Sarah Palin

I was admiring my bubble of blog tags (which should be to the right somewhere) and I noticed the Sarah Palin is notable enough to deserve her own tag.

And yet ... I have no pictures of her!

Shocking.

(Okay, there are links to a couple of funny videos.)

My wife and I went on a cruise to Alaska last summer and we visited the Governor's Mansion in Juneau. When I tell the story I mention that Sarah Palin would come out and model a new outfit every day at 2:30 p.m. for about a half hour and ... many people buy it!

Instead of adding a picture of Sarah Palin to the blog I thought I'd give you a Google Image Search of Sarah Vowell, who is a true super hero.
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© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Bernanke - too painful for Nassim Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Good Bye! The Reappointment Of Bernanke Is Too Much To Bear: "What I am seeing and hearing on the news -- the reappointment of Bernanke -- is too hard for me to bear. I cannot believe that we, in the 21st century, can accept living in such a society. I am not blaming Bernanke (he doesn't even know he doesn't understand how things work or that the tools he uses are not empirical); it is the Senators appointing him who are totally irresponsible -- as if we promoted every doctor who caused malpractice. The world has never, never been as fragile. Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific."

Wouldn't be awesome if Obama read the writing on the (Great) wall (of China) and fired the whole bunch of misfits he has in charge of our economy?


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Dubai [World]

Abu Dhabi’s Silence Raises the Heat on Dubai - NYTimes.com: "Many here had assumed that Abu Dha bi would bail out Dubai’s flagship company, Dubai World, which set off a swoon in global markets last week when it said it was seeking to delay payments on $59 billion in debt. But so far there has been no announcement, and insiders suggest that Abu Dhabi — which already bailed out Dubai to the tune of $10 billion earlier this year — is seeking greater economic or even political control over Dubai as the price for any further assistance.

To make matters worse, the Dubai government distanced itself from Dubai World on Monday. Abdulrahman al-Saleh, the general director of Dubai’s Department of Finance, told Dubai TV that Dubai World was “not guaranteed by the government,” and that creditors needed to take some responsibility. “They think Dubai World is part of the government, which is not correct.”"

So I'm not the only person that's confused about what's what. In my earlier posts I said that Dubai was defaulting. It's actually Dubai World, a separate company. But everyone (including me) assumed Dubai World was basically part of Dubai.

In our country, there was a bank called The Bank of The United States that failed, but everyone thought it was the government that failed. This caused a huge bank run.

Having said all that, it's still the case that there are tightly interwoven relationsips in Dubai since nearly all relationships are blood relationships.

In the US, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Administration (FHA) have implicit government guarantees, but as Market Skeptics points out, these are not real guarantees. So it'll be interesting to see who is left holding the bag when those agencies finally and completely implode.



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Dubai - Incredible

Dubai is in the news because it's defaulting ("postponing") payment on $60 billion in loans.

So I though I'd fly over the place in Google Earth.

I recommend you do the same. Just fly to "Dubai" and zoom out and you'll quickly find the man-made Palm Islands. Hunt around for the monorail track, the aquatic park, the giant hotel, and the range of homes/apartments, and ... lots of still empty sand.

It's unfrickin' believable.



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Key Fact

Legendary Financial Historian Ed Griffin on the Economic Crisis, the Monetary Elite and the Future of the Internet: "Daily Bell: Has the stimulus helped? Why or why not?

Griffin: Has the stimulus helped? I guess the question is has the stimulus helped whom? Or What? The general idea is that the stimulus is supposed to stimulate the American economy and help the American people and in that I don't believe that there is any reason to think that it has helped at all. I don't think it was really designed to do that at all. It was designed to be sold that way but I don't think that anyone in Washington thought that it would actually accomplish the end objective. Now I suppose that some people did think so, I would have to backtrack on that, there are some collectivists that believe the government can solve all problems, that the government can take everything from the citizens and redistribute it back to them in a more efficient manner. There are people like that out there and they thought the stimulus package would help. Surely everybody understands that the money that is being spent is coming out of the pockets of the very people it is supposed to help."

[Emphasis added.]

Actually, I'm pretty sure most people do not understand where money comes from. The value of a dollar has been so greatly cheapened by the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies that an entire generation (especially the politicians) think that money can be called into existence at any time without any cost.

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Writing Nano-Plasm over a seven year period

I posted a short article about writing Nano-Plasm over a seven year period.

I  compiled some size data by looking at the size (in bytes) of the various backup copies I made.  Unfortunately, the history for the first year was lost.




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Great Hatchet Job on Benjamin Bernanke

From The Black Hats Strike Back (Bernanke) - The Market Ticker:

I made most of these points in April of 2008 - but of course you won't pay attention to anyone who gets it right, yes Ben? Nor will you answer those critics, except through Goebbels-style repetition of bald-faced lies.

Or should you read my August 2008 missive in which I cited specifics:

Just like you said 'subprime is contained'? (3/07)

Or 'we do not expect spillovers from the subprime markets to the rest of the economy or to the financial system'? (5/07)

Or 'monetary and fiscal policies are in train that should support a return to growth in the second half of this year'? (4/08)

Or 'our baseline forecast is for moderating inflation'? (7/06)

Or '.... expect energy and other commodity prices to flatten out'? (7/07, right before the insane run in these prices began!)

Or if you prefer, you can read about them right here:

Chairman Bernanke before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on March 28th 2007, just a few days later: 'Although the turmoil in the subprime mortgage market has created severe financial problems for many individuals and families, the implications of these developments for the housing market as a whole are less clear. The ongoing tightening of lending standards, although an appropriate market response, will reduce somewhat the effective demand for housing, and foreclosed properties will add to the inventories of unsold homes. At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.'

Chairman Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s 43rd Annual Conference on Bank Structure and Competition, May 17th, 2007: 'We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.'

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speech to the 2007 International Monetary Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, June 5th: 'The troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system.'

Chairman Bernanke to Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, April 3rd, 2008: 'Clearly, the U.S. economy is going through a very difficult period. But among the great strengths of our economy is its ability to adapt and to respond to diverse challenges. Much necessary economic and financial adjustment has already taken place, and monetary and fiscal policies are in train that should support a return to growth in the second half of this year and next year.'

Is it possible to be more wrong Mr. Bernanke? I think not.

Of course, the ultimate goal of all our efforts is to restore and sustain economic prosperity. To support economic growth, the Fed has cut interest rates aggressively and provided further stimulus through lending and asset-purchase programs."

Please read the entire article. Our "crisis" is so simple - too many bad loans brought on by artificially low interest rates created either by the Federal Reserve or implicit and explicit government guarantees (which mask risk and drive rates lower).

I highly recommend Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. The book does a terrific job of explaining how artificially low interest rates lead to what Austrian Economists call "The Business Cycle" (but which should more accurately be called "The Banking Cycle"). It's a pretty easy read and you'll understand why it's nothing short of disastrous to have a central authority set interest rates.

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Upgrading your PS3 hard drive - what they don't tell you

The online tutorials I found for upgrading my PS3 hard drive were a huge help but most of them left out one crucial fact.

All tutorials mention the fact was that you need a FAT32 file system based external disk for doing the system backup but they don't tell you that you can't make one bigger than 32 gigabytes under XP. And XP will check the drive for about an hour before telling you it can't do it.

So you need a third party app to do the job. I ended up using (with some trepidation) Fat32Formatter and as far as I can tell it didn't add a key logger to my system.

But here's the thing ... why doesn't the PS3 have an option to format an external hard drive as FAT32? Then I wouldn't need a PC.

(The PS3 will format your new internal drive for you so don't worry about that.)

But eventually it all worked out and for a mere $65.00 I went from 40 gigabytes to 320 gigabytes. w00t.

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The banksters can be defeated

Judge Slams Indymac, Sets Aside Defendant's $292,500 Mortgage: "Inequitable. Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.

These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank."

If you default on mortgage payments to your bank, they take your house. But if your bank fails, is your loan forgiven? No, it is sold off by the FDIC to another bank. It seems lopsided. But now, a judge has forced a bank to eat 100% of a loan.

w00t.

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Corporatism

From zero hedge:

Watch the full program or select from the following clips. We would like to draw your attention to clips 2, 7, 11 and 13

01.    Introduction
02.    Flawed Economic Model
03.    Economic Power and Ideology
04.    Collapse of Trust in Legal System
05.    Legal Means of Assistance
06.    Effects of Bailout
07.    How This Crisis Came About
08.    New Unregulated Markets
09.    Modern Capitalism Separates Ownership and Control
10.    Control
11.    Government Controlled by Banking Interest
12.    Property Information System
13.    Protection of Wealthy and Powerful
14.    Documentation of Who Owns What
15.    New Orleans Troubles
16.    Foreclosures are Economic Katrinas

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Ben Bernanke forecasts the future

Don't Worry, We're Vigilantly Monitoring The Plummeting Dollar:

"My own view is that the recent pickup reflects more than purely temporary factors and that continued growth next year is likely. However, some important headwinds--in particular, constrained bank lending and a weak job market--likely will prevent the expansion from being as robust as we would hope. I'll discuss each of these problem areas in a bit more detail and then end with some further comments on the outlook for the economy and for policy."

-- Ben Bernanke

This is the man that said the subprime market problems were contained.

We are well and truly fucked.

This GDP number is a joke. It's a measure (it's hard to see how it could be accurate) of how much money changes hands each year. That's all it is. It's not a measure of economic health. I give you ten dollars and you give it back to me and we do that all year and we can produce $1,000s of dollars of GDP. Banks send money back and forth amongst themselves and they can produce another trillion dollars in GDP. It's just a stupid meaningless number and the fact that it (may) have increased a few percent on the back of nearly two trillion dollars in new money printed by the Federal Reserve is just nothing to get excited about.

The chairman goes on to say:

"We are attentive to the implications of changes in the value of the dollar and will continue to formulate policy to guard against risks to our dual mandate to foster both maximum employment and price stability."

Really? You're in charge of maximum employment? Then you're a completely incompetent nincompoop. (The fact is that nobody is in charge of maximum employment - that's central economic planning, Soviet Union style. How did that work out?)

Really? You're in charge of price stability? The price of what? Houses? How's that working out?

Wake up America! These guys are full of shit. It's time to give them the boot.

End the Fed!

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Warren Buffett: Traitor to Capitalism

CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great - Warren Buffett Watch - CNBC.com:

BECKY: Warren, was it a mistake for the government to allow Lehman to go under?

BUFFETT: It may have been. But I would say overall, the officials in Washington did a terrific job of dealing with really what was an economic Pearl Harbor, as we talked about. So I would say that if Merrill hadn't been bought by the B of A, Merrill would have gone very quickly. And the dominoes were really lined up. And I don't think it was fully appreciated, perhaps, what a big domino Lehman was or how close it was to the next big dominoes. But overall, I give (former Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson, I give (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben)Bernanke, I give (FDIC Chairman) Sheila Bair, I give (Treasury Secretary) Tim Geithner, I give them very high marks for the fact they took unprecedented action. [APPLAUSE]

If Warren Buffett, the most widely known "capitalist" in America, is telling people that government intervention in markets is "good" and part of "capitalism" and the "American system" then who is going to defend true capitalism?

The fact is that Warren's investment in Goldman Sachs benefited hugely from the bailout (as well as Goldman's ridiculous conversion to commercial bank status) as otherwise Goldman would be out of business and Warren would have been $5 billion poorer.

When the markets were going up he was a genius. Then there was a hiccup and he was bailed out.

This kind of hypocrisy is just horrendous.

Let me remind you: capitalism is where individuals make their own decisions as to where and when and what to buy or sell. Fascism (or corporatism) is where corporations team with the government to leverage the government's monopoly power to maintain and increase power. When it comes to big companies we have fascism. It didn't work for Mussolini and it's not going to end well here either. To hear Warren Buffett promote fascism is very problematic because he is viewed as the ultimate capitalist and his words lend great credence to the proposition that capitalism has somehow failed when in fact it is central economic planning by the Federal Reserve that has created the current crisis.

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Butt-Head is Reading on I-405

This butt-head is reading a book while driving on I-405 (Washington) after merging from WA-520.

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Driving in the Rain

I love night time photography. Someday I'm gonna buy myself a real camera. But these cheap things do a pretty good job in the meantime.

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