Day of Rage

Speaking of Our Great Leader Obama,I see that he has been busy stealing promoting his taxpayer money American Jobs Act by campaigning appealing for support directly to the people, all of whom just happen to live in key reelection battle states. On Tuesday he flew to Columbus, OH to try and convince a bunch of high school students what a great bill it is and spoke for a grand total of 17 minutes. On Wednesday he flew to Raleigh, NC and at least talked to eligible voters, although he limited his remarks to students at North Carolina State University to 21 minutes.Next Thursday he is going to Cincinnati to promote the rebuilding of a functionally obsolescent bridge that, due to the required engineering and planning lead times, will not be able to even begin construction until at least 2014. 

We are paying attention and Americans are beginning to rise up against the Kleptocracy. This weekend may be the beginning of anti government demonstrations not affiliated with the Tea Party. The Day of Rage could be the spark that ignites the public rage that has become much more personal as stagflation harvests what little remaining disposable income we have left. This video has been around for a while but I notice that it is coming up on 10 million hits, so if you can't get out be seen, at least join them in spirit.      

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from Greek: κλέπτης (thief) and κράτος (rule), is a term applied to a government subject to control fraud that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service. The term means "rule by thieves". Not an official form of government such as a democracy, republic, monarchy, or theocracy; a kleptocracy is rather a pejorative for a government perceived to have a particularly severe and systemic problem with the selfish misappropriation of public funds by those in power.

Stewart knocks it over the fence

On Wednesday I asked how Obama spells Watergate (Solyndra). By far the best quote of the week was delivered by Jon Stewart and his segment "That Custom Tailored Scandal You Ordered". In a public service announcement he advised the talking heads at Fox News to "call your doctor, because the erection you currently have is going to last longer than 4 hours."

If you are not paying you are being sold

As Paul Scofield said: If you look around the (poker) table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you. One of the common misconceptions of the Internet is that it's all free. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Two users across the country will get different search results when they type in the exact same query into the Google search engine. Who is they and how do they do it? They are ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers and web traffic analysts. Here is an excellent tool to see exactly who is watching you, what they do with your information and it provides a way to block them. I have been using it for several months and as of today have identified and blocked 186 unique sites. For those of you who want to dig a little deeper, here is another tool that goes one step further to show you how the different sites are related (specific your browsing pattern).

Theater of the Absurd

As I sit in the back row of the peanut gallery I can’t believe the drama unfolding on stage.

Europe

Europe is literally destroying itself as the failed experiment with a joint currency, entered into with no exit strategy, is disintegrating, leaving behind anarchy, chaos and a total loss of confidence in any form of leadership. Peter Tchir of TF Market Advisors had a great point when he asked “Greece's way to a budget surplus is through austerity, but our path to austerity is the big new jobs program?”.

Middle East and North Africa

For the first time in weeks we have no headlines about how the “rebels” have once again cornered Gadhafi. 

In the Middle East Israel faces the most serious challenges since they became independent in 1948 as they deal with extremist infiltration on their southern border with Egypt in the Sinai, the Palestinians are pushing for statehood, Syria is imploding and Turkey is still upset about the attack on their flotilla last year.

Political Arena

Instead of dealing with the real issues, Obama wants to spend $250,000 to create $40,000 jobs. His redirection of taxes it is a textbook example of socialism. Even today, as Europe collapses all he wants to do is campaign  to promote his political strategy solution in battle ground states at the taxpayers’ expense. How does Obama spell Watergate? Solyndra.

 Financial Markets

With all this uncertainty the Wall Street Kleptocrats continue to unleash their HFT programs and provide “liquidity” by front running the last organic traders brave enough to put their money in the pit.  How can the markets be up 1.25% with all this drama and uncertainty? I believe that in the near future physical gold at $3,000 will be considered a huge bargain.

So on that note, here is my contribution to the rumor mills in an original posting that is sure to account for another 300 point rise in the Dow, hope you enjoy it.

(AP, Reuters)   Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao  announced today that his country had successfully completed the acquisition of the entire country of Greece. In anticipation of the failure of democratic socialism, his central planners have been preparing for years to import vast numbers of slaves guest workers. Relocation is set to begin immediately to Jiangsu,  Chenggong, Ordos and Zhengzhou, previously falsely identified by Western media sources as ghost cities. After undergoing proper indoctrination to reset their work habits and expectations, all former Greek citizens will begin the production of consumer goods recently outsourced to Vietnam and Thailand.  In a related announcement, France announced that they were partnering with China and Disney Entertainment to fund the construction of the world’s largest vacation theme park in what formerly was referred to as the Greek Islands.

Further reports indicate that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was last seen in Mongolia discussing the possibility of developing large tracts of grassy steppes and Spain’s President of the Government José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was in Tibet and Nepal evaluating options for their Basque and Catalonian citizens.  

Banking Trojan Detection

Here is a very nice, free, low overhead bank Trojan detection tool.

Our river system

As noted in the STRATFOR analysis of the geopolitical importance of the river basins on our position as the super power, here is an excellent complimentary site compiled from NOAA data. 

The Lanier Effect

The Holy Grail for those of us that practice information aggregating is finding root level information sources. One of the most profound thinkers of our time is Jaron Lanier, who recently sat for an extensive interview with Edge.org. Jason is responsible for popularizing the term virtual reality. He consults to some of the most powerful organizations in the world including Google and Microsoft.

It is very difficult to translate his most recent thoughts into a brief narrative, however, I will try, so forgive me if I don't quite get it all correct or you come away with different conclusions after reading or watching the interview. 

Jaron explains that Walmart was the first global information network and was able to capture a global market by combining their knowledge of consumer buying patterns, manufacturing and transportation logistics. Once they sprinted out ahead they developed such an advantage that it was impossible for anyone to catch them. The problem is that they got so big and so good at what they did that ended up consuming their market. They were successful because they were able to offer value by significantly reducing the cost of consumer goods and food. They were able to provide value by controlling the manufacturing processes and leveraging the wage differentials achieved by outsourcing production offshore. In the process they became the worlds largest employer, but their workers are low wage earners. As years became decades, we became so dependent on cheap prices that we traded away the middle class along with our manufacturing capacity. The Lanier Effect is that if you use your power to capture a market instead of just trading in it, you will not have a long term sustainable model. 

Make no mistake, this is not all about Walmart. He discusses how Google creates so much data that only they can sort it, how Apple is choking on their tether to iTunes, how insurance companies only want to cover healthy and safe people and how the financial services industry was eventually poisoned by their own toxic waste. I hope I haven't tried to make it too simple, as he does a very deep dive.