Friday, March 13, 2009

Blue Horseshoe Loves Anacot Steel

by Ed Encho
Wake up, will ya pal? If you're not inside, you're outside, OK? And I'm not talking a $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable, I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars buddy. A player, or nothing.

-Gordon Gekko
In the movie that would serve as a blueprint for the future lives of young turks shat out of the womb of 1980s Reagan eat the poor capitalism a young broker named Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) engages in a bit of trickery to manipulate stock prices by invoking the magic words “Blue Horeshoe loves Anacot Steel” over the phone to players and media hacks. The movie was Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and the young Fox was in the process of selling his soul to the canny devil in suspenders who would become an iconic cultural figure. The seducer was big time corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) whose amorality and worldview rooted in the dogma that “greed is good” would serve as the role model for the very large scale looters, charlatans, thugs, hedge fund hyenas and money grubbing sociopaths who are responsible for the global financial collapse.

Through their avarice, their blood-sucking vampirism and their relentless pursuit of zero sum game, fuck you capitalism they have killed the goose that laid the golden egg, beggared millions and first built and then destroyed trillions of dollars in fairy tale wealth that never existed in the first place other than in numbers in a computer. The smart ones cashed out and put their money into real assets, gold, real estate, commodities, off-shore bank accounts that would allow the chiselers to evade taxes on their ill-gotten gains.

The reason that I invoke “Blue Horseshoe Loves Anacot Steel” is largely inspired by a very interesting and provocative website that I was informed of called Deep Capture which examines a concerted and widespread effort by Wall Street parasites and their many accomplices in the media to influence the markets by spreading disinformation and engaging in short selling to create nonexistent stock and making money by driving down share prices from which they would profit. To put it in pop culture terms that are more easily understandable to the layman than all of that four-flushing Wall Street bullshit jargon, short selling is what Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe did to bring down Randolph and Mortimer Duke by busting their racket to corner the orange juice market at the end of the movie Trading Places. The story put forth on Deep Capture is an exposure of a grand theft perpetrated against legitimate businesses, non-connected investors and America itself by a fiendish cadre of jackals working together to suck the marrow from the bones of not only the USA but the entire interconnected global economy that is currently on the precipice of ruination and the cause of widespread unrest that will soon be coming home to roost.

Now I am certainly no expert when it comes to the high-flying world of financial chicanery which is deliberately confusing and opaque so as to discourage close scrutiny and I am not even going to attempt to get into trying to explain this crap but even to a working shmoe like myself this sets off the alarms for fraud and criminality, the effects of which actually do trickle down (unlike the horseshit ‘free market’ deregulated predatory environment) and affect the lives of millions of victims. These are the poor people who lose their homes after being duped into taking out adjustable rate mortgages by the pimps peddling the mythical America dream, they slyly and misleadingly call it the ownership society (they own your ass) and then having those mortgages sliced, diced and packaged into complex financial instruments that are derivatives. The derivatives – the one word that is taboo in discussing the entire economic fiasco (kudos to Keith Olbermann who in his March 9th show invoked the D-word close to twenty times) for the simple reason is that it would be the accelerator to the smoldering anger and resentment already working its way through the populace and threatening civil unrest over the ongoing efforts by our wonderful government to continue to pump taxpayer money into a corrupt, rotting and diseased system to just keep the game going a bit longer to let the well connected high rollers cash out.

Note the failure of the Obama administration to do what is necessary and nationalize the banks, wipe out the gamblers and fire the management to pull these leeches off of our backs, that is rooted in an ongoing occupation of Washington by insiders. The key with any sort of real rescue of the financial system is with the devil in the details, it is imperative that the bad bank or whatever other Orwellian name that is assigned to the clearinghouse where the poisonous paper of the treacherous banksters be set up so that they can launder their money and saddle the next three generations with the bill. The rush is on too because the looming cataclysm of a tidal wave of mass commercial property defaults is near and the moneychangers know this.

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do…

Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders..
…and then the kerosene

Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

-Bob Dylan: Desolation Row

The victims of the plague of foreclosures wrought by the Ponzi schemes of mortgage backed securitization (DERIVATIVES) are despite the best efforts of the shills and payroll propaganda parrots like the usual right-wing scum along with useful idiots such as CNBC’s Rick Santelli to paint them as losers and resort to the bread and butter tactic of ‘blaming the niggers’ are growing by the day in number. The courts are clogged, there are millions being forced out of the homes that they were tricked into buying by con men and carpetbaggers bearing ‘exotic’ mortgage schemes to game the system, falsely inflate real estate prices (now dropping like a rock subject to Newton’s law of gravity) and then book their commissions and fees fully knowing that when the music stopped they would ensure that there would be a chair under their mangy asses. The music did stop when the systemic rot could no longer be spackled over and the grossly overinflated markets began to crash under the weight of their own toxic bullshit like the houses of cards that they always have been. The economic diaspora cast adrift in a sea of hopelessness filled with ravenous sharks grows in number by the day. The best efforts of the Barack Obama administration to mediate the fiasco are hamstrung from their inception since he is as his predecessors were surrounded by same gaggle of financial wizards from Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve who will always be first and foremost interested in self-preservation and protecting their cronies.

But I digress…

Tuesday’s massive stock rally (the Dow was up nearly 400 pts) was largely the result of the buzz that the besieged monstrosity Citigroup was according to inside info sent into the media spin machine by CEO Vikram Pandit having it’s best quarter since 2007. Now considering that Citigroup is on bailout number fucking THREE I would certainly hope that they are having improved results but the news of this was disseminated early and the desired effect, to give another shot in the arm to the crack ho markets was a rousing success. Now it should be no hidden secret that Wall Street’s interests are diametrically opposed to those of the majority of Americans, those who are generally referred to by the talking heads and political whores of the oligarchy as “Main Street” As the financial sector has risen to a level of dominance in this country opposed only by the military-security industrial complex and to these powerful interests, everyone and everything else is simply collateral damage. By the way, this week's Citigroup inspired sucker rally is now in the third day as the get rich quick rubes are ready to roll over and pay to grab a mouthful of pillow for the inevitable ass-fucking that they will be getting after this latest pump and dumb scam plays out. The seal of approval of the latest laying of poison bait was given by judas goat Cramer on Mad Money on Thurday - This Rally is Real!

The influencing of the markets and the complicity of certain media figures in pushing the lies of Wall Street thieves has gotten some rare attention as of late with the brilliant and ongoing attack on CNBC’s Jim ‘Mad Money’ Cramer by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. CNBC is nothing other than a FOX News style propaganda network that works for the voracious Wall Street piranhas instead of the neoNazi, fascist Republican party. Both are nothing but disinformation factories that churn out public relations pieces like link sausage made with tainted skunk meat. Cramer is a big player in the collapse and the massive fraud, he is not just some bug-eyed babbling baboon on crystal meth as he appears, the preening court jester of looter capitalism. No, what Jim Cramer is is a Harvard educated connected man, a former hedge fund manager and business associate of vitriolic neocon Marty Peretz, formerly of the DLC democrat rag The New Republic and an Israel Lobby kahuna still hung over from the orgy of blood drinking that resulted in the brutal takedown of Charles Freeman this week.

Mad Money Cramer has had increased visibility this week due to the Stewart videos that have gone viral on YouTube and appeared on websites and blogs aplenty (including this one) and his admitted complicity in rigging the markets back in 2006. Now even a former Republican congressman, Tom Davis is suggesting that Cramer be made to testify on his knowledge of the hedge fund manipulation. It is also of my personal opinion that Cramer should be hauled into court and forced to spill his guts on his role in manipulation of the markets. He is an arrogant and volatile ass clown, a fucking sociopath and a a flim flam man without peer. Dig this little nugget from the Deep Capture website entitled: Jim Cramer is a Complicated Man.
In 1994 Cramer hired Nicholas Maier as a favor to Marty Peretz, who was close with the Maier family. Maier worked for Cramer until 1998, then left and wrote a tell-all book about his years with Cramer: Trading with the Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer's Wall Street (New York: HarperCollins, 2002) It contained detailed description of Cramer's manic and abusive style. For example, Maier recounted the following scene after a trader at Cramer's firm, Mark Kantor, executed a buy order at a price one-quarter point higher than what Cramer had expected, a total difference of $625:

"'The broker fucked us, big time!'

"'The eighth offering was fading when we called,' Mark explained.

"Jim bit down on his lower lip as his hands clench into fists. He leaned forward to get closer to Mark, and started banging on the top of his monitors. The crown of his balding skull reddened as he yelled at the top of his lungs in a high-pitched whine.

"'I told you they fucked us! Fucked us, fucked us, fucked us!'


"'Listen to me.' With piercing eyes Jim scanned our sober faces. 'This is not some fucking joke!' he screamed, spit flying from his mouth. 'We are at war. We are in a foxhole.' He flung out his hands. 'Everyone out there is the enemy!'

"Mark nodded to show Jim that he understood. That wasn't what Jim wanted. He started smashing his phone over and over on the desk in front of him. He lifted a monitor and heaved it like a shot put. After flying several feet, it shattered on the floor."

Maier also described Cramer's questionable trading ethics. One passage noted a brush with naked short selling:

Jim turns toward his head trader. "Mark, sell ten thousand Bristol Myers."

"We never bought any Bristol Myers," Mark replies.

"We own the calls," Jim corrects Mark impatiently, aggravated by the delay.

"So sell it short?" Mark asks for clarification. Mark knows that according to the SEC rule book, selling stock you don't already own (even if you do own the call options) must be marked and executed as a short sale.

"You are confusing me with someone who gives a shit. Just sell it! I said hit the fucking bid!" adds Jim, not interested in wasting time over petty semantics. Skirting the "plus tick" rule in this case won't necessarily make us a lot of extra money, but in Jim's eyes, the rule is still an unenforceable annoyance. "And don't ever ask me that again!"
Even more hilarious is that Cramer claimed to be the inspiration for Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox character, I shit you not. It's like that other egotistical horses ass NFL agent Drew Rosenhaus claiming that he was the inspiration for Jerry Maguire. These guys have no fucking shame at all.

In the coming days Cramer willl be a source of much amusement, that much is as certain. In his much hyped Godzilla vs. King Kong steel cage death match with Jon Stewart last night the consensus is that Cramer got his ass handed to him, and justifiably so. Hey, what this guy is a part of is racketeering and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, the man is a con artist and the only real difference between him and those predators who fleece grandma and grandpa out of their retirement money by high pressure selling them to buy into shitty time share scams on the Okeefenokee Swamp is that he has a propaganda network behind him. He belongs on some late night cable television infomercial selling the newest version of the juicemaster or hawking penis enlargement devices.

Since his career as some kind of oracle of instant wealth is now on the downside he had best avoid the latter gig.....his future cellmate may be a customer.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

1980 should be remembered as the the beginning of the end. 1982, the year of Reagan's infamous tax cut, the end of the beginning. Everything since that year was, to use Chess terminology, 'mid-game', specifically, the consolidation of their power, alarming transfers of wealth to the dwindling but increasingly wealthy elites and robber barons.

The current phase is difficult to assess as Obama has yet to demonstrate that he is prepared to begin a new 'new deal' nor has he indicated that he is prepared to muster the constituency required to crush a traitorous party that has systematic sought to subvert Constitutional guarantees, wage aggressive wars and acts of terrorism for resources (primarily oil), and impoverish millions of Americans who have been denied even the bottom rung of the ladder.

This 'elite' has, however, quietly prepared a gulag of FEMA camps and plastic coffins.

Ed Encho said...

I am very skeptical of Obama who is surrounded by Wall Street scum and has that slimy little prick Rahm Emanuel as his minder. It seems to me that anything will be done to preserve the existing spoils system after a few public examples are made.

It is a failed system and while I will give him time Obama is just a teflon coated shit salesman to me until he proves otherwise. The entire orchard is rotten in regard to the government.

And the FEMA camps will soon be occupied with people like us who can see through it all and dare to call bullshit.

EE

SadButTrue said...

" 1980 should be remembered as the the beginning of the end. 1982, the year of Reagan's infamous tax cut, the end of the beginning. "

This fact is easily demonstrated with a chart of
the Dow Jones Average from 1960 to present. In early 1980 it was at a bottom of around 750, the average for the year was closer to 1000. It reached a peak in 2007 of 14,093.

Depending on how you do the math, that represents an increase of between 14X and nearly 18X. So the question that should be asked is, "did the American economy grow by between 14 and 18 times during this period?" Clearly not. But a lot of multi-millionaires became billionaires during this time, without ever contributing anything of real value to the economy.

Bernard Madoff is going to jail for conducting a ponzi scheme of vast proportions - $50 BILLION by all accounts. But Wall Street has always been a much larger pyramid scheme, measured in the TRILLIONS of dollars. This is what you get when an investor class is created that can act as though the extrinsic value (price) of something is detached from its intrinsic value. By a simple act of collusion they are imbued with the power to create wealth literally out of thin air.

The problem, as with all things Republican and conservative, is when you try to test such a model against reality.

Anonymous said...

There is no enemy, there is only catalyst allowing man to make "The Choice" and a 'perception' of evil.

The controlled, therefore planned economic collapse of the banking system is designed to bring all men to their knees.

Pride filled brothers whose independent nature has kept them separated will now find common ground as they will now join hands to protect one another from the catalyst of the 'perception' of evil.

We are getting close to harvest season and our logos "Yahweh" does not wish to go through the entire cycle again, but rather desires to progress.

Is this causing any bells to go off in your head, or is it causing you more confusion?

Man fears what he does not understand. Therefore, his biggest fear is himself.

If you wish to gain an understanding of who and what you are, you must read The Law of One and the other related material linked from my "Ancient Wisdom" page; (link above)

Or not, is your choice, choose wisely.

AdamS said...

Creating money out of thin air isn't capitalism, though. It's the fraud that we all know is the problem. But again, zero solutions will come from government 'stopping greed' or whatever. Hard money, government issuing currency (JFK tried that one...he didn't get too far) and the restoration of capitalism and protectionism will yield results imo. Industry in the developed world has seriously deteriorated as this blog has pointed out. But we can't expect this to get better so long as globalists are bullying 'protectionist' countries. Not saying protectionism is perfect, but it probably beats buying everything from China.

Capitalism isn't very rewarding to 'robber barons' though. The robber barons of the central banks control the system within which so-called 'capitalism' is practiced. The government should intervene only to restore capitalism, because what we have now is a monopoly by force. Only one currency is 'legal tender', and 'they' issue it. Everyone pays a third or more of their income to 'them' through scores of different taxes.

Just ask me or anyone else living under the banner of the EU, anything other than (genuine) small government capitalism and national sovereignty, especially 'Third Way', globalism and all that comes with it, is enslavement by other means. Saying capitalism caused this crisis is like saying 'guns kill people' or 'pencils misspell words'.

It's not about 'left' or 'right' anymore. The 'left' are cheering for truly the most disastrous 'tax by other means' money-print-fest also known as the 'stimulus', as if throwing cash at everything will help. In the end it's just paper. Perhaps we should remember the Communist Manifesto called for the immediate introduction of a central bank (because they knew what it did to the systems of trade).

The 'right' have claimed to champion small government then think a $1tr defence budget is necessary, and we need to give up all our right to stay safe from a bogeyman. Both are 'big government' parties.

My point is, if these 'robber barons' are actually unaccountable to government (Greenspan said the Federal Reserve is above the president) then how can you acheive the 'new new deal' you want when it will inevitably benefit the very people who caused the problems to begin with?

Anonymous said...

The recent payouts to insurance giant AIG has lead to hefty executive bonuses. Marcy Wheeler provides a wonderful analysis of how AIG bosses convinced Tim Geithner to accept these outrageous payments. Essentially, they argue that these payments are tied to complex financial trades that will be in default if the payments aren't made and the result will be that the US will be on the hook for massive payouts to contracting third parties. In other words "give us our payments or we'll bring the whole house down."

One of Marcy's commentators, readerOfTeaLeaves provides a strong case that this whole meltdown was brought on knowingly by the oil industry Bush cabal:

---------------------------------------------
In 2000, the CFMA (Commodity Future Modernization Act) was passed through the US Senate. See Wikipedia for ‘CFMA’ if you’d like more details, but I’m putting a relevant bit in this comment; as far as I’m concerned, Sen Phil Gramm (R-Texas) ought to spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary. He was McCain’s Economic Advisor until last summer, and also connected with UBS, which is evidently under scrutiny from US law enforcement for banking secrecy.

The changes to the CFMA in 2000 did two key things:
– 1. Removed credit default swaps from regulatory control by claiming that they were ’swaps’ rather than derivatives.
– 2. Removed them from “Bucket Shop Laws” which regulate gambling.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 has received criticism for the so-called “Enron loophole,” 7 U.S.C. §2(h)(3) and (g), which exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets. The “loophole” was drafted by lobbyists for Enron working with senator Phil Gramm[3] seeking a deregulated atmosphere for their new experiment, “Enron On-line.”[4]

Several Democratic legislators introduced legislation to close the loophole from 2000-2006[5][6] but were unsuccessful.

In September 2007, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) introduced Senate Bill S.2058 specifically to close the “Enron Loophole” [7] This bill was later attached to H.R. 6124, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka “The 2008 Farm Bill”. President Bush vetoed the bill, but was overridden by both the House and Senate, and on June 18, 2008 the bill was enacted into law.[8]. One specific reason behind its introduction was to address the record high oil prices of the 2000s energy crisis.[my bold]

Call me a Tin Foil Hat wearing DFH lunatic, but I’m damned if I don’t suspect that there’s a connection between the London — totally unregulated — oil swap markets, and the fact that it was AIG’s London division that got into real trouble.

Several years back, FDL Book Salon hosted Mr. George Soros for a discussion of his ‘The Age of Infallibility”, which covered many topics, among them the fact that Russia was making a lot of money via energy. Now, what was Enron trading? Energy FUTURES.

And what did Phil Gramm remove from regulatory oversight in our modern, global finance era? Energy FUTURES.

And then Texas oil guy GWBush came to office on a SCOTUS decision, a rampant, irrationally vehement global warming denier. With Cheney doing the Dark Side work out of the OVP.

And these energy pimps didn’t know what was happening?

If I were watching from the rings of Saturn, I’d assume that somehow the Russian Mafia, drug cartels, and heaven-only-knows who was swapping contracts via the London division of AIG with full, predatory, deliberate, premeditated knowledge.

And note that ‘mark to market’ accounting rules show up both in Enron’s disaster, and also in this AIG-global finance meltdown. Not that it should be an excuse for fuckwits to hide behind, but someone needs to excise that diabolical mess.
---------------------------------------------
Larissa claims AIG is fulfilling a role similar to the corrupt BCCI and all of AIG's criminal stuff was run out of a small section of their London office.

Anonymous said...

Larissa also provides some great links: Neil Bush, Jeb Bush, BCCI.

LanceThruster said...

For the record, I actually like my Jack Lalanne Power Juicer and feel I got good value for my money, whereas Cramer is just a bloody snake oil salesman.

As bad as the salespeople on Wall Street are, I would think there would be criminal penalties, regulations or not, for creating a financial product that is complete junk. They did not call it "insurance" because they would entail some very specific rules and oversight, but they basically told people their investment was safe; market fortunes notwithstanding.

Whether or not they ever calculated what a market downturn would do to these derivatives, they didn't care as they were making money hand over fist. It's like they were selling the time machine in "Napoleon Dynamite."

---

Kip: It's a time machine, Napoleon. We bought it online.
Napoleon Dynamite: Yeah, right.
Kip: It works, Napoleon. You don't even know.
Napoleon Dynamite: Have you guys tried it yet?
Kip: [reluctantly] No.

---

Napoleon Dynamite: [using time machine] Ow! Ow! Ow! Kill the pow... It kills! My pack! Ow! Turn it off! Turn it off, Kip!
[Kip pulls the electrical cord out, and Napoleon yanks off the headband]
Napoleon Dynamite: It's a piece of crap it doesn't work!
Uncle Rico: Well, I could've told you that.
[Uncle Rico is standing in the hall, looking wounded and disappointed]

Cindy said...

The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality. Click www.gofastek.com for more information.

Cindy
www.gofastek.com