Tuesday, February 16, 2016

SAR #16047


The money was good, and it was there for the taking.Jesse
Clarification: It turns out that Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 says that the president shall nominate justices to the Supreme Court unless the president is a Democrat in the fourth year of his elected term. It is too bad that Justice Scalia's actuarial event did not occur at a time more convenient to the Republicans – it is awkward for them to try to prevent the clear wording of the constitution from being followed in replacing a firm proponent of “original intent”.
Lessons Learned: Eight years into the Great Dismal Swamp a few things have become clear, the most important being that the world's central banks – specifically the Fed – have failed to drag us out of the doldrums. After bailing out the big banks with trillions, wasting a few hundred million on a puny pretense at putting people back to work, flinging money at the problem with QE I, II, and III, (globally this comes to $12.3 trillion) and then pretending things were turning up well enough to engineer an ill-timed interest rate hike... all this and now we're being prepped for negative interest rates, which are really, really uncharted territory. No one really knows what is going on. “No one knows what the Fed is really trying to accomplish, or what it can accomplish, or how to go about accomplishing it.”
The Skinny: Oprah bought a big chunk of Weight Watchers not because it works, but because it doesn't. But she knows from long personal experience that permanent lifelong weigh loss is simply not achievable, but the desire to do so is everlasting – as are the profits to be made from the needy.
Feedom Of Choice: The British government has decreed that deciding who you want to buy things from is not a basic right, especially if you boycott arms makers, fossil fuels, tobacco producers or illegal Israeli settlements.
Ultimate RICO: US families whose relatives have been killed by Mexican drug cartels have brought suit against HSBC on the basis that it knowingly participated in and profited from the criminal activities of the cartels – and use as evidence the bank's admission that it laundered over $800 million for the cartels, an act for which it paid nearly $2 billion in penalties.
It's Different This Time. Really: Those who make their living stealing your living claim that the economy is not entering a recession, this is not 2008, and – for the first time ever – the market is wrong.
Better Never Than Late: Is there really long suppressed evidence that Sirhan Sirhan could not have and did not shoot Bobby Kennedy?
Porn O'Graph: You don't always get what you pay for...
The Parting Shot:

7 comments:

McMike said...

re Scalia. Indeed, good point. You gotta hand it to the wingnuts: it's a curious way to honor the supposed legacy of Scalia.

Of course, not even Scalia stood for what he claimed to stand for. He stood for the same thing the GOP stands for, enhancing the power of the right, and to hell with the rationales du jour.

McMike said...

re: perverse incentives for diet product. Indeed. So, lucky for us this phenomena does not carry over to the drug companies. If the collective net effect of their products was to actually increase demand for their products, surely they'd stop doing it.

Gegner said...

We've been trained/conditioned to think in terms of 'us/them, Dem/Rep because you are being forced to buy-in. The Us/Them divide has always been 'have/have-not' and depending on how you were raised, usually determining which side you favored. {it's not unusual/surprising to find people who haven't a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of counting themselves as among the 'haves' (mostly because they believe if the have enough faith, they too will eventually 'have'.)

Self-deceit even trumps self-interest but stupid is as stupid does. Let us not forget, while ignorance can be fixed, stupid is permanent.

Politics has 'evolved' since the founding of this nation and it evolved along the line it has throughout history. The masses are 'too ignorant' to rule. [Mind you, this does nothing to 'qualify' the 'owner class' as rulers, but if they were 'smart enough' to swindle you out of your choice then you shouldn't complain about not being given a choice...]

Oh, and don't confuse the usurpers 'genius' in buying your government out from under you with intelligence. It is just one more aspect of money being funny, and people being gullible beyond belief...which is to point out that they gyp'd you using 'funny money', which isn't so much 'smart' as it is clever. {for those of you who foolishly equate 'rich' with 'smart'.)

And I apologize for anyone that is offended by my belaboring the obvious, the truth hurts and it's a set of circumstances you were born into...which is to point out things have NEVER been 'right'.

But I digress once again.

There are NO Democrats just as there are no Republicans...there are only 'haves' and 'have-nots'. You can't fight the problem if you can't keep the opponent in your sights.

There isn't a nickle's worht of difference between (today's) version of democrats and republicans, neither represents the will of the people and it is not either unkind or untruthful to say that they are all 'opportunists', out to do the most good for themselves.

[Bernie is the only one 'on record' as running to make this a better world for us all, which is all any of us can hope for! With age comes wisdom.

Some people remain children all thier lives...yeah, I'm looking at the 'haves' clown car.

Remember, can't fix the problem if you can't identify it. It's how they keep us at each other's throats when we should be slipping a noose around theirs.

kwark said...

RE "Lessons Learned": I'm inclined to think that the sociopaths running central banks and their fellow travelers know precisely what they're doing - extracting as many resources as possible for their clients for as long as possible. It's probably true that they don't know where their policies will take us but I don't think they care because they're confident the world's police and military will be there for them should the worst happen. And there's power and resources to be grabbed amid chaos.

kwark said...

RE "Porn O'Graph": Oh please, let's not confuse the issue with facts about healthcare value for the patient's money. Healthcare in the US is about value to corporate management and the shareholder first . . . actual patient healthcare is far down the line.

McMike said...

re kwark. Indeed, I tend to give the elite the benefit of the doubt. They know exactly what they are doing. It's just not necessarily what they SAY they are doing. And certainly not why.

Now, as far as consequences and collateral damage, they care too little to be clueless.

Tulsatime said...

LESSONS? It has always seemed questionable, at best, that lowered interest rates spurred recovery. If anything, the last 20 or so years in Japan, the clone of western economy, shows that it does not help at all. Interest is supposed to be the market way to price risk, so lowering rates would seem to turn off the primary market function. And negative rates, well that is just formalized deflation. Nothing in the known world lives by contracting, so there seems to be a major shift afoot in the affairs of man.