They don't build statues of committees.

Disclaimer:  Language filter has been flipped to the off position to enhance understanding of the level of frustration felt.  I actually care about these things very deeply and can't understand why more folks don't, as well.

They don't build statues of committees because it takes balls, leadership, pathos, and caring to get anything done.  He who conquers the committee, who gets the purest, most unmolested result, and whose result meets the need finds himself a hero.  Most of the time committees mire in tedium as each individual puts forth his idea and the rest shape it to get the most of their idea into the original.  Whether or not the final product suits the original goal matters not because each compromises their morality equally for the ego stroke to say that they got something done.  I believe the Founding Fathers used committees to make impinging on liberty purposely hard, but never fully imaged what a cluster fuck of sellouts this Country could manufacture from such hard working, hard fighting stock.  I believe that rather than passing bad legislation, they thought that quality ideas would pass through on merit while stupid, agenda-centric ideas would get hung up to rot on the vine of time.

Tactical warfare, meaningless oppression and a future of alienated nuclear ambition.  How many books must be written about warlords being on the map, with definitive patterns of terrorist activity, yet allowed to continue because they do not represent a direct threat to the United States?  In Hunting the Jackal Billy Waugh talks about spending months in an over watch position of one of Bin Ladin's training camps in Khartoum during the Clinton administration.  There existed, at the time, no political willpower to take out the threat, yet somehow that willpower got found when 10 nutjobs fell through the cracks, boosting planes and going jihad on our sovereign soil.  Now read this snip from a Washington Post article, here:

TEHRAN, Feb. 5 -- Iran ended voluntary cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency on Sunday, saying it would start uranium enrichment and bar surprise inspections of its facilities after being reported to the U.N. Security Council over fears it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Make that February 5, 2006.  Let it sink in.  A little more.  That's right, 4+ goddamn years ago.  What does it take for practicality to stage a return to the world?  Can it not be agreed through some direct diplomatic channels that every country shall agree to IAEA inspections in equal part just to ensure the security of all?  If there is a threat, take the threat out.  (Read between the lines.  Yes I am aware of the implications, but have also seen the movie Swordfish, and agreed with the premise.)  Otherwise, let these people proceed with securing electricity for their God forsaken corner of the world.  Who knows, if the motherfuckers put some A/C in their homes maybe the chicks would show more skin, the dudes would hammer more poon, and they'd work out their angst over a post-coital Klondike bar.  Why does it take four years of time to elapse between an event and a response?  Committees.  What is the response?  "Sanctions."  FUCK ME.

After all this time, they've been building (with French guidance) a nuclear program without IAEA inspections and now there are sanctions coming down the pipe.  Must have been a top priority over those $200 steaks on the UN expense account, of which America funds the preponderance.  In short, we pissed off a nuclear power with extremist leanings, allowed them to continue unabated for half a decade and then punished them with sanctions.  Chalk up another victory for group-think.  FUCK ME, SQUARED.

This United States needs to get its shit together, pronto.  We no longer bear the mantle of economic preeminence.  That has been passed to China.  No matter if they experience the economic boom/bust growing pains inherent with any early stage super-power, those folks have the will, population, and tools to get it done for a long, long time.  They also own enough of our debt to make World War III with paper and the people in the trending topics on Twitter wouldn't know a thing about it until their food stamps no longer bought them $30 bags of Doritos.  China hasn't been too soiled by the ways of Western Financialism (yet) which means two things:  when they do they will be a material drain of epic proportions, and, we need to start kissing their ass, or at least try being a friend-of-a-friend with them before they realize what a huge staff of power they wield.  The early spring Carbon Emissions summit already indicates to me that they are becoming aware of their stead in this world, a dangerous position for the United States to find itself in unprepared, arrogant, and pushy.

New globalism means that clique politics must be shelved in order for harmony to reign.  Shove idiocy up the asses of the committees and do something ... or do nothing.  If the former it better be timely, functional, practical, favorable, and useful.  (As an exercise, consider those tenets against Obama's decision to shut in all GOM wells, fail to reach out for experienced advice, and pile onto the BP bashing bandwagon after they had already indicated that they would take "full responsibility" for the ramifications of the spill.  More on this in a future post.)  If the latter, thoroughly emasculate the United States government, the UN, the IAEA ... everyone, as the useless money waste that they are, and let the people return to honest living through hard work.

Good evening.

Getting Bulled Up

It's gotten pretty harsh out there over the last 6 weeks, but the market behaved in line with my Two Week Outlook from May 27th, here, and now some charts are starting to come around.  Last afternoon I tweeted:

About 5 minutes later the sellers pressed and boom, volume picked up nicely as bids got hit.  I have a trading rule that does not permit me to purchase options more than 15 minutes before the end of a day if using said naked option as a short-term trade (unless there is major, market moving news that is single stock-based).  Frequently, though, by tuning in early you can get a gauge on tomorrow irrespective of what the underlying stock price is doing.  I saw favorable activity last afternoon and the futures are presently shaking off a Euro-zone shanking at the hands of some comments from Fitch related to the UK's tough times ahead.

I think we could be in for a nice little run here, with my target being 10600-10650 over a period of 5 to 7 weeks.  This target locates the middle of some heavy volume candles and probably a bit of overshoot of a confluence as the 50 dma continues down-trending.

The best price action should be in names like GS and V where the price has disconnected from "reality" enough that the sitting-on-cash contingent, hungry for brand recognition, awaits the all-clear.  I continue to avoid stocks in the realm of middle class consumerism, and view yesterday's consumer credit report as a dangerous indicator that a brutal, sustained hardship for lower and middle America is here to stay.  Double-dip?  I think the possibilities are underestimated by the "pundits" whose rose-tinted opinions are picked by TV producers so as not to offend the largest segment of their audience ... The Cramer Crowd.

Tighten up the stops in short positions with large short interest, if everything goes to plan better opportunity should arise in a month or two.

I had high hopes for David Faber's lunch show "Strategy Session" but, admittedly, tuned out after about 10 minutes.  Why does CNBC have to trick everything up so much?  All those market depth indicators in the background distract from the reporting going on in the foreground, and the apprentice camera men obviously know that Obama's not going to shake anything up on the union front because they're terrible, but obviously the best there is since CNBC is "where the world turns for business."  Finally, using an overhead camera to zoom on a screen in the desk?  Is there no middle ground anymore?

On Incentives, Creation, and a Cultural Shift

Buttercup stepped into my office a minute ago saying simply, "You know, everyone shouldn't feel like they need to go to college to make it in the world."  Can it be said any more directly?  The current administration complains bitterly that we do not produce and export enough, yet they still feel like everyone should be entitled or even required to go to college.  What if folks don't want to?  What if the opportunity cost of doing so means missing out on four unencumbered years of concentrated effort in their desired field?  Does not going to college somehow besmirch the accomplishment of their goals?  Should they feel required to accumulate debt in order to have a degree that might be useless in practicality?

This conversation reminded me of a NY Times article from late May, see full text here.  Quotes below to emphasize points that follow:

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college ... Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt ... She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies.

The above summarizes the situation that many middle class Americans experience.  They desire to better their standing and are conditioned from an early age to believe that going to college is the only way to do so.  Forgetting for a moment that this willingness to accumulate debt goes directly to my case for the United States as an exemplar of the worst of Western Financialism, let's consider that Ms. Munna likely had no real desire to become a life-long scholar of Religious and Women's Studies.  Rather, she felt that having a diploma from a well recognized institution like NYU would somehow bring greater wealth as she pursued her desires in photography.

Propagating the myth of a college diploma as a key to success in life leads to an imbalance in the population between those who create (those who do), and those who manage.  Using the military as an analog, an individual is either commissioned or enlisted.  The structure looks like a pyramid.  There exist clear limitations on the quantities of commissioned officers versus the body of enlisted men.  Are the enlisted any less successful than their commissioned leadership?  Plenty of anecdotes exist that indicate that non-commissioned officers (NCO's) garner the respect of the rank-and-file, not because they were bestowed with a title as officers are, but because these leaders were selected as the best from the ranks, and began at the beginning just like the men and women they lead.  Whereas baby-faced commissioned officers rely on their NCO's for practical advice to counterbalance their book learning, so too do crew foremen advise young college graduates in the construction field about schedules, milestones, and frankly, what tasks simply cannot be done the way that the book-learned would plan.

Our get-rich-quick culture has come to rely on attempting to short-circuit the apprenticeship culture that sustained generations before us.  Perhaps the time has come to recognize more fully that effort and desire cannot be taught.  Our schools should not fail students who don't give a rip for literary studies if they show real interest in metal fab.  In order to make a philosophical return to the system that had worked for so long, our education system must present higher education as only one option in a sea of opportunity.  If secondary schools made the effort to blend focus on life skills like personal finance (balancing checkbooks, credit card interest policy, how mortgages work) with esoterics like higher order mathematics I submit that we would be empowering a generation of doers capable of anything and structurally buttressing the future economy.

Every child doesn't want the Nobel.  Why should we educate them as if they are a failure for not desiring one?

Stasis.  Sustainability.  Desire.  Ambition.  These tenets could drive our civilian population to new heights of local thought and physical creation.  If one thing is for certain, our economy has turned a corner now that China is soon to assume the mantle of economic preeminence.  In order to find our place in the new reality, we must allow any success to be judged as successful, not as a caveat in some feudal ruse.  Hope is the light that guides.  Let us never willfully or unknowingly squelch that light.

Chris Christie on NJ school unions.

When the main-stream media catches on to what Governor Christie is doing, every union, from sea to shining sea, within government and without, shall recognize that their (lack of) results have spoken, and that their money can no longer buy aloofness from politicians whose practicality is for sale in increments the length of each elected term.

What a great day for America!

Please watch the video with a mind for:

• the CalPERS retirement endowment from the State of California;
• the spread between public and private sector employment wages and benefits;
• the Dreamliner plant being moved to South Carolina from Washington;
• the success of Toyota at manufacturing in America;
• begging China to lift the currency peg;
• the GM pension scandal;
• Grecian protests.

Yes.  The movement is alive.  Thank you, Chris Christie, for reminding us that pragmatism is not dead in the United States.  If we can crush unions, if only for their monopolistic, extortionist, politically corrupt, and morally bankrupt ways, then perhaps there still exists hope that we can return to a more stable economy.  Not until parity exists in the work pool can wage disinflation occur, and at such point the clamor to expatriate jobs may be stemmed long enough to return the economy to its historical roots as producers, inventors, farmers, and capitalists.  Hope is alive.

What is Western Financialism?

Over time in this blog I have deployed the term Western Financialism to describe an economy like the one we have in the United States. But what does that mean? To me, Western Financialism, focuses on consumer spending, particularly in the middle class, a la "middle class consumerism," over production and exporting, and to finance such spending, debt.

Western Financialism means running an economy in the least sustainable way possible, by relying on population growth, unaffected demographics (not yet indoctrinated in WF [China, India, South America, etc.]), and inflation as fuel for the continuation of growth. Maddeningly simple, and yet hyped as complexity, this kind of economy ticks not like an engine of growth, but like that of a bomb set to explode.

Western Financialism never seeks stasis, but always looks for fresh victims in order to sustain its ravenous feeding cycle. Western Financialism is a virus. Fresh off a trip to China to "encourage spending and decrease economic reliance on exports," please see older blog post here, Tim Geithner now speaks to the G20. While the Europeans seek to control their budget deficits in light of the current meltdowns of their member nations, Mr. Geithner, the current mouthpiece for economic recklessness has this to say:

"Stronger domestic demand growth in Japan and in the European surplus countries is needed," Geithner said at a separate press briefing in Busan. Spending in both areas is “relatively weak,” he said.

What is the European sentiment against which such a retort was drawn? (both above and below quoted from Bloomberg article, here)

While Geithner echoed the view that fiscal consolidation is needed, he said it should be done over the “medium term.” European officials said today that budget tightening needs to come next year, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that growth can’t come at the price of high state budget deficits.

So in keeping with his policy of fighting fire with fire, debt and spending against a backdrop of wealth destruction brought about by debt and spending, Geithner pledges his mind and diplomatic sway toward the ruination of others for the benefit of ... who?  Politics and economics are inexorably linked.  For this reason no man or woman has the balls to stand against this hypocricy and self-start a sort of economic Middle-ages where the tumult of times past are digested before an economic Renaissance could be born. For shame.

A dude I follow on twitter, @Dasan, wrote a book report, here, on The Big Short by Michael Lewis. He (Dasan) selected a few favorite quotes from the novel.  A bit out of context, but give this quote, my favorite, a try:

After a meeting with Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America: “I was sitting there listening to him. I had an epiphany.  I said to myself, Oh my God, he’s dumb!  A light bulb went off.  The guy running one of the biggest banks in the world is dumb!”

When will that day come for the nations who listen, and are coerced into agreeing with, the complete economic nonsense bandied about by these politician-economists who fail to make tough economic decisions at home? Maybe that day has already come?

I wonder what America will look like as a 2nd World country. I think I will find out before my time passes.

Notes to El Presidente (2)

Here we are again, getting all grumpy and hot under the collar, and then writing to the White House. Who even knows if anyone over there reads these things, but President Obama put the website up and so I write. If you want to write to President Obama, and I encourage you to do so, click here.

Tonight's letter as follows:

President Obama -

If Greece and California aren't education enough, then perhaps your advisors are not advising you properly about how labor unions are ruining this country.

As you know being president means making untenable decisions.

I resent your policy of going to China, and particularly of letting partisanship become involved in threatening the new economic world leader, and indeed, our sole source financier (Treasury excepted) with "currency manipulator" prior to making tough decisions at home.

It is past time to call labor onto the carpet and let the free market determine what fair wages are.

It is not the government's job to retire people who worked 9-5 at 55 years old with life long pensions.

Neither is it a corporate responsibility to do the same. With the today's job report, Greece, CalPERS, the auto industry and so many other examples of how the extortionist policies of labor have injured their parent companies and economies why is it that you continue to pretend like nothing is wrong?

The Lord helps those who help themselves. Let not the government act in ways that individuals should not, namely, going overseas acting tough before fixing the problems at home.

To let partisanship stand in the way of conversation and change relegates you, as others before you, to being a marionette for the money that supported your campaign.

Have a good weekend.

Corporate Webites: Spend the Money

Let it be said right now that any company whose website looks like shit, doesn't work properly, or is out of date makes me grumpy.  How can you justify a hundred million plus dollar market cap and not spend five grand on a slick website?

A company's website is its primary marketing tool.  It does not sleep, it never bitches about its wife, and you always know what it's going to say to your prospective clients and equity partners.  Would you want some fat schlub in your employ going into a board room unprepared, unshaven, and with busted shoes?  If you wouldn't have that circumstance talking your shop then understand that your corporate website will normally be the first "face" people look at when beginning to explore a potential relationship.

To any apologists who say that it's more important to perform than to pay attention to something as simple as a website I salute you ... most of the time right after summarily executing the idea of investing in the company.

Minimum Requiements:

• Surfable, normally with tabs or an index pane;
• Description of how you make money;
• Corporate Structure, diagrams are ideal;
• Share/Debt Structure,
• Authorized, outstanding, preferreds,
• Maturities, quick debrief of terms (esp. if convertible);
• Thorough descriptions of principals and board members;
• Name of IR point of contact;
• Full index of past PR's;
• Link (minimum) to SEC website for filings, Index preferred.

It's hard enough to find and maintain interest in speculative stocks.  Why waste opportunity, or worse yet, sully your image without uttering a word?