Saturday 13 March 2010

Money Illusion In The New World Order

Shaving the metal in an act of malicious malversation, Slack Jaw is a fiscal fraud.

But.

The whole of the capitalist speculative template is nothing more than a progression of restructured distortions of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" to quote Charles Mackay.

Nearly three centuries ago, the charlatan who put forward for approval a business venture involved in "carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is" was prescient.
Aside from the insider traders and market manipulators, this perspective perfectly describes the Friedmanist late capitalist template.

"Delicate indeed! Truly delicate! There is no space where espionage is not used" - Sun Tzu.

Slack Jaw is so proud to be a part of the New World Order, global government without global regulation, global speculation with no regulation, playing the Ponzi poker of currencies, deciding against saving the planet as it isn't an investment bank.

"... although we always recognized the urgency of the problems, when we were fighting AIDS, hunger, water shortages, global warming, and so on, there always seemed to be time to reflect, to postpone decisions (recall how the main conclusion of the last meeting of world leaders in Bali, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue their talks...). But with the financial meltdown, the urgency to act was unconditional; sums of an unimaginable magnitude had to be found immediately. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, saving AIDS patients and those dying for lack of funds for expensive treatments, saving the starving children... all this can wait a little bit. The call to "save the banks!" by contrast, is an unconditional imperative which must be met with immediate action. The panic was so absolute that a transnational and non-partisan unit was immediately established, all grudges between world leaders being momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe. But what the much-praised "bi-partisan" approach effectively meant was that even democratic procedures were de facto suspended: there was no time to engage in proper debate, and those who opposed the plan in the US Congress were quickly made to fall in with the majority. Bush, McCain and Obama all quickly got together, explaining to confused congressmen and women that there was simply no time for discussion - we were in a state of emergency, and things simply had to be done fast... And let us also not forget that the sublimely enormous sums of money were spent not on some clear "real" or concrete problem, but essentially in order to restore confidence in the markets, that is, simply to change people's beliefs!" - Slavoj Žižek.

And all based on Illusory Money in an Hyperillusory Matrix...

But even the money itself is a fake judged through lenses with chromatic aberration.
We cannot ever see it for what it actually is.
This is Money Illusion.

As John Authers helpfully pointed out in the Financial Times, two of the most common forms of Money Illusion relate to inflation and currency - when voters make their assessment of the economic (in)competence of Slack Jaw in the great marketing campaign known as the British Election Twenty Ten, the majority will solely judge money via their incomings and cashflow: no account for the effects of inflation nor any assessment of the Real value of their paper and metal in comparison with any basket of similar currencies will be made.

Yet in his adherence to an allegedly watered down neo-con agenda, Slack Jaw has introduced minimal annual wage increases/wage freezes and job insecurity, helped to provoke the slashing of interest rates and the compression of future wages while, concurrently, boosting inflation in bursts and devaluing what is left of your savings against any global currency you might care to choose.
All in aid of a hyperregressive redistribution of 'wealth' up the psychopathic pyramid.

"Some in clandestine companies combine;
Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line;
With air and empty names beguile the town,
And raise new credits first, then cry 'em down;
Divide the empty nothing into shares,
And set the crowd together by the ears" - Defoe.

But inflation and currency variations/manipulations are only the first layer of Money Illusion.
Money Illusion exists at a range of depths.

How far should we go down the wormhole of Realisation?

Take Quantitative Easing.
Not something that you take into account when assessing the Real value of your bank balance.
Or future taxation to pay for the bankers' holidays, not too many building Realistic financial projections with regard to the increasingly voracious State Tax Monster.
Or Americans taxed in the US for all and any earnings earned elsewhere in the American governed HyperImperium - double taxation for the crime of being American and at large in the world.

Credit - "we own your future wage slavery earnings, thank you very much", the Ratings Agencies, the fake wealth created by the housing market (actually rather a regressive redistribution of wealth up the class system), the illusory hedging in the derivatives markets and their bastardized offspring, and multifarious other autistic scams of mammon.

And all this with a lubricant that is based entirely on trust.
No Gold Standards for the likes of you, me laddio!

But all this is Micro Money Illusion.
It is in the Macro where it becomes more interesting.

Take the lifting of the ban on short selling which will impact on the global financial markets in April. Having mock traded their systems for three years, the Chinese are now ready to short.
And shorters always get the flack - it is not the decent thing to do to oppose an asset, to correctly value an overpriced entity and profit from the future fall in the asset's price.
It is un-American and anti-capitalist as both depend on an illusory feelgood belief in the fake lubricant and the vehicles that depend on such fuel, hence the rampant targeting of hedge funds in the few pieces of regulation that have surfaced since the Credit Crash began.
Keep the Illusion going - the psychology of strategic success.

Meanwhile, on a higher macro level, we have the issue of the Renmimbi being tied to the dollar to the benefit of both China and the US (minimizing the effects of the Depression in the US) and the disadvantage of everybody else. When the Chinese publicised their alleged hidden agenda of reconsidering this foundation of global finance last month, the markets wobbled.

When it is all stripped down, every single capitalist market structure is a Ponzi Scheme. The only variables are the number of layers in the pyramid and, consequently, the timescale that the scam may continue to be perpetrated.

Robert Walpole, speaking in parliament against the South-Sea Company, said it countenanced: "the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labour for a prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an evil of the first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of a stock, by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the purpose."

The whole payment system remains in danger of breaking down in this Depression.
We are currently experiencing the classic relief rally that one might expect in a W-shaped Depression, when the gullible are once again convinced of the robustness of their system following another brush with a plausible and very alarming scenario.

As Mackay said in reference to the Mississippi Scheme, another early Ponzi Scheme: "No sooner did the breath of popular mistrust blow steadily upon it, than it fell to ruins, and none could raise it up again."

But Mackay was a Cynical Realist...
"... but the people confined themselves to complaints; a sombre and timid despair, a stupid consternation, had seized upon all, and men's minds were too vile even to be capable of a courageous crime."

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Monday 1 March 2010

Robber Bankers

It is understood that Goldman Sachs are merely undertaking God's work.

The release yesterday of the Goldman Sachs (GS) financial figures for 2009 suggest either that a whole host of deities run the trading rooms at GS...
...or that GS manipulate markets.

How about a probabilistic yet holistic overview of why the latter is the Real hyperreality?

All market analysts and trading teams set benchmarks on performance.
For GS, the positive daily performance benchmark is a profit of $100 million.

In 2009, GS achieved this threshold on 50% of trading days and yet never once had a losing day of the equivalent magnitude - that is 131 trading days with greater than $100 million profits and 0 days with greater than $100 million losses.

The 131 days of exceptional performance shattered the previous GS record of 90 days in a year above this level.
Additionally, out of 263 trading days, the investment bank only lost any money at all on 19 days.

The $13.4 billion annual profit certainly befits a state-based investment bank whose major opponents were torpedoed from the water or drastically down-muscled following Hank Paulson jumping from the financial levers of power at GS to the financial levers of power above the Bush administration.

Now, now, now.....

Financial markets are supposed to be well-regulated competitive platforms where skilled analysts attempt to detect mis-priced assets in the hope of benefiting from the value when the price moves to the true or equilibrium value.
Due to the vast array of economic, psychological and algorithmic inputs to any market price, we are supposed to be dealing with probabilities.
Generally, an increase in how 'wrong' a price is leads to a greater percentage of occasions where we might expect to earn handsomely.

But markets are noisy. Knickpoints and breakpoints disrupt future dynamics. Black Swans and other uproarious events destabilise the markets. Super-systemic inputs distort the template.

The top people at GS are obviously in a much stronger position than most analysts.
GS are able to benefit from excessive levels of inside information, regulatory forewarning (particularly from governmental sources), cornering of markets or, as was the case with Greece (using the words of Phil Angelides, the chairman of the US Financial Inquiry Commission), utilising the practice of creating securities and "fully betting against them".

But even so...
131 days at $100m+
0 days at $100m-

This is the equivalent of playing repeated games of chess against your four year old granddaughter with the added advantage of being white in every game.
And with the option of removing threatening pieces from the board as the mood takes you.

The fact that these results coincided with the PR release of news about the devastating cuts that we must expect in public services in Britain (and across the allegedly developed world) over the next decade is surely just another example of the market timing of GS.

There is no competition in the market.
This is monopolistic bullying to all intents and purposes.
With no rules.

Meanwhile The Economist ask us: "Is democracy compatible with sound finances, in the long run?"

Are these two things which don't exist compatible with one another?
These are the questions of Our Time.

© A Wunch Of Bankers/Dietrological. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from Football Is Fixed and redistribute by email or post to the web.