Money,Money,Quo Vadis?

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“There’s a lot of money on the sidelines, just waiting for an opportunity."
Thursday’s losses came as the Labor Department reported that continuing jobless claims neared 5 million in the week ended on Saturday, underscoring fears that the labor market has pitched into a freefall. First-time jobless claims were unchanged last week at 627,000.Unemployment has risen to 7.6 percent since the economy fell into a recession in December 2007, and economists expect that jobless rates will break 8 percent this year and go as high as 9 or 10 percent by the time the country begins to recover.Late-Day Drop Sends Dow to a Low - NYTimes.com

Alexandre Herchcovitch:" Things were bad at one time, and my experience is that, eventually, people will consume again. They will want to buy clothes. They will want to get back to their normal way to live.”

Of Bankers ,Money,Chaos,how about THE REAL SPIN?

Bonobos, Left & Right

Frans de Waal points out that primate research was being pulled out of shape by “spin-doctors” who wanted to prove a point about human nature. You can read his excellent article in the eSkeptic for 8 August 2007.

Right-wingers were proclaiming that bonobos were aggressive because they were known to hunt small animals. Wrong! Hunting for food has little to do with aggression.

It’s important not to idealize the bonobo, but there are no known cases of lethal aggression in the wild. Violence has been seen in close confinement, in zoos.

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Living Links - de Waal

Wall Street Scar......let them go

drawing by marguerita " Oh,You are one of them"........

The esoteric securities underneath the current mess are, to the people who invented and marketed them, analogous to pharmaceutical drugs. Used correctly, they can enhance your life. Abused, they are lethal“Fact is that this is a terrible way to make a living — except for the money,” Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston and now a private investor, said. “The lifestyle is terrible — the hours, the sucking up. These guys must feel like they’re the victims of a capricious god.”.Wall Street's New Pariah Status - NYTimes.com

Gaia and The Rats : It's Comin' At You- Round The Corner

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NEW DELHI- Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil.
The chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned after revealing that he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back-office giant with a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries.
Mr. Raju said Wednesday that 50.4 billion rupees, or $1.04 billion, of the 53.6 billion rupees in cash and bank loans the company listed as assets for its second quarter, which ended in September, were nonexistent.
The revelations could cause a major shake-up in India’s enormous outsourcing industry, analysts said, and may force many large companies to investigate and perhaps revamp their back offices.Fraud at Satyam, Indian Outsourcing Company - NYTimes.com

Techcnology:Innovation can be a dangerous game:Of cows,sheep,quantum and Yes,I Can?

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photo by marguerita
“The technology got ahead of our ability to use it in responsible ways."

What happened?The miss by Wall Street analysts shows how models can be precise out to several decimal places, and yet be totally off base.“The price of an asset, like a house or a stock, reflects not only your beliefs about the future, but you’re also betting on other people’s beliefs,” he observed. “It’s these hierarchies of beliefs — these behavioral factors — that are so hard to model.”Better modeling, more wisely applied, would have helped and common sense in senior management.
“Complexity, transparency, liquidity and leverage have all played a huge role in this crisis,”and these are things that are not generally modeled as a quantifiable risk.”
That out-of-control innovation is reflected in the growth of securities intended to spread risk widely through the use of financial instruments called derivatives. Credit-default swaps, for example, were originally created to insure blue-chip bond investors against the risk of default. In recent years, these swap contracts have been used to insure all manner of instruments, including pools of subprime mortgage securities.
The danger is that the modeling becomes too mechanical.”“We’ve learned the hard way that the consequences can be catastrophic, even if statistically improbable,” he said.
In Modeling Risk, the Human Factor Was Left Out - NYTimes.com
Note:
In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons.
from the editor: apropos Wall Street and bufoons.

The word comes from the Latin "quantus," for "how much."

Behind this, one finds the fundamental notion that a physical property may be "quantized", referred to as "quantization". This means that the magnitude can take on only certain discrete numerical values, rather than any value, at least within a range. There is a related term of quantum number.

The Dollar: Life guard,Underground and Over & the Sprinkler Systems

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"all just one big lie"


Today we celebrate the Feast of the Guardian Angels, those heavenly creatures who are assigned to be our protectors from the moment of our birth and throughout life. Although the nature of angels and the tasks given to them vary in each tradition ,other roles include acting as warrior or guard :a legend among Wall Street traders, was arrested on Thursday morning by federal agents and charged with criminal securities fraud stemming from his company’s money management business.“We are alleging a massive fraud — both in terms of scope and duration.
Although not a household name among consumers, Mr. M’s firm has played a significant role in the structure of Wall Street for decades, both in traditional stock trading and in the development of newer electronic networks for trading equities and derivatives......Prominent Trader Accused of Defrauding Clients - NYTimes.com

Wall Street and Etc:Quote Unquote | Red Is the New Black

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Mr. Greenspan said that he had found “a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”
He said that the current crisis had “turned out to be much broader than anything that I could have imagined.”
Mr. Greenspan said that a necessary condition for the crisis to end will be a stabilization in home prices but he said that was not likely to occur for “many months in the future.”
Mr. Greenspan, who headed the nation’s central bank for 18.5 years, said that he and others who believed lending institutions would do a good job of protecting their shareholders are in a “state of shocked disbelief.”Greenspan Faces Questioning on Financial Crisis - NYTimes.com


George Washington- supported plans to build a strong central government by funding the national debt, implementing an effective tax system, and creating a national bank. Washington avoided the temptation of war and began a decade of peace with Britain via the Jay Treaty in 1795; he used his prestige to get it ratified over intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. Although never officially joining the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. Washington's farewell address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against partisanship, sectionalism and involvement in foreign wars. His devotion to civic virtue made him an exemplary figure among early American politicians.^[7][8] Washington died in 1799, and in his funeral oration, Henry Lee said that of all Americans, he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."^[9] Washington has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Wall Street: The Answer is in The Wind

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Wall Street looked beyond the government’s bailout plan on Wednesday and saw more signs that the economy was in for a dramatic slowdown.Stocks Slide Amid New Trouble Signs - NYTimes.com

"But the dwarf said there is no need to be upset,because the people Asterisk sacrifices to himself have already been born, and dying in the arena is the common fate that nobody escapes.I tried to ask in that case what was the point of the sacrificial tribute,but the dwarf began getting nervous and said,"Look, he's coming, now you can see him for yourself."I looked up.Two figures had appeared in front of the burnt-out building.Striding along solemnly in front was a dwarf holding a flag,with the Merrill Lynch symbol on it- you remember it, they have that jolly little bull- and the inscription "Be Bullish!'- from The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin

America's Self Portrait: Food for Thought

drawing by marguerita Principle 8. Life and the Pursuit of Happiness

Japan’s failure to respond urgently and decisively to its banking mess caused the country to endure a “lost decade” of economic stagnation. If America wants to avoid Japan’s decline, the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve the bailout — immediately.

Just as in the U.S. today, most Japanese did not initially appreciate how devastating a banking crisis could be to the real economy. Banks and real estate tycoons in Japan were corrupt, profligate and unsympathetic figures, and no one wanted to help them. On corporate expense accounts, they sipped coffee with gold leaf and patronized “no-panties shabu-shabu” restaurants, which had mirrored floors and miniskirted waitresses.

In short, the businessmen involved were jerks. Op-Ed Columnist - Save the Fat Cats - NYTimes.com

This is what a credit crisis looks like.

It’s not like a stock market crisis, where the scary plunge of stocks is obvious to all. The credit crisis has played out in places most people can’t see. It’s banks refusing to lend to other banks — even though that is one of the most essential functions of the banking system. It’s a loss of confidence in seemingly healthy institutions like Morgan Stanley and Goldman — both of which reported profits even as the pressure was mounting. It is panicked hedge funds pulling out cash. It is frightened investors protecting themselves by buying credit-default swaps — a financial insurance policy against potential bankruptcy — at prices 30 times what they normally would pay.It was this 36-hour period two weeks ago — from the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 17, to the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 18 — that spooked policy makers by opening fissures in the worldwide financial system.

In their rush to do something, and do it fast, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. concluded the time had come to use the “break the glass” rescue plan they had been developing. But in their urgency, they bypassed a crucial step in Washington and fashioned their $700 billion bailout without political spadework, which led to a resounding rejection this past Monday in the House of Representatives.

As Credit Crisis Spiraled, Alarm Led to Action - NYTimes.com

Of Bubbles and Wrath or Grapes of Dust

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We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and dust ,as smoke clouds typically promise..Op-Ed Columnist - Revolt of the Nihilists - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

George Bush: No Mea Culpa or Plus Ca Change,Plus c'est la Meme Chose

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WASHINGTON — For his entire presidency, George W. Bush has tried to avoid the fate of his father, brought low by a feeble economy. Now, as the financial crisis radiates far beyond Wall Street, Mr. Bush faces an even grimmer prospect: being blamed, at least in part, for an economic breakdown.

“There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem,” Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden on Friday. “Now is the time to solve it. from the New York Times
And by the way, where is Dick,Rummy,Condi et all??????? These days????????
So much for the Invasion of Iraq,Death and Maiming Innocent People,creating Chaos Unlimited,eh???
" Ample Opportunity",Lipstick,Moose,Caribou& etc,no?