The media frenzy around Facebook should be a lesson to all the CHEERLEADERS living a parasitic existence off the efforts to establish legitimacy to casino capitalism. Days prior to the FACEBOOK’S IPO, the financial media was racing against itself to lift the price of FACEBOOK on its first day of trading. Anything less than a 50% increase on day one would be a major disappointment. The fact that FB closed virtually unchanged from the offering price resulted in the entire stock market closing lower as the failure of FB to rise dramatically was deemed to be a statement about the overall lack of optimism on the part of investors. When the screen screamers and cheerleaders raise expectations in a rush to be the most inane, the failed expectations can lead to disappointment. Too much TOUTING and HYPE can make financial anchors long for the DOT-COM era.
***The G-8 is on a relative basis even a greater hype than Facebook. This staid and archaic group should just stop its silly meetings and fold its circus tent and leave the real decision-making to a larger group, the G-20. The statement out of the CAMP DAVID meetings was so banal and jejune so it appeared to have been written by President Obama’s daughters as a class project. To the leaders of the U.S., U.K., Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France and Canada: The world is in a very fragile state and when the leaders of its supposedly most important nations meet and issue a communique that pays homage to platitudes then it is time to end the nonsense of the G-8.
The world is not dependent on the old colonialists to dictate global policy, especially as this weekend’s statement is void of the thinking of any genuine leadership. After giving it a third read, I cried over the lack of any leadership in these very perilous times. The failure to come to any formal agreement on the need for a real support for Europe and some effort to curtail U.S. austerity leaves one wanting to buy FACEBOOK … OMG.
***The most important piece I read last week was in the Financial Times on May 15. In an op-ed piece by Keynes’s biographer Robert Skidelsky, “HOW KEYNES WOULD SOLVE THE EUROZONE CRISIS,” there is a very important paragraph that austerity and endless liquidity providers would be wise to read. Lord Skidelsky reminds the world about Keynes’s disillusionment with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the terrible outcome for the world as some victors squeezed the vanquished for every reichmark. “Keynes by contrast held that both creditors and debtors should share the task of getting out the holes they had jointly dug. “‘THE ABSOLUTISTS OF CONTRACT,’ HE WROTE IN 1923,’ARE THE REAL PARENTS OF REVOLUTION.’ “
This is a very significant statement and needs to be absorbed by the absolutists of contracts. (The GREEKS DID NOT GET INTO THE DEBT DEBACLE WITHOUT BORROWING FROM SOME CREDITORS.) Why is it that the citizens of indebted countries are asked to bear the costs and not the bankers and shadow bankers that the funds without doing any type of due diligence? The moral certitude of the CREDITORS is certainly open to challenge. The same reasoning can be applied to the U.S. BANKS AND THEIR POSITION IN REGARDS TO RESTRUCTURING OR REFINANCING MORTGAGES.
The need for restructuring of all types of debt will help alleviate the near term deleveraging of sovereign and household balance sheets. Yes, this issue is complex, but as Keynes advised, both creditors and debtors share the task. The ship of moral rectitude sailed long ago. Now, let’s do some serious problem solving. The world cannot wait for the next G-8 meeting for the overhang of unresolved debt issues is causing a potential collapse of the global economy. Anybody want some more TWO-YEAR SCHATZ FOR .03 BASIS POINTS?
Tags: Facebook, G-8, IPO, Robert Skidelsky
May 20, 2012 at 9:36 pm |
Is the junkee who shoots up a lethal dose of heroin resposible for his own demise or is the drug dealer who provided the stash to blame? is the unqualified mortgagor who has his mansion foreclosed bear any blame for his own misfortune, or is the mortgagee who overlooked the lack of substance in the financial ability of the recipient of his funds guilty as well? The blame goes all around but it starts at the door of those who created the excess liquidity at ridiculous interest rates that caused the misallocation of resources that has led our financial system down the road to perdition.
The big loser at the end will be capitalism and democracy which has served the western world so well since the 18th century, leading to George Orwell’s predicted outcome.
May 20, 2012 at 10:17 pm |
I don’t get the Keynes theory reference, it was a different place and time when that evolved and included pulling money back out of the system after a smoothing of an economic cycle was in effect and it was created for/during a gold standard though restricted early on.
This banking system only works with inflation and absolutely fails miserably with deflation, in other words, you can’t pull money back out once injected or the banking system collapses. Mathematically this bank system was meant to end from the onset in about a 100 years or so since a Ponzi scheme can’t support itself.
Armstrong keeps saying it would be cheaper to print interest free money for injection into the system rather than having to incur interest but banksters don’t make profits or gain power that way and if you did print interest free money, you might as well change to only a fee based banking system at that point.
Plan accordingly with the current banking system in place as change will be like prying away a death grip.
May 21, 2012 at 4:55 am |
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