Posts Tagged ‘anarchyjc’

#QE = Economic Crack Part 2

Posted: January 28, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logoby @anarchyroll
1/28/2014

Click Here for Part One

Getting high, if it wasn’t fun, why would so many people do it? The only problem is that the high doesn’t last forever. The come down is often a crash, back to reality, damnit there’s still the law of gravity. Oh no, the stash is gone. What to do? Face life and the world as it is? Okay, but only for as long as it takes to get the next hit.

The sky was falling in the fall of 2008.  Not just millions, not just billions, but TRILLIONS of dollars evaporated from the global economy.  The wound wasn’t just opened, it was hemorrhaging blood.  What to do? Let the free market run free until it corrected itself?  Use taxpayer money to try and plug the leak? Bomb another middle eastern country?

Desperation causes people to do things that they don’t fully understand. Under intense stress and scrutiny many human beings seek a temporary escape from reality in mind or mood altering chemical substances produced naturally or artificially known to many simply as drugs.  Coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, molly, mushrooms, lsd. cocaine, heroin, meth, crack.  Those who shake their head and thumb their nose at drug users often substitute adrenaline, food, binge screen watching, and other socially accepted mind altering reality escapes in place of the illicit stuff, but it’s all the same.

The federal government and federal reserve bank of the United States of America is run by human beings. Human beings susceptible to the same highs, lows, pros, cons, disciplines, and vices as you and me.  In the midst of panic, desperation, and catastrophe a series of steps were taken to stop the economic bleeding, stabilize the markets, and attempt to spur future growth.  However, the policies were all nothing more than reality escaping substances on a meta scale.

First came TARP. Then came the auto industry bailout.  Those got the headlines and the public ire or support depending if you’re a political elephant or jackass.  However another, much less sexy, but equally if not more important was the Federal Reserve Bank’s $85 billion per month bond buying program known as Quantitative Easing.

There have been three waves of QE from 2009 through present, it is expected to end in 2015.  But if it’s expected to end clean, at a predetermined time, why the drug analogy?

The problem, is that the markets have become dependent, on the fed flooding the market with cash, now there is a new bubble, that could bring the market(s) down in flames.

So the withdrawal pains, in the form of inflation and higher interest rates, could cause a relapse into recession or worse for both the US and global economy.  QE has been like an alcoholic going to rehab and starting a two pack a day cigarette habit.  Our recovery has been artificially enhanced by QE. We haven’t quit cold turkey, we’re on synthetic drugs. It isn’t until all the meds are out of our system that we’ll know if the economy has recovered or not.

Where does QE go from here?  I’ll cover that in part 3…

Luol #Deng, Gone but Misremembered

Posted: January 28, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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sportsrollby @anarchyroll
1/27/2014

I recently heard that Luol Deng had the third longest tenure in Bulls history behind Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen.  He was certainly paid as if he had the talent of those two.  The problem is he never produced like he was paid to do.  The Chicago Bulls recently traded Luol Deng to get his contract off of their books.  The 2013-2014 season is already over for the Bulls. Hopefully Joakim Noah doesn’t injure himself playing his heart out like he does every night.  The season is a wash, that makes two in a row

Deng was only traded because of the Derrick Rose injury situations.  The team is headed for rebuilding whether they want to acknowledge it or use that word or not.  They need to dump as much salary as possible.  They need to get as many draft picks as possible.  They need to build the team around Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose.  Joakim Noah is my personal favorite basketball player since Michael Jordan (besides Tim Duncan) but even he probably needs to be traded for draft picks. I wouldn’t pull the trigger on that trade myself, but it is for the best in the long run.

Luol Deng is a nice guy and an even better ambassador for the Bulls, the city of Chicago, and basketball in general.  The media has been using that to remember Luol Deng fondly and highlight his many positives on his way out the door.  He played very good defense, was a textbook team player, was coachable, humble, and hardworking.  What Luol Deng was not however, was a superstar NBA player despite being paid like one.  His contract numbers indicated he was a top player at his position, he is not and was not.  Deng is the third or fourth piece of a championship team, never forget that.

If he was better than that, wouldn’t the Chicago Bulls have won an NBA Championship or at least gotten to the NBA Finals? Deng was supposed to be the number two, and although he was able to guard LeBron James, he couldn’t mount half the offensive numbers needed in clutch situations OR series’ to warrant his pay range or more than two all star appearances in almost a decade in the league.

Luol Deng is a nice guy but he should have been traded years ago. If Derrick Rose’s decision making and Carlos Boozer’s defense (lack thereof) didn’t occupy the ire of Chicago sports fans, Deng would have been in the crosshairs much sooner. Luckily for him, he got out before things got really bad.  Although I don’t know how lucky one can be going to Cleveland for any reason.

Hopefully Deng realizes before he’s too old he needs to take less money to play for a contender while he still can be a starter with some lead in his pencil.  He is a great regular season player, but vanishes in the playoffs on the offensive end every single time.  That is likely due to the incredible effort he gives defensively night in and night out against the league’s best.  That would be an acceptable excuse at half the base salary he’s been taking home for his last two contracts.  Kobe Bryant once wanted to be traded to Chicago to play with Luol Deng, seems like another dimension and a long time ago.

Luol Deng is a nice guy who plays damn good defense. That is good enough to be a number three or four, unfortunately he was paid like a number one or two. For that reason the Bulls made the right call in trading him and getting what they could in return to look towards the future.

Tap the #Source, Create the Space

Posted: January 25, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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ssrlogo2

by @anarchyroll
1/24/2013

You’ve probably heard of the Law of Attraction by now.  The Secret by Rhonda Byrne as publicized by Oprah has made it almost impossible to not know what the Law of Attraction is.

Think of The Secret as Tumblr of self help/personal development books. The is essentially reblogging of material that is hundreds if not thousands of years old. However, she mostly just reblogged (in book and movie form) the works of Charles Haanel.

To me, personally, The Secret came off as naive, pretentious, and new age selfish.  Another famous Law of Attraction book by Jerry and Ester Hicks came across as to me as borderline deranged.  Tapping the Source is put in plain language. It is explained thoroughly and simply. The main points are repeated throughout the book to hammer them home.  It is one of the few books I recommend to every human being to read.

The main points of the book involve thinking positively, visualizing specific goals as if they have been achieved, AND feeling positive emotions while thinking/visualizing the positive thoughts.  Attaching the feeling(s) to the thought(s) is what most people miss/forget about the Law of Attraction. Without the specific visualization and physical emotional state attached to it, thinking positive is essentially useless.

The other principle the book is centered upon is saying specific “focus phrases” while meditating.  A person should get into a meditative/prayer state (which is more than just sitting down with your eyes closed) and say each of the following in order:

  1. I choose to focus enjoyably inward
  2. My mind is quiet, I am now in the silence
  3. I am open to receive guidance from my source
  4. I know what I want
  5. I feel connected with creative power
  6. My vision is right now perfect and complete
  7. Each new moment is manifesting my dream

The book offers very detailed and specific guidance for why each focus phrase individually and collectively are important to say.  Tapping the Source is essentially an update of Haanel’s own 1912 book The Master Key System.  If you are looking to turn your life around or fine tune your success this book is what you’re looking for. It is a great starting point because it has been a starting point for every self help author for the last century.  Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, etc all use Haanel’s work as primary source material. That is what initially attracted me to the book. I wanted to know what the self help guru’s were reading and using to create their material.  If it is good enough for them, it’s good enough for you and me. This book will help to create a solid foundation for which you can build a palace of personal development upon.

#NSA Secrets = Food Sans Ingredient List

Posted: January 22, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
1/21/2014

Contrary to what FOX News would have you believe, the ACLU is not a terrorist organization.

American Civil Liberties Union…those four words, to me, couldn’t scream democracy more if Uncle Sam was eating a deep fried Twinkie, while driving a Hummer, and taking an IG selfie while making a duckface with the toaster filter all at the same time.

The ACLU is your friend, whether you care or not, whether you want to help them or not. They are the ones, playing within the system to change the system, and make it work for the people, by the people.

It should come as no surprise then, that they’re no fans of the NSA bulk surveillance program that was created in the dark, in secret, and exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden this past summer.  Both Congress and President Obama have said the public debate Snowden started is a good thing for democracy, yet he is still a wanted fugitive, go figure.

The NSA has been using Freedom of Information requests to try and shed more light into the dark and shady world of the NSA’s metadata dragnet.  Surprise, surprise the government is just flat out refusing to grant the ACLU access to various documents. I thought this was America.

Snowden and the ACLU aren’t looking to put soldiers in danger or expose mission critical information that will aide or abed real, actual terrorists who wish to do real, actual harm to innocent civilians on American soil.

Snowden and the ACLU are simply looking to put all of the cards on the table for the American people to decide for themselves.  It is the same thinking behind listing ingredients in food.  We (the country) just want to know what we’re putting into our body (government policy) to make sure it isn’t going to harm us (evaporate our personal privacy).

Allergies, fitness goals, overall health dictate a person must know what their food is made of. Where did it come from? Is it organic? Is it processed? How much salt? How much sugar? What is polymethylsiloxane? These are things that we NEED to know for our own health and peace of mind.

The same goes for what exactly, specifically is the NSA doing with their $1.1 trillion (that’s trillion with a t) budget. How much info are they storing? How often? For how long? From what sources? Are they authorized? Is it legal? By whom? This is not the Soviet Union or Red China. We the people get a say, and at the least have the right to know. If it is important to know if our food has gluten, it is important to know if we are giving up our personal privacy in the name of national security.

Quantitative Easing = Economic Crack Part 1

Posted: January 17, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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eanda logo

by @anarchyroll
1/17/2014

Quantitative easing is a hard concept to comprehend and I would not classify it as easy to write about either. I wanted to write an article about the subject in August. I sat down to do my research and gather sources. When I decided to take a break, I saw that I had been reading articles, watching videos, and listening to audio clips on the subject for five hours. And I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of the subject. And I just wanted to write a blog, not a graduate school thesis.

The economic collapse of 2008 and the fallout of it, part of which being quantitative easing, are the fuel for me wanting to write economics articles in simple language.

QE (quantitative easing’s often used abbreviation) is a tool in the monetary policy tool belt of the a country’s central bank. In the case of the QE being used by the United States Federal Reserve Bank (not associated with the federal government) to ease credit flow or encourage lending by banks to small businesses and citizens, buy up government bonds with freshly printed money to keep the financial markets stabilized, and encourage large scale investors to invest in safer more boring assets than riskier/sexier assets (derivatives, credit default swaps).

So the Fed is printing money and buying government debt with it to stop the bleeding, close the wound, and aide in the rehab of the US financial sector and the global economy.

Sounds good right? The central bank of the United States is using their stroke to end a financial crisis and prevent another one…..except…Many signs and indicators are pointing to the economy becoming or already being dependent upon QE, hence the crack analogy/drug metaphor. There are also signs pointing to an asset bubble growing in the debt market. What do both of those last points mean? I’ll explain and expand in part two…

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