Stacy Summary: The dollar’s slow, painful death in a thousand headlines continues. While the study tying muscle weakness and paralysis to cola consumption explains, for me, the oddness of American obesity. While there are certainly plenty of obese people in Europe, they tend to maintain a human form and shape, a firmness to their large size; while the obese Americans I have seen seem to take on a very droopy piles of fat that dangle off their bodies. Perhaps it has to do with the vast quantities of cola that is giving them huge quantities of calories while also weakening their muscles? And re: the ‘accidental millionaires’ on the run . . . they are half way to being billionaires, now they just need to adopt Donald Trump’s ‘Mental Projection’ Technique.’ But seriously, they should have just used mental projection to become ‘millionaires’ through bankruptcy as does Trump. And the entire US economy for that matter.
Updates:
Tags: cattle rustling · us dollar36 Comments
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lecture by david harvey
( Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York)
“A Financial Katrina”
http://davidharvey.org/media/A_Financial_Katrina.mp3
an interesting take
These inside trades are chasing the last investor out of te makets, as it was shown some time ago a lot of the volatility is ‘fake’ anyway.
Listening to Ron Paul, and the flat tone of his voice, I wonder if we will see something like a coup soon. He is not the character, but it is clear the country needs one. What prevents the states that reasserted their indepedence to form a new federal government?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOK31D2xuOA&feature=ytn%3Amptnews
article from St Louis
Fed
The Effect of the Fed’s Purchase of
Long-Term Treasuries on the Yield Curve
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/09/ES0925.pdf
Never mind all that!
Keiser said the £ would crash & burn……………
God what will bring down the UK £?
Mike
@Mike2liverpool
Mike,
apart from the economic reasons as to why the GBP “should” fall going forward, there are also political reasons IMO.
After WW2, it became law that all Germans Bonds have to be cleared via the London market ; which is one reason why this market is the world’s biggest bond market after the US.
I remember in 2001 when there was talk about the GBP being dropped for the Euro .. the City traders ( not just bond traders ) were scared to death.
Considering the current weakness of the GBP and the UK economically, there is IMO a repeat of the danger of the Euro absorbing the GBP ( not that I would welcome that BTW ).
Imagine if that happened … I could imagine that the Eurobrats would take the opportunity to remove London as the most important European banking centre. I may be wrong .. but I trust the Eurocrats to think this way.
The London SE has currently ( AFAIK ) ca. 10 times the volume of Frankfurt SE in terms of trade-revenue volume.
Also, AFAIK, the London City accounts for ca. 30% of the UK’s GDP ; and removing that would be a catastrophy for the UK IMO !
BTW… DebTruth takes a look at the B.I.S. :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxKg9UjSubg
PS:
I had a good laugh when the Brussels parliament were arguing about which language should be the EU’s official language. They wanted French, but the Germans protested. That they did NOT even consider English, tells you something about the power-politics behind their motives IMO.
English is by far the easiest language to learn, the most proliferated world-wide, and China is soon to become the largest English speaking country on the planet .. LOL ( reported recently somewhere )!
So again .. why didn’t the EU just adopt English as their “official” language ?
PPS:
Remember the days when the French Government banned words like “Email”, “Weekend” etc. etc. ? .. the UK parliament’s response was beautiful : typical Brit humour ….
“Maybe we should ban ‘Brie’ ‘Champagne’ ‘Croissant” etc. etc.
BTW … AFAIK , you can still get fined in France for using those words ( Email/Weekend etc. )
Maybe Max & Stacey know more…. ?
yes, i see the dollar collapsing. mother earth: ron paul is a real common sense guy. he may not have flare but that doesnt matter.
Stocks still face deflationary collapse: Prechter
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE54D4IL20090514
@Phil ,….were you aware that BIS is the trading name for MOD,.?
@Dedo … “were you aware that BIS is the trading name for MOD,.?”
No , I wasn’t … now that’s pretty funny !
@Stacy/Max
I enjoy very much your terminology…Divine Right of Hedge Funds etc
Have a couple of suggestions for you:
“the elite are scamming the world like a macro-scale Enron game”
“The DOW is now so corrupted that it is no longer a status symbol to represent the privileged 30 companies on it. The DOW now measures the level of manipulation that the gullible will fall for.”
“In these times that try men’s souls, those without souls need to be tried and convicted. They are the culprits. They are the criminals. They are the evil slave masters.”
Keep up the good work Stacy and Max we need you in these times!!
@ Mother Earth, Pretty sure that the states’ constitutions themselves prevent them from leaving the union. But then there’s the issue of currency, a military, an intelligence agency, a central bank, department of defense, commerce, trade treaties with the United States, etc. etc. Leaving the union may sound like a quaint idea, but in reality . . . .
HONEST MISTAKE ?
…. “The MP for Leominster, a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, received more than £11,000 in parliamentary expenses after declaring his constituency property was his second home.
But he and his wife owned outright the £480,000 home near Ledbury in Herefordshire, where he has gone on to breed chickens and prize-winning cattle, and had not taken out a home loan on it.
Mr Wiggin denies that he intended to claim a “phantom mortgage”, however, and says he meant to put his £900,000 house in Fulham, west London, as his second home.” …..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5360026/MPs-expenses-Bill-Wiggin-made-23-phantom-claims-but-says-he-is-only-human.html
How many mores homes does he need ?
Oh well, I suppose 11,000 GBP is peanuts really…
.. after all, we’re in the Trillions these days !
Cola consumption may explain why so many americans seem to from suffer from voice immodulation syndrome…on a similar note did you know that ‘every muscle, compound, process and structure of the body has a Frequency Equivalent that can be mathematically calculated. the body is a predictable math matrix. This provides the foundation for the concept that the body’s ability to heal itself can originate as frequency interactions between the molecular signals of the entire body. Human BioAcoustic Vocal Profiling can be used to determine which nutrient frequencies are required by the body’ All you need is a mic and an internet connection..Max
Thanks Phil
I never knew that about the German bonds………….yes i can see when things are in total free fall London getting leathered!
I think we are now seeing the endgame for the Anglo-American empire.
Mike
Alex Bawin sez SACK the Autos off:-
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/05/20/alec-baldwin-calls-for-pulling-the-plug-on-detroit-automakers/
Mike
“While the obese Americans I have seen seem to take on a very droopy piles of fat that dangle of their bodies,” here Stacy furthers the ‘ugly American’ prototype. Having lived in England for four years, I am quite familiar with the European sensitivity to Americans: Europeans are superior to their Walmart-wheeling cousins overseas according to popular sentiment. But the article cited refers to an Australian as part of the study. Stacy and Max, both Americans, are prone to denigrate their fellow citizens in many of their communications. This popular pastime has been made a sport by President Obama, who apologizes in Europe on the behalf of those whom he was voted in to represent.
Obesity is a problem in England as well as America. Obama proposed the end to caricature as a means of marginalization, perhaps Stacy and Max might review his speech at Notre Dame for hints on ‘fair-minded words’.
bus to crazy town -tickets please – Fear on Wall St.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFLfzbZQFI
@Mike2liverpool … “I think we are now seeing the endgame for the Anglo-American empire.”
Now that’s a good recipe for WW peace if I ever saw one !
hi aMx and Stacy,
thought you might want to throw your weight behind this through giving it a mention during a radio show:::
A new Facebook group [called Toxic Textbooks – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73911783278 dedicated to reforming economics tuition has just been established by Edward Fullbrook, the coordinator of PAECON, the Post-Autistic ECOnomics Network. Steve Keen, the renowned Australian economist who predicted this crisis a few years before it occurred is promoting it through his website and you can, if interested, read more about it there in his may 16 post — http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/05/16/economics-students-join-toxic-textbooks/
short article on copyright:
Imagining the Fate of Copyright in a Future World
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009993.asp
I was discussing obesity with my wife the other day. My hypothesis is that the American people are subconsciously loading up on fat,(the feast) in preparation for the collapse. (the famine) I said this jokingly, but there are some people that could live for 10 months without food.
@frances snoot – Well, obviously, anyone that drinks large quantities of cola, according to the article, would be subject to this sort of problem of muscle weakness. Soft drink consumption is far more widespread in the US, however, so obviously there is a bigger (no pun intended) problem there. There are many, many overweight older French men (like Gerard Depardieu), however, and you can see that their fat is a different quality as they seem to get fat on too much real food whereas those consuming processed food and soft drink/cola seem flabby obese with no tone. I think it is something to be worried about; pretending it doesn’t exist because you might hurt someone’s feelings is daft. To me, it looks like some crime has been committed against them.
I did not indicate in my post that I believed in ignoring problems concerning obesity, but I believe that obesity is the problem of an individual, not any think-tank or government agency. The study is interesting, but not very applicable. Muscle fiber atrophy and fat cellular composition aside: people without common sense will not avoid health problems. Will the government now tax soda to save Gerty Blubberbuss?
Living in France, one might be forgiven for unconciously taking up a negative American bias. It is something to consider; that is all!
Thank you for your reply and your hard work on this extremely informative site and Max’s great commentaries!
@ Alister,
“centralized power of wall street is not bad in some ways…..Rob the government of assets and via that to rob the people of their assets.”
The government robbed from the people to get the “assets”. The government GAVE wall street those assets. Big difference here. To me the solution is to stop letting the state robbing from the people in the first place.
He also seems to be overlooking the fact that the central banks have been given a monopoly of the creation of money. This is the underlying cause of boom and bust. If this guy doesn’t see or understand this, he is always going to come to the wrong conclusion.
I can’t believe people listen to this garbage.
1) Yes, it is a well-known fact that the “Do-Lar” is going to Hades in a handbasket. Long-term, its prospects are deplorable. However, so are the prospects of all other major currencies. The question is which one will get to the bottom last. It may very well be the dollar. And, relatively speaking, the comparative laggard will be the financial winner in an economically twisted way.
Short-term, I would not be surprised to see the dollar mount a bear-crunching rally from somewhere around its present level. Positive divergences are appearing. Vide:
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=UUP&p=D&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p69827560852
Talk of the dollar being supplanted by the 人民币 (Renminbi) is ridiculous in the foreseeable future. I have been to China, and do not believe a single number coming out of that hectic-paced country.
2) Europeans tend to be more physically fit than Americans because they: a) spend less time in front of the television; b) walk more; and 3) drink greater quantities of red wine vis-à-vis colas.
There has been a lot of talk about Ron Paul’s flair but looking back on some debates I think he didn’t do that bad at all and maybe it’s beside the point anyways.
Ron Paul’s campaign was mend to bring issues into the mainstream media rather actually than winning the elections which would be a remote change we knew from the beginning.
It sounds strange but I think Ron Paul was happy not to win cause he would be an immediate target for the NWO and most likely be killed like JF or King. He knew that.
Confessions of an economic hit man make this point very clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCZCA5ZinNw
will
“centralized power of wall street is not bad in some ways…..Rob the government of assets and via that to rob the people of their assets.” how is this quote related to what i posted? 0_o
@ Alister,
the quote was from your first post; the lecture by david harvey. I just think he is mis-assigning the blame/cause/culprit. (Sorry for my previous post; I felt angry just listening to the mis-diagnosis.)
You’re latter post I agree with. Most textbooks are, at best incomplete. Some just plain wrong. (Not a big Keynes fan, either) Just curious to what is being proposed as the replacements.
(I would like to point out that the Austrian School of economists have been predicting this longer than two years before it happened.)
I think it is important to point out that most processed foods here in the US is made with corn syrup (due to sugar tariffs???).
Take a stroll through any major grocery chain here and it is not sugar inside, but corn syrup.
(yeah some people call it the same, but I stopped eating corn syrup long ago, and most americans call me “skinny”).
will
yeah, well remember that harvey is infamously a self-confessed marxist so we are unlikely to derive from him any truly sustainable near-medium term solutions for this gfc. i nevertheless appreciated his pov even though i recognise its ultimate futility (in other public broadcasts he has even gone so far as to actually advocate the eradication of profit from the market place(!))…because to understand the quilt which engulfs us all one must at least accept and hopefully seek to comprehend its invariably scruffy tapestry-recognising the wrong is sometimes more useful than seeing the right
Obesity = Inflation Proofed
The study dealt with people who drank 2 to 9 liters of cola per day. Do we really need to study that? If a group of profoundly stupid people start eating a cup of dirt per day, are we going to have to study the effects of excessive dirt eating too?
I’m not sure a crisis is such a bad thing. Clearly there are some slow-swimming fish in the gene pool.
@ Stacy, on “droopy piles,” flaccid paralysis can be a side effect of having depressed levels of potassium in one’s blood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypokalemia
What’s gross to me is the idea of drinking between 4 and 10 liters of soda a day. Don’t know how anyone can do that.
On cattle theft, something similar happened in my neck of the woods not too long ago. A couple unemployed kids stole a calf and ate it. I assumed that they were unemployed, homeless, and hungry, but the article made it sound like they were just a couple of kids camping out, who got hungry, and decided to steal a calf and slaughter it just because. I still don’t know what’s true.
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/05/02/2766704-hungry-ny-men-accused-of-stealing-eating-calf
Why Europeans are getting taller and taller-and Americans aren’t. – From The New Yorker
Russia apparently dropped the US dollar as a reserve currency, transferring over the Euro. What are the implications, then, of a shift towards Russian and European coordination. Zzz Germans have, in the past, been willing to partner with Russia, since Russia has a considerable resource base–not to mention the north pole, which might benefit them should this warming continue, although Alex Jones claims the climate is cooling. Again, the US and German governments–at least–are manipulating the climate.
Alex Jones is an interesting guy. I think he is an intrepid journalist who wants the best for the little guy, and while he perhaps paints with a broad stroke and delegates more authority to Bilderbergers, Trilaterialists and Council of Foreign Relationers than they can muster in the muddle of current events, they do enjoy a stupefying amount of oligarchical wealth and certainly have the mechanisms in place to rape spiritual beings (humans and nonhumans and the earth as a whole).
Max and Stacey,
how often do you listen to Alex Jones? What do you think?
peace
I was chatting with Catherine Fitts at the beginning of the year about the $ and she warned not to short it. She explained that US Treasuries are a global tax that we force upon rest of the planet via our military; a defacto global tax. Her $ crash forecast was late this year or early next. As our military might goes so goes the Almighty Dollar. I’m still amazed that the $ hasn’t crash landed in peso-land.