If we learn nothing, then we deserve to lose

What Have We Learned in the Past 13 Years?

We have learned nothing since 1999 except the Central State and Central Bank will intervene in the market to bend price and risk to serve the Status Quo.

If we learn nothing, then we deserve to lose. This is not a popular concept in America at this point in its history, when monumental errors are denied, excused, rationalized or quickly absolved by those who committed them.

As a small-fry investor, when I veer away from my discipline and system, I predictably lose money. As I sift the ashes of the trade, I always remind myself: if I learn nothing from my studies and experience, then I deserve to lose.

What exactly has America learned since January 1, 1999, 13 years that included two stupendous financial/credit bubbles, two hot wars and an explosion in public and private debt? If we examine the policy changes and institutional changes since the 2008 global financial meltdown, then we have to conclude that we've learned a very few things:

1. We've learned that the way to "repair" the catastrophic damage of a financial bubble bursting is to inflate another financial bubble in another asset class.

2. Systemic incentives will be put in place for everyone to speculate in the new bubble, with two important caveats: the Financial and Political Elites will get to play the game with moral hazard, i.e. their

The overdue cleansing of the Augean stables

Living Off Immoral Earnings

By Tim Price

“The reality… is that banks … support a thick layer of second tier executives, as well as legions of pen-pushing, meeting-loving, middle-and back-office workers who are paid multiples of their worth and contribution, especially compared with other industries.”

 -     Financial Times‟ Lex column, January 19th, 2012.

* * *

“Stephen [Hester, CEO of RBS] is being urged by a number of people to accept the bonus and I think he will”… This person [an unnamed senior banker] added that if [Hester] turned down his bonus, it would “demoralise” staff members and would send a signal that they now effectively “worked for an arm of the civil service or a utility, rather than for a bank.”

 -     Unnamed banker, playing the world’s smallest violin on behalf of Stephen Hester.

 * * *

Erik Schatzker (Bloomberg News): “$1.6 billion in compensation [at Goldman Sachs] is still a lot of money.”

Nassim Taleb: “Anything above zero is too much money.”

Erik Schatzker: “Why zero ?”

Nassim Taleb: “Because it is a utility. Anything you bail out, should not be earning more than a civil servant of corresponding rank. Period.”

 -     Nassim Taleb on Bloomberg News, Oct 18th, 2011.

 * * * 

Contender for leading meme of our time is the idea, fast becoming conventional wisdom, that capitalism is somehow experiencing a crisis. UK Prime Minister David Cameron (or his speechwriter) suggested last week that it is now the time to use the “crisis of capitalism to improve markets, not undermine them.” If we draw a

Nothing Really Matters?

Greek Update

By DoctoRx

Bloomberg.com is out after the close of trading with EU to Have No Deadline for End of Greek Talks.  Bloomberg was flogging the story all weekend that a deal was at hand between the Greek government and its private debtholders.  Now comes this anodyne brief piece that appears to give a Roseanne Roseannadanna spin on it:  ”Never mind”.

Does anything ever matter anymore if it’s not bullish?

Wasn’t this “PSI” initiative make-or-break?  Wasn’t the euro maybe about to go the way of the lost island of Atlantis if a deal were not struck by today?  Maybe the world economy was going to vaporize?

Now . . . fuggedaboutit?

Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra said that it’s never over till it’s over.

He didn’t foresee a world in which it’s seemingly never over.

At least with a bond, someday it is… well… over.  That’s a Good Thing.

That’s how doctors handle things.  Faced with a problem, you triage it and if it’s serious, you deal with it right away.  Win, lose or draw, the crisis gets a resolution.

This Greek situation is no longer a Greek tragedy or even a French farce.

It’s Theater of the Absurd.

Time to move on.  We who have followed the twists and turns of the Greek crisis (or is it “crisis”?) now look like the men and women who knew too much.  Que sera, sera.

Any way the wind blows…

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Tragedy of the Commons

by Garrett Hardin

In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.

The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property, subdivided into five portions. Each year the owners moved their animals to a new section. Fallow periods of four years gave the pastures time to recover from the grazing. The owners did this because they had an incentive to take care of their land. But no one owned the land outside the ranch. It was open to nomads and their herds. Though knowing nothing of Karl Marx, the herdsmen followed his famous advice of 1875: “To each according to his needs.” Their needs were uncontrolled and grew with the increase in the number of animals. But supply was governed by nature and decreased

Das Kapitulation

Germany capitulates, kicks can well into 21st century…or at least into 2013

by Tyler Durden

The biggest market-moving event so far this year is undeniably the positive (so far) aftershock from Germany's capitulation on monetary expansion and as Michael Cembalest of JPMorgan goes on to note that the ECB, directly and indirectly, is giving its governments and its banks the money that the rest of the world has been taking away. Between the ECB's LTRO largesse and its 'crisis management' initiatives (for example: collateral standards, watered down Basel III, lower bank reserve requirements), it seems clear that the resignation of the German contingency (Stark and Weber) from the ECB last year was a signal of the laying-down-of-arms by the Germans relative to the Periphery (perhaps for fear of the 'powerful backlash' that Monti among other has warned about). While the JPMorgan CIO understands the market's positive reaction (as Armageddon risk is reduced/delayed) he remains a skeptic broadly given the structural reforms and any expectations of growth among most euro-

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

The Hamster wheel

M.E. Escher - Up and Down

By Ashvin Pandurangi

The latest revolution of the Euro Crisis Cycle has brought us back to talks of restructuring Greek sovereign debt through "Private Sector Involvement" (PSI), which are somehow taking place in a Universe where debt restructuring is not allowed to be confused with "debt default" or "bankruptcy". On Friday January 20, the IIF (representing some of Greece’s creditors) and the Greek government announced that they had finally reached an "agreement" on the basic structure of the restructuring (or the basic restructuring of the structure?).  

Here’s the live blog update from The Guardian on Friday, which really stood out to me:

A framework of the deal -- the basic structure of the bond swap that the Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos wants to present at Monday's eurogroup meeting -- has been accepted by both sides, "put in place" and I understand committed to paper.

But it would also seem that other aspects of the agreement - be them legal, technical or matters of substance -- remain unresolved and will be discussed at negotiations that resume at 7:30pm local time [6.30 GMT] and look set to continue over the weekend.

The happy warrior

ON RESISTING EVIL

By M. Rothbard

How can anyone, finding himself surrounded by a rising tide of evil, fail to do his utmost to fight against it? In our century, we have been inundated by a flood of evil, in the form of collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism, and nihilism. It has always been crystal clear to me that we have a compelling moral obligation, for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, our posterity, our friends, our neighbors, and our country, to do battle against that evil.

It has therefore always been a mystery to me how people who have seen and identified this evil and have therefore entered the lists against it, either gradually or suddenly abandon that fight. How can one see the truth, understand one's compelling duty, and then, simply give up and even go on to betray the cause and its comrades? And yet, in the two movements and

The privileged clique

Putting plankton before people

Eco-warriors who campaign against the building of dams are damning the poor to live at nature’s mercy.

by Nick Thorne 

A good example of the ‘case against big dams’ was presented in a recent article for Al-Jazeera by Lori Pottinger of California-based NGO International Rivers, which campaigns against large dams and to promote ‘living rivers’. She wrote that ‘large dams have wiped out species; flooded huge areas of wetlands, forests and farmlands; displaced tens of millions of people, and affected close to half a billion people living downstream’. So if big dams have such damaging consequences for the planet’s inhabitants and its flora and fauna, how could anyone be in favour of them?

Well, Pottinger’s argument is simply flawed, with her outlook being typical of the worst kind of misanthropy. She begins with an emotive but meaningless extended metaphor: ‘Rivers act as the planet’s circulatory system. Like our body’s circulation system, the planetary

The Loan

An Exchange of Wealth for Income

by Keith Weiner

As the title of this essay suggests, a loan is an exchange of wealth for income. Like everything else in a free market (imagine happier days of yore), it is a voluntary trade. Contrary to the endemic language of victimization, both parties regard themselves as gaining thereby, or else they would not enter into the transaction. 

In a loan, one party is the borrower and the other is the lender. Mechanically, it is very simple. The lender gives the borrower money and the borrower agrees to pay interest on the outstanding balance and to repay the principle. As with many principles in economics, one can shed light on a trade by looking back in history to a time before the trade existed and considering how the trade developed.

It is part of the nature of being a human that one is born unable to work, living on the surplus produced by one’s parents. One grows up and then one can work for a time. And then one becomes old and infirm, living but not able to work. If one wishes not to starve to death

Common Criminals

To the memory of Wilman Villar Mendoza

By Yoani Sanchez

A couple of years ago, my friend Eugenio Leal decided ask for the report of his criminal record, necessary paperwork when applying for certain jobs. With confidence, he applied for the form where it would say he had never been convicted of any crime but found, in its place, a disagreeable surprise: it appeared that he was the perpetrator of a “robbery with force” in the town where he’d been born, although in fact he had never even run a red light. Eugenio protested, because he knew this wasn’t a bureaucratic error nor a mere accident. His activities as a dissident had already made him the victim of repudiation rallies, arrests and threats, and now a blot on his criminal record had been added. He had gone from being a member of the opposition to someone with a past as a “common criminal,” something very useful to the political police to discredit him.

Sailing fully loaded

Our Many Layers of Entitlement 

    the entitlement mindset includes much more than government benefits programs.

The word entitlement commonly refers to government benefits to which we are entitled as taxpayers and/or citizens/residents. But there are layers of entitlement in the American psyche far beyond government benefits programs.

Let's start with the government benefits entitlements. The programs most people refer to as entitlements are Social Security and Medicare, which taxpayers pay for with payroll taxes (even if the money just goes into one giant Federal pot).

Beyond these "I paid into them" entitlements are the "welfare" entitlements of Medicaid, Section 8 Housing, SNAP/food stamps, etc., which are paid out of general tax revenues and which are

United Welfare States of America

In 2011 Nearly Half The Population Received Some Form Of Government Benefit

by Zero Hedge

While politicians may debate whether or not America is the most "generous" (with other generations' money of course) socialist welfare state in the history of mankind, the undoctored numbers make the affirmative case quite clear and without any chance for confusion. The single most disturbing statistic: in 2011 nearly half of the population lived in a household that receives some form of government benefit, which in turn accounted for 65% of total federal spending, or $2.5 trillion, and amount to 15% of GDP. And yet some people out there still think these people, long since indoctrinated to do little but mooch off the welfare state (which will continue subsidizing its existence so long as debt rates are so low that the government can issue trillions each year without fears of consequences) will halt their iTunes purchases, will voluntarily stop subsisting on the government's teat, or will rebel against a government which is their only source of income? Why? Especially since something tells us that there will be a peculiar overlap between this 50% and the 50% of Americans that pay zero taxes.

Of course, this chart should be observed in conjunction with the "What is this?" chart we presented two days ago from Morgan Stanley which pretty much explains everything about the US "economy"

Show me

Where Should the Burden of Proof Rest?

By Robert Higgs

Perhaps you have been struck, as I have been repeatedly over the years, by the way in which certain disputes are framed. A writer, reporter, or discussant recognizes a difference of views on some matter: A maintains X, and B maintains Y. Yet, even though a difference is acknowledged, the question is resolved by concluding that X must be the case because B has not proven that Y is the case.  This conclusion is often reached only on the assumption that A does not, or should not, bear a similar burden of proof.

Libertarians, for example, constantly encounter this situation when they argue against state provision of some good or service currently provided by the state. The libertarians might argue, say, that private suppliers can provide personal security in better quality or at lower cost than the government police can. Critics claim that the

We are doomed

The rule of law and other fairy tales

click at ή εγώ ή ο άλλος

Fiat money is doomed anyway

Making the Transition to a New Gold Standard

by Larry White 

Nixon Ending The Gold Standard

Suppose for the sake of argument that we all agree to the following proposition: If we could change the monetary regime with zero switching cost, merely by snapping our fingers, we would prefer the US to be on a gold standard. In the most general terms a gold standard means a monetary system in which a standard mass (so many grams or ounces) of pure gold defines the unit of account, and standardized pieces of gold serve as the ultimate media of redemption. Currency notes, checks, and electronic funds transfers are all denominated in gold and are redeemable claims to gold.[1] The question then arises: What would be the least costly way for the United States to make the transition to a new gold standard? We need to choose a low-cost method to insure that the agreed benefits of being on the gold standard exceed the costs of switching over.

Two transitional paths suggest themselves. (1) One path is to let a parallel gold standard grow up alongside the current fiat dollar. (2) The more conventional path, as followed after the suspension of the gold standard during the US Civil War, is to set a date after which the US dollar is to be meaningfully defined as so many grams of pure gold. Or as it is more commonly put, an effective parity is established

The politics of war

Stop the Madness

Despite all the hype, Iran's nuclear program has yet to violate international law. It's time to calm down, think, and above all halt the rush to war.

BY YOUSAF BUTT 

Olli Heinonen is alarmed that Iran has begun producing 20 percent enriched uranium at a new, deeply buried site, and calculates that Iranian scientists could further purify the material to the 90 percent enrichment needed for a bomb in about six months' time. This prediction, however, is based on unsubstantiated assumptions regarding Iranian intentions, and only serves to provide ammunition for hawks in Washington that would rush the United States into another destructive war in the Middle East.

If Tehran enriched uranium to 90 percent, it would be forced to break its four decade-long adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- a momentous step that would likely prompt swift military action from the United States or Israel. Furthermore, Heinonen fails to mention that, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, "All nuclear material in the facility remains under the

Deceits and delusions

The euro-crisis and democracy

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

Anybody with any knowledge of economics should feel uneasy at the sight of a country where half of recorded economic activity is conducted by the state. Are such semi-socialist societies operable, and if so, for how long? That complete socialism is impossible and that any attempt to establish it must fail, we know for sure since Ludwig von Mises explained it in detail in 1922 with his masterly Die Gemeinwirtschaft (Socialism). The only reasons that the Soviet Union did not collapse earlier but managed to drag out its persistent economic decline for seventy-odd years are that it introduced full socialization to no more than seventy percent of its economy, and that it had its bureaucrats constantly peek through the Iron Curtain and observe market prices in the capitalist West to be able to

Corporatocracy Has Replaced Capitalism

Why We Are Totally Finished

Corporatocracy: A government that serves the interest of, and may de facto be run by corporations.

By D Sherman Okst

Capitalism Fixes Problems & Preserves Democracy: Capitalism is what we should be relying on to fix our problems. Capitalism has it's own ecosystem, just like biology's ecosystem. An economic ecosystem that weeds out the weak, has parasites that eat the failures and new bacteria that evolves and grows replacements for

Teaching and common sense

How’s My Teaching?

More policymakers are adopting evaluation systems based on classroom performance.

By MARCUS A. WINTERS

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and New Jersey governor Chris Christie are the latest high-profile policymakers to pursue radical changes in the evaluation of public school teachers. While the policy details—in particular, how they would use students’ test scores to evaluate teachers—get the most attention, the most promising aspect of these proposals is that they represent a fundamental shift in philosophy. The new approach is much better aligned with what we now know about teachers and how we should employ them.

Under the current system, public schools measure teacher quality by placing heavy weight on a set of professional credentials. In order to enter the classroom, a prospective teacher must earn a degree from an education college and must be certified. Teachers earning advanced degrees get rewarded with higher salaries.

The secret contract

The Secret Document That Transformed China

by DAVID KESTENBAUM and JACOB GOLDSTEIN

In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China's economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village's collective farm; there was no personal property.

"Back then, even one straw belonged to the group," says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. "No one owned anything."

At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: "What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?" Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.

In theory, the government would take what the collective grew, and would also distribute food to each family. There was no incentive to work hard — to go out to the fields early, to put in extra effort, Yen Jingchang says.

"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work."

In Xiaogang there was never enough food, and the farmers often had to go to other villages to beg. Their children were going hungry. They were desperate.