Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily
Wednesday July 8, 2009 07:55 AM CDT
The Digital Curtain: Tax Evasion Showdown
Looming between UBS and the US government over people and entities that live in the US and have secret/numbered accounts in Gnome-land. then wire transfer in tax-free money and claim they don't have jobs here and skate on taxes.
The fun part is that the Swiss say they will stop UBS from handing over data, but of course, readers around here remember the Scotia Bank line of suits that went after drug dealers in the early 1980's and the US courts held (if memory serves) something to the effect that 'If a foreign bank has a branch on US soil, then the ALL branches of that bank ANYWHERE can be compelled to comply, or get kicked out of the US.
All of which brings down Mr. Ure's long-awaited "Digital Curtain". It's going to be like the Iron Curtain back when we still had commies to kick around, but the 'new and improved' version of the curtain technology is that the US will kick out banks that don't fess up, go after some high profile folks that didn't report their overseas TD-F's this year and then the foreign banks will pull out of the US and go with online banking. And then the US will impose server access restrictions to foreign banks from within the US and we will all go the route of China and Australia where this kind of technology is incubating right now.
There, feeling better?
Boring Trading Range
haven't talked to Robin Landry for a while about his take on the markets, but as I've said before, Landry's been eyeing the line in the sand at 7,800 and a new high (8,800 and up) in order to call the trading range 'over'. But not likely to happen today. A solid penetration of 7,800 for a few days would set up the retest of 6,626 or on the upside, we get one last load-the-boat on the short side chance.
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Meantime the CFTC is planning to hold ostensibly public hearings around the country to get input on rules which would effectively limit speculation in energy, but it's a move that feels to me more like a ploy to get the little guys (like me) out of commodities speculation. Hey, I get to hedge by 10 barrels of farm diesel, don't I?
Manipulated Markets? Department
Did you catch the quote this week in the story that the "Goldman Trading-Code investment put at risk by theft" story where it said...pay attention here to the highlighted part here...
“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” (*Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph ) Facciponti said, according to a recording of the hearing made public today. “The copy in Germany is still out there, and we at this time do not know who else has access to it.”
‘Preposterous’
The prosecutor added, “Once it is out there, anybody will be able to use this, and their market share will be adversely affected.”
The proprietary code lets the firm do “sophisticated, high- speed and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets,” prosecutors said in court papers. The trades generate “many millions of dollars” each year.
Manipulate markets in unfair ways? WFT? So what assurance is there that Goldman alone can be trusted with such? Just wondering out loud here but do I catch an odor of something? When US Attorneys start talking about unfair manipulation of markets, Mr. Ure listens up.
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The mind reels. What would happen if someone threw this into an Open Source folder? Picture the global trading meltdown that would ensue...oh, not for a month or two? It will take that long to load and test before turning on the production copy? We'll be watching...from the sidelines, of course.
By the way, the Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) also reads this with some concern having sent the following letter to the CFTC (from the GATA website):
"Gary Gensler, Chairman
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
3 Lafayette Centre 1155 21st St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20581
Mary L. Schapiro, Chairman U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F St. N.E. Washington, D.C. 20549
Dear Chairman Gensler / Dear Chairman Schapiro:
I'm enclosing a copy of a report distributed July 6 by Bloomberg News Service about the U.S. government's prosecution of a former employee of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. involving the purported theft of a Goldman Sachs computer trading program. The report quotes Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Faccipointi as saying in U.S. District Court in New York City: "The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways."
If the report quotes the assistant U.S. attorney correctly, and if he was characterizing Goldman Sachs' position correctly, then Goldman Sachs claims to have possession of a computer trading program that can manipulate markets. The assistant U.S. attorney's comment can be construed to suggest Goldman Sachs considers its own manipulation of markets to be fair, while such manipulation by others would be unfair.
The court proceeding described in the Bloomberg News story would seem to impugn all markets in which Goldman Sachs trades. On behalf of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc., I ask your commission to investigate Goldman Sachs' trading program urgently and report its findings publicly.
Thanks for your consideration.
With good wishes.
CHRIS POWELL Secretary/Treasurer
We'll be waiting to hear if Chris (or Bill Murphy) hear anything back of substance besides the Washington two-step.
Google's OS
Speaking of Code Wars: Here's something to keep an eye one: Google is looking to bring out a new operating system that would be browser-based and might give Microsoft (not to mention Mac and Linux) a run for their money. Lots of open-source in it and based on the Chrome browser - and should be available in mid next year.
If there's still power and an internet, of course. Depends how those dueling trading programs do - that story could be the WOPR.
Hack-Attackas
US government and South Korean web sites were attacked over the 4Th of July, which points to North Korea say sources. Sure it wasn't just script-kiddies?
Is anyone Awake?
Guess what happens about half past noon today? It will be 12:34:56 07/08/09 notes a reader who obviously missed a pill.
Velocity and Debt
Now that the world hasn't ended (yet, not that things don't get dire over the next couple of years, don't get me wrong) we can proceed with our focus on economics; namely how to make an honest buck - or maybe hang on to the few we have - before it becomes time to do a 100% bailout on the paper money system late this year...something we'll get to one of these days.
The predictive linguistics are pretty clear - the one's that come from www.halfpasthuman.com - and a new set will be issued probably in a week to 10-days. So much so, in fact, that Cliff's worried about whether the discussion of its content shouldn't be accompanied by a parental warning along the lines of "Don't let your kids listen..." Not hype, either. Things are gonna get that bad that there's a discussion yet to come amongst time monks as to whether all the cards are laid on the table, or whether certain blanks are left such that young people today will have something worth hanging around for.
Consider - if it's not too early in the day - whether you'd want to live in a world where the oceans are polluted, starvation is more or less chronic, exploitation for crass political purposes is done by a ruling class centered only on its own survival and position at the top, and while you're at it, steal the fresh water, have dozens of earthquakes and terra changes going while grabbing your plutonium filter. Nice place, huh?
Fortunately, we have two things going for us. First is that it won't be happening overnight and second is that the markets will be open again today, arguably waiting for the release of the 'fed's' Consumer Debt report which some wise market watcher, like my friend Jas Jain, have pointed to as the essence of where the economy is going next. Since we live in a dren driven (infested?) economy where your savings is actively under attack through whatever schemes 'the street' can come up with, the best measure of how well the "consumer debt's OK" fraud is working is by summing up the amount of revolving (credit card) and non-revolving debt (like mortgages) and see how we're doing.
Not well, is my sense of it. Although I expect to heard headlines this afternoon that 'the implosion of consumer credit (really debt) has slowed, it would take a refi and easy money festival like none ever before in history to pull this economy back from the disaster that looms this fall. Simple: The odds are infinitesimally small. Our focus will remain on seat belts, Dramamine, barf bags, denial, decaf, and Prozac as a result.
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No doubt the falling global velocity of money will be one of the topics at the G-8 which president Obama will be attending in Italy today. You know things are bad when you read headlines that the "Pope prays for G-8 Summit." Why his holiness wasn't paying for an end to credit card extortionists to be gone back at the 'disaster could be prevented' stage escapes me. But I know he's onboard with that "New World Economic Order" crowd, at least if I read the NY Times piece right.
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When I talk about velocity of money dropping (like a free falling piano) what I'm really talking about is the dramatic drop in global(ist) trade. You know that has to scare the pants off some of the PowersThatBe - why, without trade control, people living within their means, saving a bit, and thinking independent-like, what's a good team of financial despots to do?
Just as a couple of data points, let me share this: Behind the scenes "The Baltic Dry Index .BADI which measures changes in the cost of shipping key commodities fell 4.7 percent overnight."
Put on your unofficial "Mogambo Ranger Hat" and repeat softly (so as your boss won't hear you and have you carted off...) "We're all freakin' doomed." Well, we are...welcome to our mat.
Bad Policy
World from the VOA that the "UN halts food aid in southern Philippines after bombings" has me wondering. When I watch the wildlife around the ranch, seems they get more cantankerous - not less - when their bellies are empty. Guess that's why the State Department doesn't call for advice. Stuff's just too damn simple, most times. Just find the item or service that's being used as leverage and delever it. Pretty simple, really.
Joe, Meet Barak
Well, one morning I'm telling you that veep Joe says Israel is free to steer its own course on Iran and then this morning, BO says "No green light to Iran attack." Do you guys ever - you know - talk?
Are You Kidding? Department: Blame African Leaders
Let me see if I have this right: Western corporations come into Africa, exploit the resources and people, sell guns and ammo wholesale to whoever's armies, turn a blind eye at criminal governments and then flood the region with consumerist imagery and oh, look here's where AIDS breaks out. And then President O says "African leaders must take responsibility for failures..." Oh?
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Then everyone gets to look amazed down on Wall Street when "Nigeria: The economy loses N2.2 billion daily to attack on Chevron's offshore production."
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Maybe I live in La-la-land, but I don't see people fighting or rioting much when everyone gets a square deal.
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Coping: The Ex-Tex Ex-Pat
I get very interesting emails from time to time from our once Houston Bureau chief, who found life enjoyable there as long as most everything wasn't being offshored. But, sensing the winds of change as he did, he had to take a cut at a new land: Indonesia. Periodically, he files reports on what life is like there...and his latest report is especially worth sharing:
"I knew at the DNC in 2000 that Barak was coming. (Others saw it, too - link - G) They made an unknown black senator from Illinois the keynote speaker? That was his coming out. The general response led me to believe that he would be prez when the time was right. Even then, the Barky infatuation could be felt. Someone texted me an observation after he was installed in the White House, to the effect that a black man would be president when pigs flew, and right on queue, swine flu.
It's a national past-time here to be a childhood friend of Barky. At last count, he had something like 4,000 close, personal friends in school. During the recent elections, everyone had ad photos of them with Barky and GOLKAR (a local Indo political party - g) even went as far as ripping off the whole Hope/Change marketing campaign. It was rather disgusting, I thought. GOLKAR got 11% of the vote for second place, with the National Democrats (PRI) keeping first place, with 20%. Barky's home here in Memang was bought for a million bux (most nice houses in Jakarta go around 50k, with the average home price 25k). It is now a museum/tourist trap/Barky worship center.
I am quickly reaching the point of reacting violently to anyone who smiles and says "Obama" when I say I am from Texas. I make a point of saying I am Texan and NOT American. Confuses the shit out of everyone. You can see them searching their high school geography files for some data point that they may have missed. Fortunately, most people do not associate Shrub with Texas here, so I don't have to put up with that [expletive deleted], too. It's not unlike all the "who shot JR" crap back when we lived in Ireland. Two places I predict Barky will NOT go in the near future are Jakarta and Kenya. Don't want to put too fine a point on his foreign backgrounds. That's why Hillary, God help us, was sent to glad-hand the Indos.
Pick up a flick called (I believe) Point of No Return, with Kevin Costner. He is a Commie agent planted in the States as a boy who rises quickly through political/military circles. Interesting little flick, in light of the Barky phenom. Not that I believe the whole left/right, Commie/Capitalist bullshit either. Just bread n circuses for us unwashed masses. Like Sunday afternoon football.
People here really hate politics and don't get very worked up about the whole thing. A protest here is most often a bunch of people paid $5 each to go carry banners and chant. I could form a protest here with $500 and some quick print jobs. Today is the presidential election though, and sometimes the passions do boil over.
Monday, a taxi driver made a point of taking me by the muster grounds for the national police, where several hundred bodies and a bunch of equipment were being prepared for "unrest." There has been a lot of noise made about the voter registration process because several million people were not allowed to vote in the Parliamentary elections in April. The high court ruled Monday that a national ID was good enough for the election today.
Anyway, I can see the stage being set for one of the CIA's "color revolutions," should Indonesia prove to be strategically valuable and the PRI not pliable enough. Given events in Iran and China recently, my eyes are peeled. GOLKAR's colors are gold and red, so pick one. PRI's colors are blue and white, neither of which engenders much passion, unlike green, pink, orange, and so forth. Of course, in Indonesia, a bag of money buys any public official. They even have a platitude for it: Uang Rokok...cigarette money. Just like the whores. You don't pay them for sex, you give them uang taksi/taxi money.
Friday is a national holiday for the inauguration, so I expect the long holiday to be as good a time as any for "unrest." I plan on being in the mountains.
Hope all is well on the home front and Mom is OK. Had my MRI and MRA on Saturday, and contrary to popular belief, I DO have a brain. Waiting to meet with the doc again to get the results, if any. I personally don't see anything on the images that just screams out "problem," but my minimal radiology background and lack of clear vision don't make it easy. I will let you know what comes of it. Give my love to Mom and keep the home fires burning.
Will do...and we'll hope to keep the home fires contained to the hearth, but the summer is only a few weeks along.
Passings: Good-Byes
The fact that "MSN gets record traffic during Jackson memorial" isn't as bothersome as it was 50% more than watched the inauguration.
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There was another memorial yesterday - to the late father of North Korea's Jong-Il...who, BTW hasn't returned my email yet. I still want to know what the fascination is with building nuclear weapons. No use I can see for them unless he's planning to nuke something, in which case I'm sure readers would appreciate his 'top 10' target list so we can be conveniently dis-invested or out of town that week.
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Also passing: One-time SECDEF turned banker Robert McNamara who eventually said of his Vietnam War "We were wrong." I lost number of friends who I expect will look him up in the afterlife.
The Disappearances Meme
Curious email about the 'disappearances meme' that we've been tracking for a couple of months:
George, As a daily Urban Survival reader and a Peoplenomics subscriber, I have become more aware to watch for events you predict. At first it was to see if you were hot air as most all internet scribes are, but I have found you to be very accurate. Especially, when I quit looking for the extremes in events and started to watch the signs of the universe. I happened to be shopping at a store outside of Nashville, Tn on July 4th when news was spreading word of mouth about the death of former ex football quarterback Steve McNair. As the saleslady was ringing up my sale, we were discussing the news. Out of the blue she said, "They are all disappearing. They are all leaving and leaving fast." I asked her who was leaving and leaving fast. She said, "Celebrities. famous people...there getting out of here. Just look at the last week. Farrah, Michael Jackson, Billy May, now McNair. They are smart. They are getting out of here'" Rather like a lightning bolt striking me, I lost track of anything else exchanging between the saleslady and i. I became focused on how much the words relayed your predictions. I decided to watch and wait to see if anyone else famous is "leaving and leaving fast". Do you think these deaths could be form of your prediction of disappearance of celebrities during the summer of chaos? Just interested in your thoughts. I am sure I am not the first one to ask. I look forward to your writing everyday and have worked hard on finding my own self reliance.
Cliff decided (as chief time monk and it's his project) that we wouldn't try to 'keep score' on just how good or bad our batting average was/is. That would lead to endless debates. One person would score a 'hit' this way, while another would score it that. Nope, not interested. The work is there for what it is - the shape of things to come as reflected down at the archetype level.
If it was down to the precise "Don't trade XYZ shares until they hit a bottom at 10:29 AM on the 25th of July (this is an example, that's Sunday and the market is closed, get it?) we would be putting ourselves at huge risk because that would represent just too damn much of a threat to the PowersThatBe.
So we've been quietly publishing the highlights of what's coming for almost 10-years now (as of next June, anyway) and I think we're both getting a good laugh out of stories like the one just published in New Scientist that claim "Email patterns can predict impending doom."
Why, we're in the company of geniuses. If they think emails can foretell an implosion like Enron, perhaps an extension of the concept to the whole web fora and some past hits like the Northeast Power Outage, the China Quake, Banda Aceh, and the list goes on would qualify us as non-nutters.
We do take some of the model outputs seriously - which is one reason Elaine and I returned to our ranch in East Texas from the LA area in early October of 2005. The model had been going on about a major loss of life in a quake at around 34º North and we were living in Burbank which is where?
As I left the LA area more than a few 'friends' thought I was nuts. Even when I emailed them the location of the Kashmir/Pakistan quake three weeks late at 34°29′35″N 73°37′44″E and the eventual toll of 74,500 dead, most I'm sure thought "Coincidence." Haven't heard from most since. Their loss, I figure.
So yeah, we're into the 'disappearances' part of the linguistics now...and it should rag on if I'm reading it right for a couple of more months with so many large (>6) earthquakes are to be too much work to note, although I have to ask Cliff to look a little more at the 7+; one's due before year end. In fairness, though, he asked me "to what end? People aren't going to alter their behavior..." Sadly, that's true.
Meantime, save your solar flare worries for 2013 if we're still around.
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