High Anxiety

108th Floor – Sears Tower, Chicago

High Anxiety

I’ll pass.

Can One Man Stop Goldman?

Matt Taibbi with the help of Rolling Stone:

On giving-Goldman a Chance

The Billy Mays of Wall Street

In honor of Bill Mays, the first “Billy Mays, Salesman of the Year”

2008 – Jim Cramer

Billy Mays never sold a product with a $700 billion commission, plus trailers.

Begs the question, is it a good thing that Wall St is based on PT Barnum’s motto on the minute?

Iran – How Not to Rig an Election

Iran Election Video Update

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There had been some pundits predicting that Friday’s Presidential Election in Iran would devolve into their Tiananmen Square.

Given the Anti-Iranian propaganda we hear in America, I figured the Iranian theocracy was a pretty tight ship and they would easily rig this election and insure a peacful acceptance of whatever result the Grand Mullahs desired.

Turns out I was wrong as Iran is indeed seeing widespread urban protests, disrupted communications and the ongoing expulsion of foreign reporters.  As the above video attests, the Iranians are bad at both rigging elections and suppressing reporting on rigging an election.

All this could have been easily avoided had Iran just followed America’s lead in rigging an election.

Imagine this scenario:

Following the closing of polling booths Friday, the government should have gone into delay mode.  Whether blaming tremendous voter turnout or a close election the government could have spent the next weeks and even months counting votes and rounding up overly vocal protestors.

If Iranian leaders had known recent American history they could have used the example of of our election of 2000 to learn the value of a cooling off period when stealing an election.  Imagine our protests had Bush been declared the winner on election night 2000 with a unthinkable 65% to 35% margin of victory.  Even our uneducated electorate could have smelled that stinky a fraud.

Combine the delaying tactic with the anti-protest tactics of NYC Mayor Bloomberg.  The weeks of delay  could have allowed the Iranian authorities the dual benefits of being able to round up protestors and inserting agent provactuers to sully the oppositions reputation.

Highly Illogical

A)  American’s don’t want a public healthcare plan.

B)  A public health care plan will force out private insurers.

So we don’t want a public option but if it’s offered we’ll all select it??

A)  American’s want their big SUV’s and not fuel-efficient econoboxes.

B)  GM went out of business because it was making cars American’s didn’t want.

So American’s want big SUV’s that GM made but won’t anymore.

A)  Bank of America is Too Big to Fail

B) Bank of America is forced to buy the biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide, and the biggest retail broker, Merrill Lynch.

So stress tests now prove that new bigger Bank of America will no longer fail nor need to be disassembled.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”  (guess the speaker)

Truth can be Violent, Vulgar and makes good Video

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
John Ruskin

WARNING: While full of truth and sorta funny, the following video does have some offensive language.   Please avoid if you don’t want to here some bad words or the truth about our “Green Shoots”

Ok, a lot of bad words  ;-)

Unions – The New Victims of Bigotry

The question by NY Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin at the end of this clip says it all: “”Name a Successful Unionized Company!”

I guess they all forget UPS, GE, all six major movie studios, AT&T, and many many others.   Like most in my generation, his job depends on his being uninformed, or appearing as such, about his area of expertise.

So much for the Times being a Liberal Rag

Here’s the email I sent to the Public Editor of the NY Times, Clark Hoyt:

Dear Mr. Hoyt,

One of your BUSINESS reporters, Andrew Ross Sorkin, while appearing on MSNBC as a New York Times representative, stated that he could not name one successful corporation with unionized employees.

Can your newspaper really be successful if it has reporters who lack such basic knowledge about their area of expertise?  His statement is so egregiously incorrect, I was surprised the unionized employees at the immensely successful General Electric, who were filming his segment on “Morning Joe”, didn’t just turn off the camera’s and lights.

I have yet to hear a correction from either Mr. Sorkin or the New York Times.

Hopefully the correction will be as prominent as Mr Sorkin’s asinine comment.

Sincerely,

Thomas Bergman
tbapple@yahoo.com

UK Healthcare – Too Simple for Our Feeble Brains

We all know the meme, “Government wants to take over health care and get between you and your doctor”, and we all know it’s not that simple.  In fact the UK system is quite simple.  They have guaranteed healthcare for all but you can still get health insurance if you are dissatisfied will the governments system.

Why Both?

In the United Kingdom, both emergency care and standard physician services are guaranteed for all.  Then why do they still have Health Insurance?

There is a grain of truth to the threats of long waiting times for medical procedures under government run health insurance and it typically doesn’t cover “elective” procedures.  This is where health insurance fills in for the governments deficiencies.

For example, an athletic sixty year-old might purchase insurance to cover procedures like hip replacement or optical laser surgery that might be neglected in a government insurance plan.  We can all be sure that the insurance companies will be quite adept at pointing out these gaps in coverage.

Why haven’t we heard this argument from the Dems?  Either they think its a nuance too complicated for our feeble brains to understand or (much worse) they think we might.

On Transparency…

Whether we are talking about Bank balance sheets or US Gov’t torture photos,

the absence of transparency reveals its own truth…

The Paradox of Deflation with Inflation

One of the primary economic arguments today is whether we will have deflation caused by the bad economy or inflation caused by the response to the bad economy.

I believe we will see deflation in many assets but inflation in staples like food and water.

It’s my opinion that we will continue to see a huge inflation in Cash prices but offsetting deflation in Credit prices. Think of the CPI as averaging the two product baskets, hence the disinformation of current low inflation being reported.

For example, bread is typically purchased with cash while TV’s are typically purchased with Credit.

We all know the distortions of the current CPI dating back to the Clinton years. To really understand the problem just simplify the basket to two goods; one a necessity and one a luxury.

2006 – Bread – $1 per loaf, 30″ Flat Screen TV – $1000
2009 – Bread – $2 per loaf, 30″ Flat Screen TV – $500

In 2006, $3000 would buy 1000 loaves of Bread and two 30″ Flat Screens

In 2009, $3000 would buy 1000 loaves of Bread and two 30″ Flat Screens

Hence no inflation, as long as you can eat a Flat Screen TV.

If you would like to learn more just Wiki “Gresham’s Law”