Sr. Pessimist

Online Ad Spend: $42 Billion by 2011

That's a lot of dough. I look up and see $42 billion. I don't really care about money. It's just numbers. I know more about numbers than most people, and money's just a superstition. The war in Iraq cost a lot, maybe $2 trillion after all is said and done. $600 billion in activities so far. So the government is in debt, which will collect taxes from overworked underpaid born-workers. When the workers are robbed of everything capital, then the government will take out loans until it's no good for a loan anymore. Then I'll be in my mid 30s or mid 40s, when the US Dollar is worth 1/2 what it's worth now in terms of goods and services. Nothing I'll go chasing anymore. Apply equity to capital and you're ensuring you'll never be rich. Very rarely does capital-equity melding make the active worker rich. He works because he is mentally and physically healthy enough to work. When wasted, he resorts to a destitute state of ill health in mind and body, where he is inconsequential to the betterment of others and is placed in a managerial position, where he rots to the tune of $100k annually. If a wasted war is worth $2 trillion, and online ad spending is worth $42 billion, then what is the US Dollar worth? Was Saddam a really bad guy for the US? What are people chasing all day long for hell's sake?

Good Retail Sales -- or Bad?

No respect for USD. Live as you wish, life is over if you live it in America. Life doesn't count if you live in America. The labor equity is going somewhere, but I don't know where. I mostly see rich severing their capital on art. Artwork is made by proletarian talent and is sold for high prices. Why make $8 billion like Steven Cohen if your primary use for it is to buy $300 million in artwork? Sculptures and paintings. A big house. Not a small one, which is worth $20k in raw labor equity and materials, but a big one, which is worth $50k or $100k in materials. The rich just buy overpriced stuff.

The proletariat consumes what they need to persist, under stringent conditions. It's slavery. And inflation devalues the US Dollar in what appears to be a well-planned crash course to bleed the country dry for all it's worth.

But art is brush strokes from a painter, while electronic dinky-bots come by the crate from China on huge boats. There is more work being done than is being consumed. Where is all the stuff going? My suspicion is it doesn't add up. I know corporate job holders don't work. How many people don't contribute as much as they withdraw? I just find it hard to believe that the country can be in such bad condition if artwork from a select group of artists is the focus of capital equity severance of the rich.

Breakout? Top? Wait and See?

Day traders.

Bank of England Cuts Rates: Politics Above Everything

England cutting rates like that isn't far from lock-step with America. That's poor decoupling.

One thing I know the governments know is where the high skill of the world is. I want to know who the other quality proletarians are. Mediocre workers who can't materialize miracles don't pull much sway. If there are 100 such in Europe and equivalently 100 in America, that's what matters. Then I have a better idea of what the regions are going to do.

Hedge Funds: Reports of Industry Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I was way off with the hedge fund estimations, if the above numbers are more or less correct.

Are those cooked numbers? I can't imagine that they are fully correct. Unsustainable earnings?

Hedge funds seem to mirror the corporate trend of merging [and acquiring]. Since the quantity of capital gives the quality of the capital, capital systems under distress exhibit consolidation much like a semiconductor industry yielding slim profit margins. Big hedge funds can pull more than small ones. Some of these have nasty huge numbers to play with. I can't even imagine the amount of evil that can be inflicted with the 11 digits of volatile, reactive liquid solvent ready to capture equity solutes and turn these very large lakes into streams and rivers.

But I still strongly question the future of any optimistic numbers like these. We are rapidly approaching recession in America. In fact, I believe we're in recession. That's not bound to be good for hedge funds. Goods and services shrink, meaning less equity for the capital, and what are hedge funds but lakes of capital wanting of equity?

As European Central Bank Holds Rates, Inflation is Non-Existent in the U.S.

Since we're seeing currency problems everywhere, it may be a worldwide recession we're coming upon. Europe worried about workers demanding greater wages? Okay. Lemme tell you how so NOT jealous I am of $100k corporate goons. They are owned by the corporation, and can't do anything except point their finger in the general direction of the friend that got them in there.

My service equity development capabilities are world-class. I can demand the greatest pay for my algorithm design services, for instance. The world of needs is open to a world-class software programmer. So if the greatest pay is for a European firm who can't merge a couple of databases, then I can do that job for the equivalent of one year's salary for a corporate goon with a friend. Plus I get to sip espresso and look over the Mediterranean next to a girl I met out there, and since I'm still single, I wouldn't be cheating on anybody back home.

But back to the non-sexual-tangent subject, Marx predicted the world would be currency-free. A dictatorship of the proletariat would be encountered. Maybe cream-of-the-crop workers worldwide would all just demand the best pay so they could live it up. I believe I came face-to-face with a German top merit of the software industry when I took my Canadian escapade. Consider if he and I found ourselves in a discussion, and we talked about job opportunities. He and I were both under consideration for the same contract, and further he and I were the only ones in the world who were available to perform the required work. What if, to maximize profit, I opted out of one such contractual consideration while he opted out of this one? Then he and I would both maximize our pay among the two top jobs in our job schedule considerations. That's us- proletarians- dictating our wages. Further, the value of such a barter agreement is found in how both our paychecks are perhaps 20% greater than before.

So with our global world, currency is worth less and less, and perhaps the Marxist theory will come into play with perhaps a global depression preceding a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Stop Writing Eulogies for the Dollar

728 million in Europe right now. America has 300 million. Europe is on the decline in population. America is on the increase. China claims their population problem is taken care of by 2030.

I'll add something. I read (if I'm correct) that China rewards rote memory capability over critical thinking skills. America is corrupt as hell, but a lot of different minds can trade equity for thrice the average income. Garbage trap minds are useless in engineering disciplines. I'm about broke right now, but I'm slated to enter the upper class in a couple of years for some work I've done because I encountered an opportunity to choose between focusing on what I was doing or pursue a very risky goal, and chose the path less traveled. Generally, in China, unless you're among that 1% that makes it to the best school (Peking University), either make it to secondary school and accept it, or learn to retread tires.

I can see how a barrista serving coffee should probably earn enough to live on. Triple his or her pay and that's closer to reasonable ($20 an hour or so). Out in Turkey girls work coffee shop jobs and get really reasonable pay- enough to live on. However, they get very comfortable with a stagnant equity development capability. They don't have much incentive to pursue a diverse skill set.

I also heard that in Sweden everything is handed to you. That's my idea of an ideal country. But this is not the first time I've heard that Europe has a rapidly aging population and is facing a severe skilled talent shortage of about 20 million able-minded highly-skilled workers.

Now my understanding is that capitalist expansion carries with it an expiration date on the system. It's a very vicious system, but in so being has a greater capacity to survive among other systems (where you find other vicious systems). My question now is how Europe affords to treat its young people so well yet is able to guarantee its older people such a strife-free retirement.

Italy certainly does seem to need to be schooled on how to do an economy right. 3 hours of ciesta luncheons with a party every night and maybe 4 hours of work during the day is as much as I heard about the Italian work ethic. Switzerland seems to enjoy its influx of Italian migrant workers to do their work for them. As happy as the bowls of pasta and bottles of red wine sound, the party's got to come from somewhere.

What the hell is going on in the rest of the world out there? I thought America didn't have its act together.

Inflation IN-Inflation

Well, even if we run out of helium, hydrogen-filled balloons are bound to be more fun to pop.

As Banks Opt Out, What is the Real Purpose of Paulson's Super-SIV Plan?

Perhaps the wars in the Middle East were mostly an attempt to secure equities sufficient to cover the under-wraps debts at the critical banks of the system. Invading weaker countries in the Middle East and stealing their oil would theoretically provide the big banks- the financial identity of the US empire- with something to back the IOU. These IOUs mount to nearly $100 billion with Citi alone, if I read it correctly. The rich are the recipients of the initial debt principle, and the American slaves are trapped in the US Dollar system to cover some equity obligations. But if the capitalist system has already reached its expiration date, there's only so much you can do to torture slaves into working to place equity on the unpaired capital (the capital due to receive adequate equity by the debt's terms). But if the merit-poor rich simply can't push the capital-poor workers hard enough to cover the nasty debts, then wars are the last option to cripple other foreign lands into servitude to the ailing US system. In this case, either pipeline the oil out of the Middle East and steal it for ourselves or at least make a second Israel out there where they provide the US with proceeds from the oil. This would cover for the systemic debts incurred over periods of time where the rich robbed the poor more freely to only worry about the cost later on.

As Banks Opt Out, What is the Real Purpose of Paulson's Super-SIV Plan?

Every day of work I've surrendered to the system seems like a lost piece of my life. Now that I know so much about America, I feel that any good I do for the individual clients I see is trumped by the feeling I screwed out of a day of my life and whatever proceeds I generated from helping somebody went to benefit an evil system in the business of wars and crimes against humanity.

That's a lot of debt at Citi. I know the US system is very violent now. Very desperate and violent. The war activities might be a representation of how desperately weak the system's currency of oppression is. These are big banks in the business of managing an expiring power from the heirs of that power against the innocent victims of birth to capitalist society.

It's hard to be anything but negative about life in America if you understand enough about the world. I'd have to reduce my intelligence by one half to say that life and work in America is a good thing. It all goes to evil causes that betray even your own self.

So yes, Citi is in the crapper.

As Banks Opt Out, What is the Real Purpose of Paulson's Super-SIV Plan?

Nobody knows where all the purchased debt is. I think it's where it's not supposed to be. Like, off balance sheet or in some otherwise sturdy retirement portfolio. My peeve is the greed of capitalists.

I think I'd feel better holding up a huge bank than by working for money. I've poured blood, sweat, and tears into trying to make a living for myself. The system owes me, and it just seems everything I do is unappreciated and stolen from me. I just don't feel quite right about a hard honest day's work like I used to. I feel like committing crimes to get money. I've already paid my equity dues to this society.

Apparently, the best way to get rich is to hook up with a big bank big wig and sell bad debt but hide it from the balance sheet until you've gotten away with it. Why the hell should I work for money if crime is the only thing that pays?

CIBC: High LTV Prime Loans Vulnerable, Citi Most Exposed

Capitalists got too greedy (pronounced "desperate"). So they warped the financial situation so that those healthy and able to work were worked finger-to-bone in a race against death with severe underpayments no matter what the occupation. What you earn is not a valid indicator of your worth as an individual. This has finally caught up to the FICO system. They'd rather enslave an engineer than look ahead 5 years.

The Falling Dollar Isn't All Bad

I do foresee sudden changes in the highly-globalized economy. If a nation can adapt, they're enjoying at least one advantage.

Earnings Recession Has Arrived

zero profit succeeds in employing workers

Lest We Forget The National Debt

infrastructure shut-down