Thursday, July 7, 2011

Smokescreen

Greetings good citizen,

Oil has, er, regained much of its lost ground just as the stock market has returned to its recent highs…which is baffling because there are no positive economic developments.

How do we account for these ‘positive reactions’ during some decidly negative economic events?

Can you say 'investor optimism'?

Well, the likeliest explanation is what we’re seeing is a ‘Smokescreen’, more financial jiggering that provides the ‘illusion of profits’ where there are, in fact, none.

Naturally, if you know what you’re looking at then the ‘ploy’ becomes obvious…the question without answer is do you know what you’re looking at?

Usual Suspects Now Heavily Involved with Commodity Warehousing

“There is no evidence to suggest they share information…”

Oh sure.

My guess is that this is the primary reason that these firms have gotten involved with commodity warehousing. If the left hand isn’t sharing information with the right hand, with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential trading profits hanging in the balance, I’m Santa Claus.

Via: Wall Street Journal:

About 600 miles from Wall Street, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees are busy doing deals.

But instead of a sleek office tower, they work in a rundown warehouse deep in an industrial section of Detroit. And rather than trading in stocks or bonds, they move metal—lots of metal.

Goldman’s warehouse on the banks of the Detroit River is one of more than 100 storage facilities controlled by the giant securities firm around the world. The warehouses are part of Wall Street’s effort to forge a new frontier in the commodities markets: warehousing metal.

In the past 18 months, Goldman, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and trading firms Glencore International PLC and Trafigura Beheer BV have snapped up warehouse operators, all of them accredited to house metal traded through the London Metal Exchange, or LME. The buying binge means the four firms now are landlords to about two-thirds of the LME’s entire metal stocks, from aluminum to copper to zinc.
What are the dangers of having a single player behind multiple entities? That single player can create the ‘illusion’ of economic activity when nothing is actually happening.

And if ALL of the players are acting ‘in concert’ then you most certainly have a ‘staged production’ that produces nothing but fiction!

Why is it that over the past thirty years the US has become best known as the place where we sell each other houses for a living?

Now even that canard is broken!

I had a curious incident this morning where I met an individual that was as deeply concerned by the ‘conservative stupidity’ he encounters pretty much everywhere. (Mostly in the media.)

Naturally, you start talking to someone whose only source of information is the corporate owned media and quickly learn just how ‘misinformed’ the average citizen is.

Then you’re hit with the coup de grace, introducing them to the facts doesn’t alter their viewpoint.

It’s the old ‘if the guy on TV lies to you, you tend to buy it because what does a schmuck just like yourself know?

It seems people fail to make the connection that the guy on the TV says what he says FOR A FUCKING PAYCHECK, HE DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT IF IT’S TRUE!

Which is to say that the reading of the War of the Worlds on the radio one Halloween didn’t teach us anything.

Except people tend to ‘believe’ whatever they hear on the idiot box…and THAT was the lesson Orsen Wells was targeting!

How ironic is it that the only ones paying attention were the ‘forces of evil’?

But that is not the only thing the forces of evil have up their sleeves!

After the whole ‘you can buy a house with nothing down’ scam blew up in our collective faces it is still unsettling that nothing has changed…

The fines are paid, a highly compensated individual takes the nominal 'punishment' while keeping the proceeds, the politicians and regulators are paid, and the fraud continues on.

Where is the reform? Why not ban the institution from participation in Fed subsidies and in government financial markets for some period of time? Better yet, why are those who speculate in and game the markets for their own gains with one hand taking cheap subsidy money from the government to 'improve the economy' and economic confidence with the other? Where is the repair of the public trust betrayed?

It is hard to determine if Obama is a Herbert Hoover, or more a Neville Chamberlain, consistently giving ground to the bankers' bully boys. I suspect that like most of the politicians and bureacrats he is without moral principle, rationalizing a grotesque selfishness above honor, oath, and duty, despising the many, worshipping at the altar of greed.

After throwing a sizable stone at ‘Dear Leader’ we return to the corporate owned media for more ‘happy talk’

At the same time, Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader, said Wednesday that he would not accept any net increase in federal revenues, and that any money raised from eliminating tax breaks or loopholes must be offset by cuts elsewhere in the tax code.

“If the president wants to talk loopholes, we’ll be glad to talk loopholes,” Mr. Cantor said. “We have said all along that preferences in the code are not something that helps economic growth over all. But, listen, we are not for any proposal that increases taxes. Any type of discussion should be coupled with offsetting tax cuts somewhere else.”

White House officials acknowledge the unrest among Democrats. But they argue that Democrats will be in stronger shape politically heading into November 2012 if they help enact a credible deficit reduction deal, allowing them to mount the argument that they protected Medicare from a much more drastic overhaul by Republicans.

Even the Tea Partiers are on the record as admitting we need to increase revenue if we are going to reduce the deficit. (How unfortunate is it for the rest of us that they tend to think this will happen ‘magically’ via more tax cuts?)

So now we have the media created Tea Party holding the Republican Party ‘hostage’ so the wealthy aren’t hit with increased taxes…

And NOBODY believe in the Corporatocracy…

Nobody believes the government has been hijacked by the wealthy! (Or so says THE FUCKING CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA! [wtf!])

And that tank parked in your driveway? It’s the police…seems somebody reported seeing a ‘terrorist’ wearing what looked like a burka stepping out of your shower…

Can you see through the smoke or is it so thick that you can’t see anything and must take the word of ‘trusted others?’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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