing so because the lack of demand for bonds backed by those assets has had a real political impact in an election year. Students can't get loans for American universities because investors won't buy bonds issued by the banks who made the loans to the students. No funding, no college.

We don't know if you are as agitated reading about the Fed loan programs as we are writing about them. It's pretty agitating. You have to translate what the Fed has done from Central Bank speak to what it really means.

What it really means is that that the Fed has lowered interest rates as far as it can to deal with the bank lending crisis. It still hasn't encouraged banks to loan to each other, or investors to buy bonds backed by various kinds of consumer liabilities. But it HAS had some effects.

Remember last week we said the interest rate on U.S. Treasury bonds is below the rate of inflation? Well, American real estate speculator Sam Zell says this has lured some investors back into the market for residential mortgage-backed securities. "Is it in large volumes? No. Is it the natural first step in the evolution? Yes."

The evolution of what? New credit markets? A credit market where the Fed trashes the yield on U.S. government debt in order to make the yield on mortgage-backed debt look less trashy? One asset might look less trashy in a side-by-side comparison. But for investors, isn't this like choosing which leper you'd like to take home and introduce to your mother?

Our take is this: the Fed has probably stopped cutting rates for awhile because it's apparent that cutting rates has not solved the problem in the credit markets. That problem is still the same: poor asset quality. But even on that score, not everyone agrees.

Whip, buddy, face facts: life in the US is about to change dramatically for the worse. Good luck!

Hotness being hotness.


Evening on the beachfront.




I like this make and model. I might get this. Only costs 34k Euro new.

- Apparently the iPhone is coming to the 3rd world this Summer. I think I will buy one. Unless, of course, anyone has a better suggestion.

- I just found an old army friend using the power of Google: Stalking Made Easy.

- Crys is due in like 5 weeks. Almost a daddy.

- I eat salad at least once per day dating back 6 weeks. Unheard of for me.

- Someone who introduced chocolate brownies or the like to this island would be worth millions in days.

- Girls here are very fashion conscious but don't seem to understand that those outfits don't fit them.


- I often see couples here which remind me of that old nursery rhyme: "Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. And so between the two of them they licked the platter clean.


- I'm heading out to some car show here in Capo. I need to buy a vehicle. Suggestions? I like the Infinity FX look a lot. Give me some ideas.

- Oh yeah, I decided I am not renewing my paid LJ account for IKilled007. If someone else wants to, feel free!

I went outside this morning and saw this when I looked up.


Of course, that means that not too long after, I saw this.


( To see what else I saw, click here. )

That's my life. How's your life? What's going well? What's going shitty? What are you doing to move more toward my life?

Can someone find me the video for the episode "The Waiting Game" from the television show "Monsters" please? Thanks!

Ok, a lot of you have questions for me. Ask them in this post. Sorry if you have to repeat your query from another post, but this is much easier for me. I'll answer any intelligent question as specifically as I reasonably can.

Hit me.

Some shit from Sant'agata and the mountains and whatnot:





( 18 or so more )

Cefalu is about an hour or so west of Capo and is really, really old. Like Venice, the water comes right up to the buildings off the seawall. Cool stuff. It's a major tourist destination in Sicily, and we spent most of the day there. Here are some pics:





( 38 more )

Well, I've been living here in Sicily for about two months now, and while some of you consider me to be a tourist, I assure you I expect this to be my home until the good Lord sees fit to call me back. I have complaints about life here, of course, and if I didn't have certain advantages which other immigrants don't, I likely would have many more. While I won't delve into too much detail, those include a very cush job, an ability to understand the language, wealth, and being connected. I wouldn't recommend this move for most of you. Sicily is a nice place to visit, but you don't want to move here without knowing people. Case in point:

We were at dinner a few weeks back at one of our favorite restaurants, Ramona's, and a young man (early 30s) dressed in a coat and tie sitting near us overheard Crys and I speaking in English. He politely interrupted us and told us he was an American who visits Sicily every year for a couple of months and that he and his sister were trying to start a television station in Brolo or someplace nearby. He works in television production and his sister works in movie production and he figured there was a demand for programming here and so on. He lamented to us that he had never seen such bureaucracy as he has since encountered. Waiting for hours to talk to people whom he isn't convinced even exist. Trying to get licensed. Told to va a Roma (go to Rome) with his complaints. We listened and feigned sympathy, but we had heard how things work here from Crystal's manager who told us that Americans come to Sicily thinking they have a great idea but they run into stiff resistance. In this case, we surmised that one of the families in Brolo probably owned and operated a television station and didn't want competition, so they likely invented a licensing procedure out of thin air and started running this guy around until he gave up. Which he did, by the way. It was great seeing the application of the principle with our own eyes.

Now I know this doesn't sound like some Libertopia or Ancapistan, and to be sure, it isn't. But it's also not Bezerkeley or Taxachusetts. Families run the show here, not governments, and so one form of tyrrany has been replaced by another. Yet...

The tyranny here is more tolerable because it's unobtrusive. No one is in your shit. You are left alone as long as you don't rock the boat. There's plenty of room for progress, and not all of it is managed. But what there is no room for is crime and decay. You will show honor and respect to your fellow citizen or you will be outcast or worse. But like all tyrannies, even more tolerable ones, there are significant downsides.

In Sicily, things move slowly when they move at all. If you want to build a house, it might take 18 months to 2 years. Want to get internet? 3 weeks to a month. Want to meet with people to discuss business? Domani (tomorrow). Everything is domani here. Domani domani domani. You need to get up and get started at 8am if you have shit to do, because everything shuts down around noon and doesn't reopen until 4ish if it reopens at all. You do NOT want to go to the bank. Transactions that take 30 seconds in the US take 2 days here. Cashing a check? Come in at 8am, grab a number, leave, go run errands, come back at 4:30pm and hope you get seen. I am quite certain the Louisiana DMV based its operations on the Sicilian banking industry. Of course, this kind of stuff is predicated on not being connected. If you have friends in high places whose parents were friends with the parents of people you need to meet with and so forth, then you get shit done at a pace similar to the pace in the US.

And then there are the half-built structures all over the island. Many people mistakenly assume that mafia funds-siphoning is responsible for this, but I have it on good authority that building permits expire before construction gets finished in many cases which causes construction to cease pending another permit.

Some things work better, some worse, but the quality of life is definitely better than the US. For one thing, there is no crime. No robberies. No rapes. No carjackings. No muggings. No nothing. What there are are infrequent but targeted murders between rival families; these flair up and then cease, flair up and cease. Bystanders don't fear these "wars", but they are dangerous for the participants, obviously.

Point being, if you're raising a child and have a hot model significant other and want to live in a safe, secure, self-sufficient family-oriented environment with great food and a relaxed lifestyle and beautiful landscapes and stunning beaches, Sicily is the place to do it. But it ain't perfect. But nothing is.

More later.

Another beautiful day in this communist paradise. Sure, it may be a beautiful and self-sufficient little island mostly immune to world economic downturns, but it has two serious drawbacks:

1. No indigenous hotties.
2. World powers use every excuse in the book to roll through here with their armies during times of war.

Hopefully the United States won't manufacture some reason to bomb my little slice of heaven. I'm thinking of toning down my posts though. I'd hate to be used as the scapegoat for the seizing of olive farms.

Anyway, with no further ado:





( 17 more )

I notice I get fewer and fewer replies to picture posts. Should I take a break? You guys had enough for a while? It's all the same shit anyway.

You know how the Feds claimed that the economy grew .6% in Q1, 2008? Well, whip_lash, that's based on a 2.6% inflation rate. Here's Peter Schiff (the guy you consider to be a douchebag) explaining reality to people who have no comprehension of real economics. Want to have some fun? Use the "Inflation Calculator" on the BLS' CPI page to see how little inflation there has been. Let's see what we get...

I plug in $1 in 2007 and it tells me that it "has the same buying power as" $1.03 in 2008. Even by the idiotic definition used to define a recession (a decline in a country's real gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year), we're (oops, sorry, old habits die hard) you're in a recession. The other definition used is: "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

Unless, of course, it's not a recession. If it's not, what is it?

"Considered a rare but extreme form of recession, the start of a depression is characterized by unusual increases in unemployment, restriction of credit, shrinking output and investment, price deflation and/or hyperinflation, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as violent currency devaluations."

But you think things are improving already, right? Man, are you in for the shock of your life. Don't worry, I'll be here to hold your hand through the pain, all the way up until the time you drop your internet to cut costs.

You've only yourselves to blame for this deluge of pics. You hounded me relentlessly.

Today's pictures are of the jungle behind my condo. I spied a vicious predator stalking its prey. He might be hard to see in some pics for you pedestrians, but I caught his movements instantly with my natural special forces abilities. That's why I was point man for ODA-2044, and you can't find your way to the bathroom at night.

With further ado, I present my series Wildcat:





( 13 more )

PLOP!!

So the Gulf States (the middle eastern ones, not the US ones) are going to:

1. Stop pegging their currencies to the US Dollar,
2. Stop making all oil sales in US Dollars.

See this: http://stocks.us.reuters.com/stocks/charts.asp?symbol=.RICIX

That's an index that measures a basket of commodities. It's not manipulated like the CPI (for some insight into that, read here among others: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp). Anyway, see that index? It's going to the moon. At this point I don't think even legislation like the outlawing of private holdings of precious metals can stop it. The US Dollar is toilet paper in the next 2-3 years. It's wallpaper. It's shit.

Already, the metal in a pre-1983 penny is worth 4 times the face value (copper) of the coin. Think about that.

It seems that today is some sort of labor holiday in Sicily (Italy? Europe? The World?), so we went to one of the really small farms for some good food and relaxation. Lots of pics behind the cut. The ones which look like duplicates aren't really. Look closely as the cam zooms in. Anyway, enjoy:





( A lot more (horses, goats, chickens, dogs, lizards, and a hairless ape) )

Peter Schiff:

The grainy footage of Great Depression soup lines and Hoovervilles now in heavy rotation on the major news outlets has been largely counterbalanced by a parade of economists who reassure us that such a protracted downturn is currently inconceivable. Their confidence stems primarily from the belief that government safety nets enacted since the New Deal, together with a Fed chairman who is a self-professed depression buff, will prevent a replay of the 1930s. As usual, this analysis is woefully optimistic and sidewalk pencil sales may in fact be a growth industry.

Although Bernanke may have spent much time studying the Great Depression, his understanding of it is anything but sound. That epic slowdown resulted from a series of policy mistakes, first by the Federal Reserve and then by the Federal Government. Bernanke’s view is that these mistakes were simply not large enough. What the current Fed chairman does not grasp is that the seeds of the Depression were sown during the “roaring” 1920s when the Fed, in an effort to support the British pound, kept interest rates much too low. It was this unnaturally cheap money that fueled a raging stock market bubble. In 1929, when the Fed finally came to its senses and raised rates, the bubble finally popped. In his reading of this history, Bernanke ignores the effects of the overly easy policy and simply lays blame on the tightening.

As the recession progressed, both Hoover and Roosevelt, in politically inspired efforts to ease the pain, repeatedly interfered with free market forces working to correct the imbalances. This ultimately turned what would have been an ordinary, though perhaps severe recession, into what we now call the Great Depression. This time around, the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed blew up even bigger bubbles and both the Fed and the Federal Government now show an even greater commitment in preventing free market forces from rebalancing our economy. As a result, similar to the way that the “War to End all Wars” had to be rechristened after 1939, future historians may need to come up with a new term for the Great Depression.

Rather than acting as safety nets, the programs now being devised by government will act more like snares, further impeding market forces from righting the ship. But for those who insist that a new “New Deal” is needed, it is important to retain a sense of scale. Prior to the massive expansion of Federal programs in 1933, the government was very small relative to the economy of that time. Though I believe that many of the economic policies of the New Deal were unwise and simply prolonged the Depression, at least back then we could afford them. Today of course, the Federal Government is already enormous, and any increase in spending will either have to be financed by further borrowing from abroad or though additional money printing by the Fed.

For his part, Bernanke blames the Depression on the Fed not printing enough money. Had the Fed done precisely what Bernanke now thinks they should have, the Great Depression would have been much worse. Had the Fed tried to re-inflate the stock market bubble or keep it from bursting in the first place, it’s the dollar that would have collapsed, and Depression-era America would have looked liked Weimar Republic Germany. As bad as the Great Depression was, hyperinflation would have made it even worse.

The good news is that there is still time to alter course and steer clear of both hyper-inflation and depression. The bad news is that if we remain on our current course that is precisely where we will end up. Our days of dominating the global economy are clearly coming to an end. The only question is will we follow the path of Great Britain or Argentina?