And It Takes a Single Man With a Powerful Idea to Crash the World...

polifrog




Bloomberg:

Six central banks led by the Federal Reserve lowered the cost of emergency dollar funding for financial companies in a global effort to ease Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis.

Tallystick gives the move in layman's terms:

 FED increases dollars liabilities balanced by euros and other currencies held as assets. So America gets euros while European companies are planning for end of the euro. Another dump overvalued/worthless assets on Americans operation courtesy of the treasonous FED.

Quick Thought:

So, there was not enough private capital to fund Europe, not enough public money in Europe.  To the US Europe has gone.  Of course, this is not a fix for inadequate capital; another will be required ... who will provide the next band aid for profligate spending when the most profligate spender is now the band aid? Yeah, the problem is that big.

I asked this question in jest earlier this month:

Why not have each of the Euro nations simply transfer some portion of the debt that is owed their nation by the other Euro nations to Greece so that Greece can count those debts as credits against their debt?

The answer is apparently  not to turn to other European nations, but to the US and the world as a source for credit funded by ... debt.

This Keynesian thing is crashing big.




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Lending One's Self to Servitude ...

polifrog





When starting from the perspective that one may become the powerful, as does the Tea Party, the result is liberty.

When starting from the perspective that one is subject to the powerful, as does Occupy, the only result is servitude.






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Feel the Fever and Follow: It Just Doesn't Matter, It Just Doesn't Matter, It Just Doesn't Matter... It's a Rapture Thing:

polifrog




BigFurHat:

Adapted from an un-attributed viral e-mail:

WHEN he refused to disclose who donated money to his election campaign, as other candidates had done, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN he received endorsements from people like Louis Farrakhan, Mummar Kadaffi and Hugo Chavez,  it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN it was pointed out that he was a total newcomer and had absolutely no experience at anything except community organizing, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN he chose friends and acquaintances such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who were revolutionary radicals, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN his voting record in the Illinois Senate and in the U.S. Senate indicated an absentee senator, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN he refused to wear a flag lapel pin and did so only after a public outcry, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN people started treating him as a Messiah and children in schools were taught to sing his praises, it didn’t seem to matter.

WHEN he stood with his hands over his groin area for the playing of the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance, it didn’t seem to matter.

More at the link.


Hmm, perhaps they attended the Murray School of Rapture and took away a single thing:

if we win ... it just doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter ...

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Even the Cheeleaders are Bilnking...

polifrog




Cramer, here, describes the Euro credit crises in "terms that we can all understand".

Consider all these countries you hear about, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal now Belgium. Consider them like small retailers like my dad.They spent too much on their budgets, now they can't afford to pay their bills....  The banks are stuck with credit risks in the form of bonds and the countries can't afford to pay them back...

DefCon 3.

The Euro created economic linkages between fiscally unsound nations and generally sound nations that allowed credit markets to view unsound nations as if they were sound nations. The assumption has been that any national default within the EU would be absorbed in an effort to protect the Euro and hence any debt owed the sound nations denominated in Euros. Credit risk was spread.

Via the Euro Germany and France extended their credit worthiness to member EU nations; they acted in a very real sense as cosigners. Now they are absent cosigners, but who can blame them. Where a single default would have been fiscally possible if not politically possible, multiple defaults are neither.

So, if not for that pesky political hurdle of democracy in member nation, the EU could have taken advantage of what was once fiscally possible and regained its fiscal footing. Obviously the solution going forward is that member democratic nations should cede further sovereignty to non elected EU technocrats.

It seems that the people of Europe will either suffer from too much patriotism in the form of nationalism  or too little in the form of the EU.

Democracy is an elusive thing for some.



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Government Intervention Making the Implausable Plausable:

polifrog




If the federal government regulates light bulbs, why not toilet paper?

CBS local:

Federal prosecutors said the three conned elderly customers into buying unnecessary septic products, in some cases more than 70 years worth of toilet paper, CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald reported.

...

They told their victims that the federal government changed regulations on toilet paper, the Herald reported.

Although the federal government does not regulate toilet paper it is sadly reasonable that it would.



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Reminder: They Gave Up the K-31 For the SIG 510...

polifrog


Referencing discussion and that UK Euro contingency plan Dan Mitchell asks:

Here’s a thought experiment to drive the point home. If Europe does collapse, which people do you think will be in better shape to preserve civilization, the well-armed Swiss or the disarmed Brits?

My bets are on the plethora of SIGs, though I really like the K31.




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Smile File Sunday Afternoon Toons...

polifrog

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Triadwatch becomes Eurowatch...

polifrog



But who hasn't?


Forbes on Europe 

Mauldin on China, Japan and India

NYT on Europe etc...

Telegraph via T: "Prepare for riots in euro collapse" - Pay Attention?





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Occuwusit Wines as Occupy Winds Down...(Goodbye Occupy)...

polifrog






While the drumbeat to muster from a pepper-spray incident a moment like Kent State around which a movement may coalesce was Occupy's final failed grasp at relevance, this guy is the whiny realization of a movement rejected.

Goodbye Occupy.




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A Failed European Bond Auction ... in Germany...

polifrog




Megan McArdle:

... a German bond auction went rather badly today.  In fact, a lot of commentators are using words like "disastrous".  They sold just over half of the €6 billion they had put out to market, the worst such outcome anyone can remember.  This comes on the heels of a Spanish debt auction in which the yields on their three month notes more than doubled to 5%.  That's a higher interest rate than I pay on my credit card.

I've seen three explanations offered for this:

1. The market is pricing the euro, not German credit
2. Bund yields, at 1.98%, are too low to be attractive
3. European banks are deleveraging, depriving the auction of buyers

#2 is actually just a special case of #1--people used to like to buy ultra-low bunds as a safe-haven, and now they don't.

And local Keynesian, Brad Miller, unable to learn from the failure of others, follows in European footsteps.

 Let's look at what he said upon the failure of a special bipartisan supercommittee to reach an agreement on cutting at least $1.2 trillion from federal deficits.

Brad Miller via The Charlotte Observer:

"I didn't think they would do anything to put their political careers at risk," Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C, of Raleigh, said of Republicans. He blamed the GOP for failing to consider increased taxes on wealthy Americans.

Like Europe Brad  Miller rejects the necessary  austerity in favor of  shifting private sector wealth to federal spending.

Socialists never learn.



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How Does Rep. Brad Miller (NC-13[now running in NC-4]) Line the Pockets of Warren Buffett?

polifrog




Brad Miller voted for TARP, the US bailout of our nation's financial system and in part Europe's financial system with your money.

Prior to that vote Warren Buffett advised our government on how  best to bailout our financial industry while actively buying into depressed stocks that later benefited from the bailout he was privy to:



NC-4, Brad Miller is not Main Street's friend.





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Insider Trading Is Not Insider Trading When the Source is the Federal Government...

polifrog


So, Warren Buffett advises our government in how to best bailout our financial industry while actively buying into depressed stocks that later benefited from the bailout he was privy to.:



There is a separation of state from church.  It is sad that there is not a similar separation of state from business.

At the  vary least there should never have been bailouts.



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Who Is Rep Brad Miller (NC-13 [running in NC-4])?

polifrog



Let's look at what he said upon the failure of a special bipartisan supercommittee to reach an agreement on cutting at least $1.2 trillion from federal deficits.

Brad Miller via The Charlotte Observer:

"I didn't think they would do anything to put their political careers at risk," Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C, of Raleigh, said of Republicans. He blamed the GOP for failing to consider increased taxes on wealthy Americans.

Consider his answer as framed within the free fall Europe is now experiencing.  On the one hand there is Estonia, an ECU nation that has found its footing amid member ECU nations in free fall:

Speigel:

In the middle of this year, two rating agencies, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, upgraded Estonia's credit rating. The country had a budget surplus of €115 million in the first two quarters, and it is expected to virtually balance its budget for the entire year. Government debt is about 6.6 percent of the gross domestic product...

On the other there is the rest of Europe (continued from above):

...as compared with 120 percent in Italy, 160 percent in Greece and 80 percent in Germany. In the first two quarters of 2011, the Estonian economy grew at an annualized rate of 8 percent. 

Brad Miller's approach is the same as that adopted by the majority of Europe, increased government spending, increased debt, increased likelihood of sovereign default.   What he rejects is the healthy nation growing (as opposed to government growing) choice of austerity that has returned Estonia to its feet while its member ECU nations continue their free fall toward sovereign default.

One can not escape the conclusion that Brad Miller wants for our nation what the EU has already found.





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Science is Not a "Cause", But Then Neither is Mann a Scientist Nor AGW a Science...

polifrog



Daily Pundit

3115; Mann: By the way, when is Tom C going to formally ublish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

3940; Mann: They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

0810; Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause.

Science is not a “cause”. (Daily Pundit)

2440; Jones: I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.

One more time!

Hide the decline:


and one of my winter favorites, Frozen Wasteland:






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Living Off the Plate of Another...

polifrog


Newt on Occupy:





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A Fractal In A Frying Pan...

polifrog



A Fractal In A Frying Pan (love the title):

While Gerald Celente is crying about his lost six-figure account, Bill Fleckenstein also has personal money tied up with MF Global. He is hopeful that he will get it back but is critical of the authority figures involved. Celente does not expect to get all of his money back. Ann Barnhardt of Barnhardt Capital Management has shuttered its operations after six-years in the business. She did not feel like her clients’ funds were safe in the futures and options market any more. Lawrence Lepard, who posted on Zero Hedge, wonders if the MF Global failure was a hit job done by the Fed. My point is not about who is right or wrong (time will tell), but that we are getting an early, slow paced look at things to come—the story telling, guessing, shock, denial, hopeful strategizing, negotiations. The success, failure, triumph, rage, loss, and sorrow. As we move through time and defaults, the pace of people finding out that they “can’t get to their money” is going to pick up.

We have seen the unpleasant result of default in the private sector as governments have striven to cover for their less-than-private financial systems, but we have yet to see the abuse governments will foist upon the citizenry due  sovereign default.




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Self-Reliance as A Pejorative...

polifrog


ABC:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

City Journal is correct when saying:

...from Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to John F. Kennedy, the Apollo astronauts, and those supremely independent garage-tinkerers, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For them, as for most Americans, self-reliance was seen as a virtue, not a liability, a characteristic worth promoting, not denigrating.

I've never know self reliance to be anything but a source of  comfort first and comfort second.

H/T Maggie's Farm



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SouthPark Soothsaying...

polifrog



MF Global and Celente ...

Following the company’s glorious collapse [MF Globa], Trends Research founder Gerald Celente had his own six figure gold investment account completely looted by chapter 11 trustees, and he is fighting to get it back.

I have a feeling we will be seeing a whole lot more of this:



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Remember That Faster Than Light Neutrino?

polifrog



Another one just walked into the bar...

CBS:

A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light -- stunning the world of physics -- has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.

Poor Einstein, NOVA will have fun with this in a few years...



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Turning to the Great Ponzi for a Euro Solution...

polifrog


Why not have each of the Euro nations simply transfer some portion of the debt that is owed their nation by the other Euro nations to Greece so that Greece can count those debts as credits against their debt?

Here is a telling interactive.





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Just How Undemocratic Is the EU?

polifrog


Nigel Farage addressing the European Counsel:

"None of you have any democratic legitimacy for the roles you currently hold ..."

 Mr. Herman Achille Van Rompuy (European Counsel  president)... "you, an unelected man man went to Italy and said, "this is not the time for elections, but the time for actions."

There is more in the short video of his address below.

Nigel Farage:





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Milton Friedman Died 5 Years Ago Today...

polifrog



Milton Friedman:

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Free to Choose:



There is no freedom absent economic freedom...




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Enjoy Earth...

polifrog




Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.




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Iowahawk on Occupy Fail...

polifrog



Iowahawk:

Hello Faddah
Hello Mama
I'm Occupying
Camp Obama
I'm protesting
Wall Street grabbings
And trying to avoid the hobo stabbings

On my iPhone
With my last tweet
I down-twinkledJews on Wall Street
Please don't worry
About psychosis
'Cause my Guy Fawkes mask repels tuberculosis

We are saving
This whole nation
With some squad car
DefecationWe went marching
in Zucotti
And got applauded by the Nazi Party

There's a rapingEvery day now

Some are straight and

Some are gay now...

Occupy was the incarnation of the media's false portrayal of the Tea Party.



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Rationalizing a One Sided Debate Over a 70 Year Experiment in Failure...

polifrog



Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit from my hat...

But at heart, this was Krugman vs Summers, which is an inspired match-up: especially in election season, one of the most important criteria for any debate is that it not cleave easily and obviously along party-political lines. That way people just end up voting their party and rehearsing tired party-political talking points.

This debate, because it took place within a basically Keynesian, leftist worldview, was very interesting.

... and debate only the perennial failure of Keynesian solutions in the best of light.

Keynes made a Great Depression of a harsh recession, a perma-recession of Japan's recession, and the Keynesian Depression  we live with in the US today.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

And this says nothing of the long term damage exacted on  the American economic and political  psyche by Keynes' prioritizing spending above saving.

Whatever, keep debating deckchair placement.




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Big Government's Failure in Europe ...

polifrog



Nile Gardner:

Krugman is rewriting history now that the European model, beloved by East Coast liberals, is going down in flames.

The reality that Krugman refuses to accept is that Europe offers a glimpse of America’s future if it continues down the path of European-style big government. The root of Europe’s financial crisis lies in decades of over-spending and over-borrowing, largely to pay for overgrown and bloated welfare systems, vast public sectors, and incredibly generous pension plans.

I have been caught off guard by leftist arguments that the Euro's failure is a failure in markets rather than governance to the point of suspecting the author's spirit. I suppose should not have been, but there it is.


And from the comments, raffles:

Into the Valley of Debt
Rode Angie, and Sarkie and Berlusconi,
Bond markets to the left of them,
Eurosceptics to the right of them.
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs just to charge.. and the Euro to die.

For Germany at some point the cost of retaining the the Euro (bailing out debtor nations)  will outweigh the cost of exiting the Euro (loss of loan repayment). Until then Germany will cost effectively do what it can to defend the Euro.



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I Learned a New Word Today ... Murmuration ...

polifrog

My last two weekends have been spent either backpacking in the Uwharrie or hiking Hanging Rock.  And although the autumn  leaves and weather have been marvelous, never did I experience the beauty of an ugly ass starling taking part in a murmuration.



I once heard someone describe the same effect via the Twin Towers.  Either one taken alone were uninspired, however taken together they found beauty.

Inspiration through a collection of the uninspired.

H/T Maggie's Farm


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Mississippi, Defending the Liberty of Even Those Unable to Vote...

polifrog

I know some of my libertarian friends will not agree with me in what is to follow, but so be it.  Most of them seem to bow out of the abortion issue while muttering something that includes the phrase  "... legislate social issues..." at any rate.

Salon:

Personhood amendments were once considered too radical for the mainstream pro-life movement, but in the most conservative state in the country, with an energized, church-mobilized grass roots, Mississippi could well be the first state to pass one. Initiative 26 even has the state’s top Democrats behind it.

How is Mississippi defending liberty?

• Humans by the very fact that they are human have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• Due to the fact that all necessary human genetic material is present, a fertilized human egg possesses inalienable rights.
• Thus, abortion is wrong ... because abortion because it infringes not only on the rights of another individual, but on the most basic of rights of an individual ... life.

So, it takes backward Mississippi to defend the liberty of the unborn from the born.

It seems Mississippi understands that diminishing the rights of one group for the benefit of another is as wrong when the individual is unborn as when the individual is enslaved.

Perhaps Mississippi learned something from history the American left has forgotten.

H/T EdCone

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So Quiet...

polifrog


Sorry so quiet, but I will remain so for another week or so...




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