Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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all fall down .....

all fall down .....

We were warned by billionaires who know how the global financial casino works and don't like what they see, even as they prosper. You've got to love Warren Buffet, the most successful investor of this era, when he talks about the financial speculators and manipulators operating under the polite title of 'hedge funds'. 

'In Wall Street you have this progression from the innovators, to the imitators, to the swarming incompetents,' he told the CNBC financial network last week. 'And what happens is that the results achieved by the innovators enable the product to be sold by a lot of people, simply because the record of a few people was good. 

'So the idea that billions, well, trillions of dollars can be managed to get above-average results while charging fees that are way higher than normal just defies logic.' 

Nor does Buffet buy the logic that the world's largest economy can avoid a recession by the simple expedient of cutting interest rates. It's too late. The debt bubble is too big.

'By any commonsense definition, we are in a recession. On balance, most [Americans'] net worth has been heading south for a considerable period of time. 

'And if you owned a house, and you had an 80 per cent mortgage on it, and 20 per cent equity a year ago, you might not have any equity now. Millions of people are in this position now.' 

Plenty of them live in Australia, and are being pummelled by the Reserve Bank.

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Gus: and now Joe Hockey is throwing a spanner in the works by announcing that Australia is going into a recession fast... but that's his spin on having lost the elections... Blame someone else for whatever... It could happen but not just yet and it would be due to the fiddles of John Howard who spruiked value in too greedy...
On this site, we've alerted readers to the "problem" of shonks and fudge on the money market for a long time... Buffet is OK. Having made heaps of mula out of ordinariness and diversity, he knows these fellows trying to sell "fuedges"... a mix of fudge where they sell edges to you but bet on you losing your pants... Casino capitalism... ? Not new... But presently too many people are betting their last shirt on a "cert". The only "cert" is that they will loose... and on the average, looking at our superannuation, we're mugs as well. 

Mostly Losers In Casino Capitalism

crumbs...

"In Wall Street you have this progression from the innovators, to the imitators, to the swarming incompetents"

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Gus: I understand where Warren is coming from... But to tell the truth, I can see that the "innovators" are often shrewed operators — modern highway robbers who find a great new way-to-invest-niche-market and who in small numbers can appear fantastic investors as the returns are fabulous. Of course soon after others pirates and flibusterers will follow on these "innovative" ways, cutting the slices off the new "innovative" cake a bit thinner... But in the end it's the sheer numbers of con-artists and gold prospectors, all doing nothing more nothing less than the "innovators" did, that spoil the broth and reduce the slice of the cake to mere crumbs... It's just there are too many of them fancy "innovators" on the money market and no magic pudding... Saturation and traffic jam of lemmingsways! The cake becomes tasteless as the pundit of the Fed bank add more liquid to the soppy value... soon mopped up by stale bread... The ordinary folks lose anyway unless they become more "innovative" themselves. To me, "innovation" on the money market is a euphemism for singular discreet pickpocketry, until they all do it...

And yes, I am in training with my likenesses : ... My next door neighbour wants to win the Archibald next next year.

Ah yes and I forgot... It seems I am mixing my "hedges" with my "edges" ... Probably... (no wonder I'm making no money)... But to me "hedge" funds are on the edge of decency and "hedges" are devices basically designed to hide sumpthin' on the other side... or protect from all ill-wind, some will say... Take your pick... Fuedges or fuhedges. It still is fudge.

family jewels...

Gold hits $1,000 for first time

The price of gold reached a record, trading at $1,000 an ounce for the first time, pushed higher by a weak US dollar and fears about the US economy.

Concerns about a possible US recession are seeing investors buy up commodities such as gold as an alternative to company shares and the US dollar.

Since the beginning of the year the value of gold has increased by about 20%, after it rose 32% in 2007.

Gold eventually settled for the day at $993.80, up $13.30 an ounce.

Analysts say gold will stay high as long as dollar and growth fears remain.

"Every bit of bad US economic data boosts gold in two ways," said Fortis Bank.

mug beans...

bean counting is not what it used to be...

Report Assails Auditor for Work at Failed Home Lender

By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: March 26, 2008

In a sweeping accusation against one of the country’s largest accounting firms, an investigator released a report on Wednesday that said “improper and imprudent practices” by a once high-flying mortgage company were condoned and enabled by its auditors.

KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms, endorsed a move by New Century Financial, a failed mortgage company, to change its accounting practices in a way that allowed the lender to report a profit, rather than a loss, at the height of the housing boom, an independent report commissioned by a division of the Justice Department concluded.

The result of a five-month investigation, the report is the most comprehensive and damning document that has been released about the failings of a mortgage business. Some accusations echoed claims that surfaced about the accounting firm Arthur Andersen during the collapse of Enron, the energy giant, more than six years ago.

well done, T-bone...

The investment firm run by the US billionaire Warren Buffett has reported a record profit for 2013.

Berkshire Hathaway made $19.5bn (£11.6bn) last year, up from $14.8bn (£8.8bn) in 2012.

"On the operating front, just about everything turned out well for us last year - in some cases very well," Mr Buffett wrote to shareholders.

However it underperformed the S&P 500 share index for the fifth year in a row.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26405406

 

For those in the know, apparently, T-bone is the name used by Warren when he plays cards on the net...

welcome to the accountability-free zone...

When the former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was released from prison a few weeks ago, the news conjured memories of a corporate scandal that now seems almost quaint – and it was also a reminder that Enron executives were among the last politically connected criminals to face any serious consequences for institutionalized fraud.

Since Skilling’s conviction 12 years ago, our society has been fundamentally altered by a powerful political movement whose goal is not merely another court seat, tax cut or election victory. This movement’s objective is far more revolutionary: the creation of an accountability-free zone for an ennobled aristocracy, even as the rest of the population is treated to law-and-order rhetoric and painfully punitive policy.

Let’s remember that in less than two decades, America has experienced the Iraq war, the financial crisis, intensifying economic stratification, an opioid plague, persistent gender and racial inequality and now seemingly unending climate change-intensified disasters. While the victims have been ravaged by these crime sprees, crises and calamities, the perpetrators have largely avoided arrest, inquisition, incarceration, resignation, public shaming and ruined careers.

That is because the United States has been turned into a safe space for a permanent ruling class. Inside the rarefied refuge, the key players who created this era’s catastrophes and who embody the most pernicious pathologies have not just eschewed punishment – many of them have actually maintained or even increased their social, financial and political status.

The effort to construct this elite haven has tied together so many seemingly disparate news events, suggesting that there is a method in the madness. Consider this past month that culminated with the dramatic battle over the judicial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

September began with John McCain’s funeral – a memorial billed as an apolitical celebration of the Arizona lawmaker, but which served as a made-for-TV spectacle letting America know that everyone who engineered the Iraq war is doing just fine.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/americas-new-arist...

 

Read from top.

 

Read also:

They should be in prison: The Trilogy...