my 'friend' Elaine making a brilliant analogy ! Speaking in terms of her own fallen tree ...
(snip)"The single branch that fell this week is at least 4' in diameter. The split in the trunk is over 7' tall. The fallen branch stretched across not only part of the hay field but the entire two lane road I built years ago. Now the tree, weakened by industrial pollution, namely acid rain, will die rapidly. Already, the crown shows many dead branches. Insects will enter the core of the tree and eat it inside-out. No longer can one rest at peace in its shade: the tree is no longer shelter but deadly, a hazard. For this great limb fell on a windless day. Silently, it suddenly fell with a tremendous boom.
So it is with our empire. Even if nothing is happening, it can suddenly fall with a boom. The fall itself will be violent but the trigger doesn't have to be any storm or earthquake: like the fall of the British Empire or the Soviet Union, previous storms will shake it and weaken it but the actual fall will take all by surprise. Economies are like this, too: there doesn't need to be any great event for it to collapse, all it needs is to be sick, overextended, overweighted and weakened by previous storms. Then it falls. We are watching exactly such a fall.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior Securities and Exchange Commission official said on Thursday insider trading appeared to be "rampant" among Wall Street professionals and the agency has formed a working group to focus on it.
"I believe we're going to see more insider trading cases," Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC's enforcement director, told reporters on the sidelines of a securities fraud conference.
"I am disappointed in the number of cases we are seeing by people who make an abundant livelihood in the market that they are sort of abusing by insider trading," Thomsen said, referring to cases already brought against professionals this year.
A wise farmer prunes their trees. When I bought this field, I climbed up into this tree to try to save it by pruning it but the damage from the first limb ripping off was too great. It was a fatal wound to a very lovely tree. My husband cut up the fallen limb to make firewood and we burned it. This latest, even bigger limb, is also going into the fire. In America, we are now taking the fallen limbs and chopping them up and literally burning them. Ever since 1974, when the US hit its personal Hubbert's Oil Peak, we have been 'growing' just like my tree, but dying at the same time, just like my tree. If one stood far off, the tree looks magnificent. But as a seasoned forester approaches the tree, the obvious signs of death are easily read.
One of my father-in-laws once joked that all stock trading is really insider trading. With his own company, he knew long before anyone, even anyone inside the company itself, what was going on. He could see trouble from very far off, he was a well-known publishing executive! By definition, he always knew better than anyone, what his stocks were really worth. Being a painfully honest man, a totally honest businessman, a humane boss and a man with a very powerful conscience, Joe never exploited this information. Nor did he use it to destroy the lives of his employees. He never sold stock to pirates, hell hounds or raiders. He fought them off, he was willing to take a personal loss rather than gain by destroying his own employees who considered to be his 'family.'(snip)
(snip)"Today, I see an army of anti-Joes: people who want to WEAKEN America. They want to be richer and more powerful and think, they will be very powerful even if this means killing this nation, destroying the world's economy and starting many wars! Joe was a stunning example of goodness and these people are horrible examples of badness. I remember once, an executive decided he wanted more money for himself and his fellow top officers for Christmas so he frivolously announced a huge layoff of his workers.
The horror, despair and frantic attempts at getting a new job, the suicides, bankruptcies and divorces his careless action caused didn't bother him in the slightest. The stocks soared, he and his gang sold shares and made out like bandits. And they were bandits! Far from 'growing' their company in a HEALTHY way, they were destroying it. This ethos is now nearly universal in our empire: schemes to enrich the guys 'in the know' are being pursued ruthlessly even if this means utterly destroying everything.
From Bloomberg:
Moody's Investors Service cut the ratings of collateralized debt obligations tied to $33 billion of subprime mortgage securities that were downgraded this month, a decision that may force owners to mark down the value of their holdings.
Securities with ratings as high as AAA from at least 45 CDOs were either cut or put on review for a downgrade, according to individual statements distributed today by the New York-based ratings company. Moody's didn't release a summary."(snip)
(snip)"The collapse of this huge branch blocked all traffic. I couldn't go out to do business and this meant cancelling appointments. Two neighbors came over to help us clear the road and with several chainsaws, we did this in 5 hours. The collapse of whole sectors of the US economy are causing traffic to flow elsewhere just as we had to walk around the backside of this tree in order to get up and down our mountain. And it will all be burned just as the insiders are burning our economy in order to heat their mansions.
Joe didn't live in a mansion. Taxes in the 1950's and 1960's were very high on the rich. So there was no point in him grabbing a huge share of profits for himself. Instead, he supervised the spreading of these profits so they flowed mostly to the workers. He was one fo the people who helped devise this system of taxes. When he graduated from college with a degree in mathematics, he was hired by the government for this purpose. So he lived a modest life and was the HEART of his community! Many people looked up to him and sought him out for advice. He was beloved by not only his loving family but the entire community. Since he lived only slightly better than his own employees, they all felt he was one of them and loved him in return."(snip)
(snip)"His funeral was packed and spilled into the streets of Brooklyn. Everyone genuinely cried. The present crop of crooks are not like this. They live far from their own employees who they don't associate with. They live like gods and like gods, are quite cruel and cultivate cruelty. When Enron's executives were lying, cheating and stealing, they encouraged their employees to toy with California and to shut down power plants frivolously and then make the resulting energy deficits worse and worse. Some employees were on tape, chortling like so many little demons working for Satan, laughing as they yelled, 'Die, you old bitches!' as they shut down systems, causing economic chaos and deaths in auto accidents or fires in homes when desperate people tried to light up the night with candles!
This attempt at exhorting money from California rate payers was one of the triggers of the Dot Com collapse. California is a huge part of the US economy. By deliberately sawing off a branch of our economy in order to make more profits for Enron, Lay and his Bush Pioneer gang unwittingly wrecked internal US trade and caused even more companies to flee this nation to better climes.
Joe used to say, 'Jesus saves but Moses invests.' And Joe invested in his community. This is why he was a pillar of the community, not a stalker seeking victims to rip off. Joe wouldn't shirk his taxes and use tax havens so he could then live above everyone while weakening America. Right now, many of our rich, despite record tax cuts that give them huge wealth advantages, are treasonously fleeing our taxes entirely to 0% tax havens. Europe is in the same boat. For a long time, the Japanese resisted this. They ran Japan like Joe ran his company. But the lure of easy riches, living like gods while everyone else starves to death, was too great.
This is the Zeitgeist of our civilizaton! No longer the beacon of democracy, the shining light in the dark, the generous harbor in the world's rough seas, the US is leading the entire world down the path of destruction as we encourage irresponsiblity, cruel labor practices, despotic rule and outright theft! Our ethos is now cruelty and inhumanity, torture and outrageous invasions on specious charges. We are living the lives of outlaws even as we yell about law and order."(snip)
(snip)"This is because our empire is dying. It is not healthy. It isn't growing, it is dropping huge branches. Right now, we are seeing our automotive branches falling. GM is still growing but NOT HERE. Ford is still growing but NOT HERE. Apple is growing but NOT HERE. The list of companies that are growing but NOT HERE is very long! The military/industrial complex is also guilty of this. They are 'outsourcing' stuff not just mere privatization, they are outsourcing it to other nations! This is because the executives can make more money this way.
From Markit:
Based on a desk-by-desk survey of traded notional at LCDX market makers, slightly over $55 billion of estimated notional was traded for the month of September for LCDX8.
This, as with previous surveys, includes a conservative discounting of the notionals supplied by dealers to ensure inter-dealer trades are not double-counted.
The total volume traded on the index since inception is approximately $405 billion.
Nearly half a trillion is traded doing nearly nothing useful. It is all about making money any way possible and these systems were set up recently and have no real, honest function. None of these money-creation systems are strengthening America, they are WEAKENING America. This means they are bad, bad. Like, very bad. Yet they are being protected and even extended. Our Federal Reserve is focused on enabling them, not protecting us. This is why we have fake inflation caclulations: it is a cold-blooded attempt at shifting the burden of making wealth away from honest labor and towards ripping off people."(snip)
(snip)"I wrote about this [speculative index based hedge - sic] fund when it was launched. I groaned and said, 'This is so destructive! It is pure gambling!' And it seems to have collapsed. Many of the branches we see falling this year are deadwood. But they infected this mighty oak and let in the termites which ate at the heart of this dying oaken economy. The frantic efforts as saving these deadly limbs is not only wasted, it is criminal. I want the SEC and others to investigate all these financial games and systems because they are bad. I want Congress to fix the huge tax loopholes that helps traitors to evade their obligations to this nation. I want Halliburton delisted from the Stock Exchanges here since they are now based in a tax haven in Dubai! And arrest Cheney, of course.
Congress, instead of doing the right thing, is soliciting bribes for the next election. Many of our politicians are courting the termites that are destroying our mighty economic oak tree. They are moving heaven and earth to continue the destruction. Instead of changing course, we sail into more ice fields as our Titanic sinks."(snip)
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!! I will give ya brownie points for blind optimism though...just to show..you know...a lil' optimism!!


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