Are these guys out of their minds?! Last week, the latest, lascivious round of IPO-mania pushed Twitter’s capitalization to an intraday peak of $35 billion, putting it in the same league as John Deere, News Corp., Halliburton, Biogen and Prudential Financial. This, despite the fact that the Internet messaging service, with hundreds of millions of followers, has yet to earn a dime of profit — or even to figure out how to earn one. “Investors” seemed not to care, however. In the opening minutes of Thursday’s session, their orgiastic buying spree pumped the stock to an intraday high of $50 that was nearly double the $26 offering price.
For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read text messages limited to 140 characters called “tweets”. Although tweets undoubtedly have theoretical value as a marketing tool, they have been used mainly by celebrities to share their personal thoughts and reflections with millions of fans at all hours of the day and night. The tweet-happy Justin Bieber, for one, probably has more online followers than Coca-Cola, Doritos, Ralph Lauren et al. could attract in a lifetime. If you’re wondering, then, who can benefit from Twitter, let alone get rich from it, you’re not alone, especially since the service has yet to come up with a viable business model. One answer soon to be tried involves adding graphic marketing images to tweets. However, this would force Twitter to compete more directly with Facebook. It would also risk driving away users who were attracted to the service in the first place because of its simplicity and ad-free format.
Street’s ‘Community of Thieves’
In the meantime, Twitter, having become one of America’s 100 most valuable companies literally overnight, will presumably continue to add nothing, zilch, zero to the economy. At best – and this is only in theory – it could help a company raise its market share at the expense of competitors. So where’s the money? Even bank robber Willy Sutton would have trouble figuring that one out. One need look no further than Wall Street, however. The Street is by far the biggest winner every time its insider gang of thieves has an opportunity to hype the IPO of some company whose business is inscrutable to most of us — inscrutable, no doubt, to most of the halfwits who were clamoring for IPO shares last week at $50 per. If they wind up making any money at all, it will only be because even greater fools have come along to bail them out.
Our hunch is that the epic stupidity, hubris and greed that made Twitter’s IPO such a success will mark the top of the second, and presumably last, dot-com boom. Readers?
Comments on this entry are closed.
A sobering recent look at charts of American financial inequality. Ouch…
http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-on-us-inequality-2013-11?op=1
Of course it is quite clear that Wall Street shenanigans and QE have NOTHING to do with this. If the common citizens of America would take more responsibility and realize that they can change things, this kind of problem wouldn’t happen in the first place, starting with their right to vote, right? Wake up from that delusion.
If we are nearing a top it better be now. Clearly we are running out of time both seasonally and using any sort of resistance levels. It’s now or not till beginning of new year at the earliest.
As for the good cheer on Wall Street, its not just the QE continuation, but rather some signs of life from the consumer. With income levels showing the best 2 month back to back increases and employment numbers well above expectations, we could see a GDP that actually breaks above the 2 percent mark. I for one do not dismiss everything that is presented since corporate profits are what matters to investors. the rise in both income and workers is a two edge sword. If anyone watched the futures market right after the employment numbers were out it went down. the initial reaction was fear of the sugar fix from QE would be gone. the Fed wants desperately to end this vicious cycle. if they can, they will. the big question is will the economy improve enough to allow this to happen.
Well worth the read gang, even if you might not agree on some points, the guy’s not a chump…
http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/why-us-stocks-are-dirt-cheap-2/
I read it. Very bullish. But he left out two economy killing paradigms.
1. Debt. Our private debt is at an all time high, no matter how you want to measure it. I’m talking the debt of most of the Western world. Can’t speak for China as I’m never sure of the facts, different people say different things about China.
But it doesn’t matter because history shows that whenever debt gets so large as it is today the economy goes into a nose dive. If the West does that I don’t see how the rest of the world can make up the difference.
2. Demographics. 80 million boomers over here that want to retire. ditto for much of the rest of the world, especially Japan. If they don’t then the younger generations don’t get jobs, if they do then who is going to pay for their retirement? Any that have assets will have to sell those assets to fund their retirement, the rest will need someone to pay their SS and Medicare. (Immigration, anyone?)
I don’t see how the stock market and the economy can overcome these overwhelming headwinds.
Andy
Hi Andy, thanks for the added comments, easy to agree and worry…
Speaking strictly in large global macro terms, a couple of other points come to mind:
1. Yes, to answer your question, China also has a lot of debt, as much as all the other big parties involved, though they also have plenty of cash too, which none of the others do. Thank heavens for that.
2. America’s declining 100 million middle class is offset by the equal rise of 300 million plus in China, plus an additional 200 million more in emerging countries across other regions, mainly Latin America and Asia. So I am comfortable suggesting this is a BIG offset, especially considering that 50% of S&P500 company earnings are international, not domestic. So, then any rise across the ocean goes well to support these companies in general, including their share value.
3. Without exception, every multinational client I work with (across half a dozen different industries) is dealing with exactly the same paradigm: Their domestic China operation is their most important and strongest market worldwie. It is the place where their company has and is experiencing strong growth and expansion, while in the U.S. and Europe business is flat. China is the center of board room meetings earth. I would then confidently suggest that for any of these companies having their China business hit the wall is a bad sign. Hopefully China really does have at least another decade of fire left, most likely it does. China’s recent aggressive reforms are good for and central to the global business environment and will be implemented over coming years.
Cheers, Mario
Rick could probably verify, if he wanted to, the fact that I lost everything I ever owned (he could do so through my new ISP address) due to the forces of mother nature.
I have no complaints.
I have a roof over my head and I eat daily.
You guys . . . my gawd, I have never, ever, in all my days been so inundated by such a bunch of crying little babies.
This world owes you jack squat.
Get over it, get over yourselves and for Christ’s sake, contribute something to the planet.
Hurricane Katrina, Troll?
A little more recent, Cam … think Canada
I sent you something about bees some time ago via Rick, Cam.
Hope reigns supreme.
High River, Canmore or Calgary I am betting then. Let me guess your house was totally drowned out and the whole lot ruined by the floods. It could be worse though….like that train wreck back East that burned almost a whole damn town out. Actually that reminds me, Hinton had a hell of wreck once too. Didn’t a fuel train go off like a lit fuse there once? Or maybe it was some chemical gas? Been a long time now so I have forgotten most of the details.
Well, I am just going to say, this wasn’t voluntary.
It was forced.
There is a big difference in doing something when you know you can revert back to what you have if you really want to.
I have never said, ” There is no need to be prepared.” Not once.
There is a big difference in being prepared and hoping your preparations actually become necessary.
So go ahead, do without all the trappings of the modern world for a day or two.
I did it pretty much for ten days.
So, my thoughts on how fortunate I am to have a roof over my head and central heat and lights and electricity are genuine.
This is a picture I took of my front street on July 3rd:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=59va0y&s=5#.UomnwY21Gao
And yes, much of what was in that pile was mine.
So, I don’t care what causes a collapse.
A collapse is a collapse.
And you shouldn’t be wishing a collapse on anyone.
That’s my opinion, and I know many of you won’t agree.
Troll, I totally respect your bootstrap spirit. I think too many Americans have gone way too soft. Myself included. Not that I want the realization call that you had but I think I need to be more thankful, more gritty and determined and less whiney about the little stuff (and most of life is little stuff.)
I told you this because I think I have a better idea than most what a “collapse” actually feels like.
I know what it’s like to have no electricity, no running water, no land line, no cell phone access, no internet, no stores, no gas stations. These are just a few of the things many people in here would expect to live without in the event of an economic collapse. Never mind the mental anguish, which you will surely suffer in the same manner I did, if the economy does, in fact, collapse.
And I can tell you, quite frankly, it sucks.
And when I see Peter Schiff up on his soap box praying for something like this to happen to all of you, (as he was again, yesterday) it makes my blood boil.
Peter Schiff will not suffer any hardship. He will be just fine.
Basking in the glow of all the money he’s made in a system he claims to hate.
I shouldn’t even respond to this. I’ll just drop a few notes.
Everything you’ve ever “owned” (as you put it) is nothing, period.
“This isn’t life, it’s just stuff.”
Kevin Spacey – American Beauty
So long as you have your family, your friends, and your life (experience), you have it all. The rest is gravy. Conveniences are nice, but they are just that, conveniences. Sure, “it sucks,” but you still have your life and all of the aforementioned, don’t you?
And yes, I do know what it’s like. I’ve also lost my best friend, family members, and other loved ones. I’ve experienced things I wouldn’t wish on anyone, it pains me to mention that much. Also, I nearly lost my life, and I’ve been in another situation where I could’ve easily lost it a second time, but I’ve also had some amazing experiences throughout my life. That makes you appreciate how it could happen any day at any time. That IS life.
The world doesn’t OWE anyone anything. I feel thats a large part of the reason people here get so annoyed; particularly in regards to entitlements and social programs . Somehow you cannot see that. I personally feel that I do owe things to people because I believe it is part of the purpose of life. I’m not perfect in anyones eyes, but that doesn’t stop me from working on it.
You’re the one just sitting there castigating others. Do something for the planet, huh? As if people on here haven’t had discussions about dying bee populations, Deep Water Horizon/Corexit, Fukushima (the nuclear industry in general), pharmaceuticals, Monsanto, etc. the organic movement, natural gas fracking, etc.? You act as if there is no concern from the people on here and that is pure garbage. How myopic. I’ve given you just a couple of examples of what I give back and there are many more. I’ll give you another, I tend plots an land at a community garden and assist in providing organic produce to the local food pantries. What about you? What do you do? So far as I can tell, you come on here, cherry pick on things people say and criticize.
You literally do sit there and snipe at people as if you were playing one of those shooter games, like Halo (hat tip RWD).
You don’t like what’s written on this board? You are free to not read it.
You may have the most adolescent approach I’ve ever seen on this board.
Grow up.
I’ve already written too much and I need to stop soon. I took a hiatus before, I’m ready to take another. It’s nice to drop in but there’s a lot of other stuff I need to focus on.
Peter Schiff making your blood boil is laughable, I guess you are glad he never did get a chance to help the fiscal and monetary insanity of the USA. What he says is pretty accurate, whether you like it or not, and no, he will not be immune. We need a purge one way or another. Force Majeur? “It is decidedly so” says the magic 8 ball. Personally, I’m not sold on the gold/silver (PM’s in general mindset), but it is an interesting system, Schiff is all about it. I have more to learn and I guess I have a slightly different view. You hate him because he has been accurate and he has used what he’s learned to be successful so far? It sucks that he’s right all the time? Get used to it and whine about it some more. How about Soros? Buffett? Gates (although he may be a bad example)? How do you feel about them? You probably don’t like Gerald Celente either. That’s too bad, he’s a no nonsense, highly intelligent, matter of fact guy. He doesn’t blur the lines, he tells it like it is and makes no apologies. He’s accurate as all get out too, the proof is in the pudding. He lives in reality.
Instead, what do we do? We are held captive and spoon fed. Band Aid here, kick the can down the road there (debt ceiling match II coming up again in a couple of months) – just slow the bleed, create more unintended consequences, more malinvestment and moral hazards, screw the little people even more so there is no middle class left. The haves and the have nots. Wait, that’s the system we’ve got.
Oh, 2 more things.
Tiring of conspiracies doesn’t make them cease to exist. Do some real research, stuff that’s on file at your own friggen library, in newspapers on micro fiche, etc. Many of the ones covered on this board were in effect before the internet produced all of the sites people on here constantly deny. Perhaps, some day, the government won’t be classifying everything under the sun so we can’t possibly know the truth. Jesse Ventura shed light on that, explaining that the government now classifies more than 16M documents a year. Just a guess, but, Benghazi sure seems like it could amount to a drop in the bucket.
Also, Bees do what they do out of love and endurance for their colony, for survival, for continuity; that is their life. That is how they live, part of their circle if you will. They do not perform as they do because it is an imposed tax; Latin word meaning “rate.”
Well, good for you.
You said it all in ONE sentence:
“So long as you have your family, your friends, and your life (experience), you have it all.”
So what the heck is everyone here complaining about?
You make some great points, and I won’t disagree with you on a single one of them, as I refer back to the
most important thing you wrote (in the above sentence in quotation marks).
Cheers
Thanks for taking the time DK. Your best line:
I shouldn’t even respond to this. I’ll just drop a few notes.
Troll doesn’t think that many of us are thinking things out. Unsurprisingly, I would argue the opposite. I think that many of us, after much reading and contemplation, wish we hadn’t thought things out. Ignorance is bliss as has been said countless times.
The matrix works so well, it really does. It is a “marvel” as they say in the movie. They actually have the control planted so deeply that those who would help others to be more free are met with violent reactions, repulsion.
Regardless of Rick’s topic of the week, when I read these posts I always conclude that all road’s lead back to tending one’s garden.
Never thought Voltaire and Camus would resonate so strongly with me when I read them over a quarter century ago.
“All roads lead back to tending one’s gardens”
Nice one Red. It’s a metaphor for minding your own business and staying productive in your own home too. Trolls earlier comment about living without power, water etc under conditions simulating an economic collapse remind me of something I learned year ago from an Emergency Preparedness guy. He had said part of their training was to turn the power, mobiles and water off in your own home for as long as a week and see if you could survive it. That was how he discovered all the cracks in his own emergency plan (designed around surviving a major West Coast Earthquake by the way). The rules were simple. No cheating allowed. No shopping or driving. No using cards or cash to patch over what was missing in the plan and no talking on the phone. One week of that and he had a list as long as his arm of what was REALLY needed to get through an emergency like a monster quake.
Sorry, this is double-posted . . .
Well, I am just going to say, this wasn’t voluntary.
It was forced.
There is a big difference in doing something when you know you can revert back to what you have if you really want to.
I have never said, ” There is no need to be prepared.” Not once.
There is a big difference in being prepared and hoping your preparations actually become necessary.
So go ahead, do without all the trappings of the modern world for a day or two.
I did it pretty much for ten days.
So, my thoughts on how fortunate I am to have a roof over my head and central heat and lights and electricity are genuine.
This is a picture I took of my front street on July 3rd:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=59va0y&s=5#.UomnwY21Gao
And yes, much of what was in that pile was mine.
So, I don’t care what causes a collapse.
A collapse is a collapse. It can be economic or otherwise.
And you shouldn’t be wishing a collapse on anyone.
That’s my opinion, and I know many of you won’t agree.
As for you Red, I don’t dislike you. I just think you’re miserable, and you have no idea what you’re wishing for.
But I’ll happily buy you a plane ticket and even pick you up at the airport if you’d like to see, first-hand, what a collapse is all about.
Rick has my email address. Contact me if you’re interested.
It would make for a great write-up on Rick’s site, if nothing else.
And it might give you some perspective.
And I am a pretty good cook.
And don’t worry, Red.
I might be psychotic.
But I’m not a psychopath.
I assume you know the difference.
If anyone here wants to know how it feels for life to totally suck, vote “yes” to Red coming to see for himself what the real world is actually like.
I will extend the offer to Rick.
The day I spend a thousand bucks on a course and rely on an anonymous source like ZH to contradict what I’ve been taught . . .
Well, think about it and get back to me if you wish.
For the record, I LOVE Zero Hedge. Conversations on the site reflect the sum total of human knowledge about the global economic and financial systems. It’s all there.
Right, but they, as most, are truly idiots about China.
It’s not a question of “love,” Rick. It’s a question of how timely their information is and if they make us any money vs simply trading your system.
“Love and the stock market” don’t come across to me as synonymous.
But it might make a great title for a novel.
How’s (falsified – according to you all) government statistics and ZH and Rolling Stone Magazine doing vs Hidden Pivots?
I would say a BIG FAT ZERO!
What say you?
So what you are saying is, “Gee, Rick, it’s a great course, but when can we get short? Because (and we are not refuting your course, we are just asking) Zerohedge tells us something entirely different where your HP’s are concerned.”
Have I got that about right?
Aloha All
Appreciate the many intelligent posts here
Since investment decisions and economic discussions involve politics, here is our modest campaign contribution introduced by Clinton Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy Robert Reich:
“Congress, meanwhile, doesn’t know much about the bottom 90 percent. The top 10 percent provide almost all campaign contributions and funding of “independent” ads.”
“Moreover, just about all members of Congress are drawn from the same top 10 percent — as are almost all their friends and associates, and even the media who report on them.”
“Get it? The bottom 90 percent of Americans — most of whom are still suffering from the Great Recession, most of whom have been on a downward escalator for decades — have disappeared from official Washington.”
http://usnvrepcan.blogspot.com/2013/11/acres-of-diamonds-in-las-vegas.html
FB target -19% to 39
I’m with you on this Rich, intend to add to my short tonigh and wait, regardless of the index’ moves….
Hi Mario
Good to see your posts and best with the new book.
Sent you tweet as requested and did not see response.
Things getting pretty interesting in markets.
(Old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times)
FXI target +47% to 56
Regards All
Sold QQQ calls and bot QQQ puts
Holy cow!
People, you are warm, fed and have access to things our predecessors could only dream of.
And all you do is complain.
Think about it.
So says the turkey just a week before thanksgiving.
Last I looked, turkeys have been living the same way they have been for centuries.
People, on the other hand, are not.
We have access to the world at our fingertips.
We can communicate freely with someone like Mario, who is off plying his trade in a foreign land.
We share ideas with the click of a button.
Our clothes are made for us; our idea of hunting is checking to see which grocer is offering us the best deal; we drive nice cars on nice roads; some even earn a respectable living staring at a monitor all day trading ticks on the S&P Futures.
Say what you will, but I wouldn’t trade places with anyone who walked this earth before me.
So, please, go right ahead and tell me I don’t have a clue. Twenty five years ago your rebuttal would have required a typewriter and a postage stamp.
And you’d have decided it wasn’t worth your while.
Before anyone comes on here and tells me I am a troll who contributes nothing . . .
I contribute to HP’s and pointed out as much (despite
my mistakes, which were corrected)
Troll August 4, 2013 at 5:21 am
An alternative pattern on the ES (a one-off), if it hasn’t been mentioned in the chat room (it shows up quite well on the weekly)
A 1382.25 C 1685.75 p 1705.00
Enough said.
Troll August 4, 2013 at 5:24 am
An amendment to the above:
A 1382.25
B 1685.75
C 1553.25
p 1705.00
So, I am sorry I don’t regurgitate “stuff” on the net you can all find for yourselves . . .
But you bears might want to concern yourselves with the “D” in the above pattern.
Easy to agree Troll, just that its not the case for too many, whose fundamental lifestyle has become more not less of a burden at the behest of the overlords…
Troll, I like your point, agree with it, be thankful, etc. and that’s genuine. I just think you’re overdoing generalizing it. There are winners and losers. And in the American battle for success, a once very large and prosperous group of people, the lower/middle class have been routed. Now I’ll be the first to say that at the same time other groups on the planet, far LARGE than the American middle class have in this same generation been rising up and very strongly and will continue to do so for another 20 years. This is why i always favor looking at the big picture, the global macro picture first. On that front, the global picture has alot of strength to it. But America’s middle class are not a happy scene in that picture. It does’n’t do a struggling single mother or father much good that she has a cellphone with cool maps, a Kindle with awesome free kid’s learning apps, can skype for free with grandma in Miami and her Uncle in Hong Kong when in her daily life she’s royally screwed over with a K-mart job, and little real opportunty, less than ever before in her society to bridge that gap between poor and well-off. And the govt, our leaders, aren’t helping the matter much, they are the ones who have moved the situation in this direction, with wild success for the haves and greater burden for the have nots. Yet, perhaps an increase in social programs including ACA will now help support them, but after we’ve royally screwed them, let’s not be unclear about that. In terms of macro trends, America’s new found oil, natural gas and global trend toward reshoring business back into America, which even many European companies are now looking at, could all combine to serve well as a stabilization and improvement but not “the good ‘ol days” the American middle class once had.
So I’m just a believer in keeping all such things in their proper and reasonably deduced perspective.
Cheers, Mario
Fair enough, Mario. You have always managed to keep things in perspective. People would do well to read what you have to say.
Mmm, sorry to hear you got wiped out as you briefly mentioned, life has its insanely tough moments, I’ve had mine…yet, if it doesn’t destroy you, it sure as heck gives a person clarity and perspective moving forward in this life…
Mario, I’m in so much better shape than most of my friends and neighbours.
I didn’t mean for that post to come across as a sympathy-seeking complaint.
I’m not going to get much sympathy on this site, anyway 🙂
I just think people here aren’t truly thinking things out, sometimes.
A point I will add here is that it is typically done in increments so they can get the sheeple to start down the path. ODicktator and his cronies are on video admitting that they want single payer aka state healthcare but view this as a transitional step. The incremental approach has been employed across the board to reduce freedoms wherever possible.
It really is a parade to the cliff by obvious evidence. I mean, one good thing about American freedom is that there is press who can openly write about exactly what is going on. And as each month passes, the govt of America simply gets more and more intrusive on innocent citizens, everyone, without rhyme or reason (well their reason of the day is because of terrorism, what a joke) TSA and airports are now in full information sharing harmony, what was once policy only for people on the watch list is now being applied by TSA to everyone. If you pass through the airport with a passport #, you are automatically screened by the linked databases of everything you have ever done, together, to check on you. There is ZERO privacy, ZERO freedom. And the place still tries to say there is American “freedom”. The examples and stories are an endless nightmare and there frequency is increasing right under everyone’s noses. And Gary thinks its the citizens fault, because the citizens are complacent! The citizens used the corrupt voting system to vote in the place the govt that is supposed to be representing their interests, when that whole system is corrupt, what’s the vote accomplishing. The original vote, the original system doesn’t even exist anymore. Damn those citizens, they should do something about it!
“The govt is too strong! We need another Boston Tea Party, we must do it, George, Tom, Mary, Harry, let’s get our legally owned guns, our AK47’s and deer rifles and throw some tea off the ships at the harbor, I’m sick of this crap, we shall not be complacent!”
Hah, yea, right. What will be the result? You’ll be overrun by the might of the military, thrown in jail for being a terrorist with no rights, no right to a trial or a phone call. This is what they do at airports, they detain you because your passport looks fishy and you have NO rights in that process from beginning to end if that is what they deemed. That is the law of the land passed by the representatives of the government your vote bought. And no matter which side you voted, the result is the same. They’ve got the system sown up, locked up, every egress covered and under their control. And its getting worse, not better. Period. Sad. Unfortunate.
Cheers, Mario
Cheers, Mario
All true.
You give your own species too little credit. What happened when the Robber Barons combined with government endorsement took over? Greed has a wonderful way of waking up the masses. Do you think it was just coincidence that liberal minded people took over government after the Great Depression? Do you give no credit to our voting system? Could the Tea Party develop such growth decades ago? Was it not the people that got awoken? Am I really that naïve?
Here, still in the United States, government power and direction is at the discretion of it’s citizens. A complacent, spoiled citizen, is one where government can and often do take advantage of. Do you really believe “this time is different”? You all seem to think all elections are rigged. You believe the two parties are now all powerful. Hmm, if that was so, why in the world would the Republican establishment embrace the Tea Party? I guess they made a tactical error that can easily be fixed? Really?
Let the games begin! We shall see how politicians are all powerful in the next big election. According to everyone here government policy would never change.
You’re forgetting that when you rape or victimize a person’s life in some way, either individually or in mass, that while this wonderful pain may inspire them to rise up in masses to create future change in society and govt, oh how glorious to look forward to man’s indomitable spirit, first you have traumatized their psyche, their lives, their emotions, their families, leaving scars that don’t heal. I’d prefer not to get bent over and sodomized by my govt in the first place, thanks. Perhaps I should ask them to pay for the therapy and meds I need from the nervous breakdown they caused, paid for by national healthcare of course. Don’t you get it. First, we screw you over, make ourselves rich, then, when you can’t afford anything anymore and have far less opportunities to improve your life, we, the folks with more money than ever, have to take care of your sorry little servitude asses, and so we increase social programs, AFTER we’ve ruined your life and bought our ferraris!!!!! And the whole time, we act publicly and in the media like “America is a great country, we are together, blah, blah” How can anyone be stupid enough to buy into their story?
Cheers, Mario
Great post.
Gary, the elections ARE rigged, along with so many other things around the sleeping minds of the citizenry, not perhaps in the way we immediately think of it. Skipping questions at the ballot boxes, before that, the elections are rigged because the country is rigged, the people are brainwashed, conditioned and they don’t know its happening to them. I teach this stuff, and I know it well, so I know what it is. I can make a group of people cry, fall asleep or feel strong conviction, pride and goodness in three minutes. The puppetmasters are masters of communication, the media helps them disseminate their messages and the people swallow it, why? Because the majority are sheep who, as intelligent as you might wish to claim them to be, don’t even know its happening to them. I do it, I teach it, for good purposes in communications/media/PR for clients but it can and is just as easily used to manipulate people for self-serving purposes sans any sense of ethics and morality. That’s what sociopaths do, charming on the outside, no scruples or regard on the inside.
Here’s a template, on the house, pay attention:
You know, as I’m typing these words this morning sitting here in on a sunny Shanghai Autumn morning, I realize something quite important, as you are sitting there in your chair across the ocean a few short minutes later, looking at, reading these words, genuine questions, important questions rise up in your mind….I easily recognize you care and I respect that as the good thing it is. Let’s explore them together and as we do begin doing that, here is what we may find…I can easily say here is what we do know, both of us, right here, right now…We know x, we know y, we know z. And so, let’s take a minute and focus, let me suggest…(pull the trigger)And so perhaps what has to happen next is ….(now feel free to pull the trigger)
That language template is just a quick example, its implicit, unconscious and highly persuasive. It massages, leads and ultimately controls the conversation, the behavior of the people in it. And its a weapon in the hands of people who want to control you for self-serving purposes. No one are greater masters of this kind of fabulous crap than the politicians and media and other big orgs.
Don’t forget, one of the greatest master of it all, EVER in world history that few in the art of oratory and delivery will speak about because it is such a blight on the heart and soul of man: Hitler. And look what despicable road he led otherwise intelligent individual thinking people down.
Cheers, Mario
Mario, you know nothing of human psychology. If a government placates citizens during times of corruption people will look the other way. I challenge all of you to tell me this isn’t so. Case in point, every single argument I hear on why the system is failing is based on YOUR OWN experience. Not much empathy there. We don’t sit around and decide what is best for the nation as a whole. We only look at what is best for ourselves in our current situation. Gee, the universal understanding of our degraded standard of living should have us all in arms over the treatment of the lower class, yet the EXACT opposite is true. We want to cut spending on them. So perhaps you should look no further than yourselves for answers to why we allow governments to become corrupt and greedy.
There is no system on this planet that has worked better, even with all the flaws of a boom/bust cycle. NONE. As long as our personal life is not disrupted we, for the most part, do not participate in finding the best government politician to represent our values. We allow and trust that governments will take care of us. When it gets so bad that the citizens wake up and take control, they do manage to clean up house. It is always after such events that strict laws and rules get enforced. it is only after such events that the disparity between rich and poor get balanced. This is a cycle. it happens in every generational change.
You might not like the way we behave as humans but I can assure you it will go on for another thousand years. We are a young species that has not developed to our potential yet. Do you dispute these findings? If you want perfection built an android and have it replace our emotional baggage.
Try teaching the fact that we have genetically inherited emotional baggage along with our intelligence. Try understanding why we have always gone thru the same mistakes every single generation. Try understanding why today most Americans don’t even know their representatives. If we were in such dire straits as you state than surely every single person affected so terribly would be spending all their spare time figuring out who to vote for. If we were already in such dire straits there would be not 200K employment numbers, no income growth, no retail sales, no corporate earnings. Please, peddle your doom/gloom argument when we are actually in it. We certainly look like we will be in it soon enough. To declare all is lost in one breath while in another you say there still is a strong middle-upper-class supporting this mess is dishonest. Which is it? Is the last 5 years a shame? Is the data all wrong? Are each and every one of us living in poverty and can’t understand where the government and corporations get their manipulated data from?
You believe in a system that is a sham. You believe CHINA, after a few decades of change is on the path of greatness? You believe in no citizen representation and here you are criticizing us? You believe in a strong central government with absolute power. Great. Live with it. You glory over the fact that you can live a good cheap life with the income you have. I guess “for you” life doesn’t get any better. It is however laughable that you defend their practices. I guess as long as “you” aren’t affected its great. You are exactly amplifying my point. Thank you. According to you China is a great country to live in. According to you it is the model to live by. Ask anyone here if they would trade their freedoms for a warm cuddly dictatorially controlled government. yes even today. You are out of touch my friend to preach from the position you are in.
So, please explain to me how we ever developed child and environmental rules, minimum wage, unions, grievance outlets, courts, work place laws, entrepreneurship, competition, etc.. Please explain to me how they came about and when. Yes when. Was it during times of peace and prosperity? Now tell me how such things will work in your world? not sure yet? how’s the interest of China’s citizens doing? No hardships, unfair practice, rampant pollution with absolutely no concern for its citizens? Hmmm. I can guarantee you if we had to live in an environment like that all the current politicians would be voted out. GUARANTEED! No, lets rephrase that. It would never be allowed to get that bad. never.
The glorious motherland of China. I am very tired of you delusional assessment of that country.
You have taken the concept of twisted nonsense to new level. Your abilito y to filter out what IS important AND rationalize what isn’t is the model for a case study. I learned from my exwife you can’t talk to a person who is in delusional self denial of evidence based states of reality without judgement. After you have directly answered any of my several questions do i know and understand your position to continue in an intelligent conversation. You belong in the comment section on BI.
Well worth reading Wayalat’s latest update, one of my favorite reads a few times a year….
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43068.html
Bullish on stocks, well thought out views on drone wars, Middle East nuclear possibilities and best of all, a thoroughly wonderful and thoroughly competent bashing of both facebook and twitter stocks.
Cheers, Mario
Beware the rise of Asian platforms like wechat, which is easy to love. They are far superior to Facebook and Twitter and growing much faster in every way; users, marketable, flexibility, features.
Great, Mario! We will have both Asians and Americans tracking our internet preferences!
Interesting point. Asians including Chinese already don’t care about that! People here never had any illusion fed to them that they weren’t being watched, no argument about limits of freedoms i return for a hopefully harmonious society. For example, there are dozens of traffic cams all along every road in China. Singapore the same. Nobody cares or questions it because the govt doesn’t abuse it. Ah but there are NO sneaky highway patrol cars moving around with radar guns to “catch” you, which is freer? In America, not only are the freedoms being taken away but the society for its occupants is becoming a less enjoyable and more burdensome place to live. People in America are getting afraid to chew gum without worrying they might get in trouble with the cronies in charge. Its really weird and not good.
Cheers, Mario
I’m looking forward to the day when msn is a footnote, same for google, facebook, apple etc. Something about fascism cloaked in state loving faux liberalism rubs me the wrong way. As for twitter? Really, where is the barrier to entry? Not a tech expert but developing similar competing tech doesn’t seem insurmountable to me. Seems like tech bubble echo. With as much $ as is being given to professionals criminals by the unconstitutional fed, is there any wonder?
I can easily see how the use of smartphones and tablets has created a megashift in the way human beings interact, consume content and behave. Some of it is not so good, such as watching ten people have lunch together with all of them having their heads stuck in their screens. Other than that, I have come to like the many benefits alot as a constantly curious person. I truly LOVE my Kindle Fire HD 7″ and I need no more than that. I can do so many things with it as a “consumer” of content from watching my favorite shows to researching on the web, plus many very useful apps including excellent interactive child apps for my son to learn and develop. I’m connected internationally on the fly for free with wechat and skype, etc. Really great practical and useful in many ways. BUT where do facebook and twitter fit in all that? More I’ve used them lately, they simply don’t except a tool to deliver out information…like Rick said, unless you’ve got a zillion followers, they are not relevant to life’s daily doings.
Cheers, Mario
Rick, glad to see you think I am the only one that believed the data. I guess you must mean me and the whole stock market. I am not talking about a one day wonder. No, I am looking at 4 plus years of Gary and his merry men being fooled by faked earnings and gross margins that have exceeded any thorough out our history. You would expect the market tot be in ruin with earnings this big? Really?
Now to the future. We are nearing the start of another bear market. It should last between 10 and 13 months, and could fall 80 percent or 20 percent, depending on whether this is “THE” top or not. I have strong opinion on this and have declared the 20 percent as most reasonable. I even think that we have a decent drop soon but have yet one more rally to new highs at year end. No matter. For years I get ridiculed for being correct on the markets trend. Instead of acknowledging this, you love to demean my remarks are naïve or worse. yet the market, with trillion of dollars invested have agreed with my assessment and has made a great return on their money. I suspect the smart money will telegraph yet again when they exit in a big way. until then, keep on trivializing the market move by equating it to MY opinions.
You will only be satisfies with another grand crash. It will however be short lived since most humans are not defeatist in nature and pick themselves up and start over. Their track record is enormous and in that long time we have always reached and exceeded the prior peak in every known way. I suspect we will rise once again out of the next destruction and be the better for it.
You were never ‘ridiculed’ for your belief that the market was headed higher, Gary, only for insisting that economic forces were behind it. In fact, it was just a monetary hoax — and not a very successful one, since all we’ve got to show for countless trillions in stimulus are artificially inflated real estate and stock prices that are destined to crash.
Amen. I’ve stated the same to Gary since argument 1. How many years later and he still treats us like strawmen seemingly oblivious to our arguments treating index levels and economic underpinnings thereof differently.
Look at all they’ve manipulated and the hyper-degrees of it all. Is the Naz back over 5000?
Makes Andrew’s point.
Gary has managed to deceive himself and it bothers him that we refuse to join his club of the wilfully duped.
Too important to omit. From an insider.
Too big to fail QE Monetary hoax Rick noted, exposed.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-12/former-fed-quantitative-easer-confesses-aplogizes-i-can-only-say-im-sorry-america
Wasn’t some guy running around here, there and everywhere extolling the virtues of this hoax as if it were on par with turning water into wine?
I have to agree with Rick, Gary. You keep talking about all the good stuff going on, and so do I, but you seem to consistently forget at who’s expense in other parts of the American society and economy, not only in the U.S., but globally. A person has to be blind to not see and know with an abundance of evidence that the financial twists and turns are very much manipulated and engineered. Do you not “believe” Matt Tabbi’s article about GS creating bubbles in various different markets they’ve targeted, and the influence those events have on the society as a whole? Do you not understand that $80 billion/month is going narrowly into the hands of banksters and on their books, not trickling down into the rest of the economy, that the middle class has been decimated, financially burdened more and more while their wages have been flat for ten years while the corporations we love have been having their record earnings with CEO pay going from 50 to 350 times their employees flat wages?
Gary, there is so much about the situation that is very very much NOT a pretty picture.
Cheers, Mario
“You will only be satisfied with another grand crash. It will however be short lived since most humans are not defeatist in nature and pick themselves up and start over.”
Tell that to the investors in 1929 who bought the DJIA index, or equivalent. They didn’t get their money back for another 20+ years, if they held on.
We face the same prospect, since we, like 1929, suffer from an extreme excess of bloat, whether its in debt, production, politics or anything else you want to use.
And like 1929 its going to take a long time to reduce the bloat so the economy is going to move forward again.
Last time around we did this with WWII. One can only hope we don’t have to repeat history, but how else do you eliminate bloat on a grand scale?
And don’t try and tell me we haven’t exceeded the record for bloat this time around. Everywhere you look its obvious. Heck. Just walk into any shopping mall and look at the people. How much bloat do you see?
I’m always reminded by the words of Hamilton Bolton, written in 1957, concerning depressions, before our present era of gigantic bloat: (I substituted bloat for credit)
All were set off by a deflation of excess bloat. This was the one factor in common…the signs were visible many months, and in some cases years, in advance. None was ever quite like the last, so that the public was always fooled thereby.
Does someone want to tell me we don’t suffer from an excess of bloat?
Andy
Michael Snyder published a piece yesterday that dealt with avg. amerikan victims of Obama’s “recovery”. I would have posted the link but it would just be another of the hundreds that have been posted here that Gary selectively ignores. You may care to read it Mario. It backs up your assertions.
My other recent favourite details how 3 SF progs built a superior Ocommie care website over a long weekend. 3.5 years and half a trill later and Gary and Jill and Troll’s beloved State couldn’t pull off the same yet they can’t wait to have the government handle more and more and control more and more…
I’ve enjoyed their absence/relative silence in the wake os this latest debacle.
Your generalizations are horrifying, not to mention misleading. “We are a spoiled bunch that just doesn’t appreciate what we have, especially when times get tough.”
Who the F*&K is “we”? What do the “we” you are referring to “have”? What is “tough” Help me out. There are 100 million American middle class whose lives have been pillaged….they certainly don’t appreciate that their life has gotten harder not easier while their boss the CEO’s pay has gone up from 50 to 350:1
Another thing, don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never been anti-govt in writings and I am fine with govts doing what they do and providing what they provide, only wishing they would do so fairly. I’m anti – bad self-serving greed govt.
“Did it happen in the dead of night? Was the common man not aware of what was going on?” “Citizen complacency?”
Yes it DID. NO he didn’t. NO he is not complacent, he CAN’T do anything about it.
That’s it, I’m done. You are insane, irrational, incapable of seeing reality clearly.
Cheers, Mario
I have acknowledged the world governments ability to create debt at will. I just don’t see their results as being ineffective. The money has gone somewhere. Perhaps its not where you would like. I also don’t agree that there can never be a solution where we don’t crash and burn. If political will, and a gradual reduction in spending were allowed time to develop we could get out of this mess. I have always stated that while possible, and even logical, politicians would most likely never adapt such a program. We had a surplus not too long ago. It is possible to reverse this trend. You treat every event and decision by governments as a concerted effort to do the middle class in. You also seem to relish the idea that this country should get punished for its mistakes.
I have made my financial bets based on my understanding of Wall Street. I see no reason to doubt my reasoning. I also understand that continued debt saturation will result in credit freeze and defaults. I see these things as a slow developing process. I also see there is always a possibility of escaping a doomsday scenario. Personally I believe the end result will be as you describe. I just don’t see thinks as clearly defined as you. Governments have done miraculous things these past centuries. They have also done horrendous things. There is no mindset determined to destroy us as most on this board believe. Power and corruption have been here for a very long time. Greed and how to keep power, not ideology, determines the fate of countries when allowed to grow. Over reach of this power always results in their own demise. So too will this latest event. It doesn’t mean we don’t rebuild from there.
WHAT? what planet are you on? They DID do the middle class in. Did you read today’s op-ed post in the WSJ by the former FED member staying an open apology to America for ripping them of his Wall Street baskets who have kept all the billions for themselves? Are you paying attention at all to do the details of what IS and HAS happened. You seem to apologize it away as just another rosy greedy day in history. You don’t see ineffective?! For WHO has it been effective? To make the rich even richer to a degree that is now OFF THE CHART while the middle class heart of the USA has been pillaged and now ha their freedom removed. If you’re an American and your not pissed you’re not breathing. Even if you think you can’t do much about it, and I happened to agree with that, you should still feel pissed, disgusted and sad at what that country has evolved into. It is a socialist govt run by banker cronies and politician puppets complicit in their self-serving greed and corruption. It is comfortable for me to say it is far worse than anything going on in China and that’s saying slot. At least in China while the rich are enjoying their spoils like anywhere the govt is also simultaneously rising up and improving their lower middle class population as well by actually forming and executing policies and projects for the good of the society. And please don’t you or anyone start in on me for being anti America or pro China, I am NOT. I am simply noticing the observable facts, choices, actions, policies and results of a group of govt and banking leaders who are in charge of a country. I don’tt care if we’re talking about Finland and Brazil instead. How the hell can you rationally defend and apologize for what is going on and what has happened there? The country shouldnt get punished? It’s not a “country” that makes choices, it’s leaders in charge. They absconded with billions and still are worse than ever, via games they play and get away with it without even being investigated and prosecuted! Wall Street leverage is now back to 2008 levels. Our leaders in Washington KNOW it. What are they doing for the whole country, for the good of the society. Oh, I’m tired of writing, I want to take a break and go watch America’s most popular tv show, Breaking Bad. The country is morally, politically and accidentally bankrupt. Bravo to those who are pissed and try against the grain to do something about it, not be an apologist for the corrupt, selfserving banking and corporate banking and political system. Phooey!
Cheers, Mario
Mario, thanks for being the daily poster that summons enough energy to confront Gary’s absurdities.
To be anti Amerikan now is to be a supporter of freedom. People that remain pro Amerika embrace a ghost.
Gary claims there is no mindset to destroy…Yet they’ve done nothing but destroy here and abroad. Things are so wonderful that they literally hinge on a pathetic and insidious monetary hoax continuing uninterrupted. On the other side OPM playas, market rigging, psyops, and “corporate” profits help to enhance the fantasy. And although nearly all of us allow that the fantasy can roll onward, somehow we’re categorized as immediate bears and doom and gloomers because we refuse to lose sight of the truth along with our refusal to buy into the illusions.
So Gary, all the epic destruction has merely been a byproduct of good intentions?
Or not?
Think about human nature. Think about human history. Think about how sociopaths rise to the “top”.
Let’s hear it Gary. What is really behind the epic collapse of everything Amerikan? I can’t wait to multiply these probabilities together to calculate the odds…
Mario, how do you explain the simple fact that all of you are enraged that this government spends so much money on social programs? I will give you a minute to figure that one out. Not so one sided after all? Without all these programs the middle-class would have been destroyed decades ago. Got to love the one-sided approach. All actions by governments are bad for the middle-class. What a joke! Lets for once imagine Social Security and Medicare dissolved. Lets now imagine a universal health care that takes hold for the people that haven’t hit their golden age.
As for the rip-offs, yes they are plenty. It only becomes apparent when the system starts breaking down. The cause? Well lets recap the cause of all this. Why was Enron allowed to become so powerful? Why was Banks, Brokerage Houses, Insurance Companies? Did it happen in the dead of night? Was the common man not aware of what was going on? Did the big bad government shut down due process? Did they, like China, become the spokesperson for their citizens, without any ability to challenge these rules and laws? The answer is absolutely NOT. It is so easy to blame government. I find it amusing that only bad people seem to gravitate toward political aspirations and gain power every 60 years or so. I am sure it had nothing to do with citizen complacency. How did they get so complacent anyway? Surely the big bad government with no interest to placate the middle class didn’t have a hand in it. No, it must be some strange disease that comes along every generation. Yup that’s it. A disease that sweeps across the world like clock work.
How in the world can you discuss the wanton destruction of the middle class by the very same people that force the elderly, poor, disease ridden individuals to endure government intervention? So, which is it? A government designed to destroy the middle-class and reward the rich, or an soppy liberal minded one that believes in silly ideals of health and happiness.
We are a spoiled bunch that just doesn’t appreciate what we have, especially when times get tough. It’s the spoiling of its citizens that allowed governments to stray off its chosen path. this didn’t happen overnight. this happened without everyone’s eyes wide open.
We are in this mess not because of a one-sided approach to reward the already rich and powerful. We are in it because it was NOT one-sided. they gave away the store to EVERYONE. Most here are still only looking to cut spending on the middle-class and poor. I find that very strange. Perhaps it involves self-interest? Where was the outcry when the government decided to cut food stamps? What, not personally affected? How do you justify doing this when the rich are so rich, as everyone here keeps reminding me, yet YOU refuse to change that? Tis a puzzlement.
Gary, I’m actually OK with good socialism, govt benefits. Please, that doesn’t make me a label such as “democrat” or Lord help us all “communist” cuz I happen to live in China, it could be Italy. I never think of how a govt is doing in terms of allegiance to a party or particular political group, I have exited that circus decades ago. IF properly executed socialism seems to keep the swatch of society stable. For example, all other major countries in the world providing national healthcare. In Australia particularly, maternity leave and family support offer huge benefits and that seems to take the edge off of family’s lives. It seems to be that the systems all start falling apart, whether U.S. or any other country as soon as the rich start raping the system followed by the resentful poor raping the system. As in England, for example, where there is a huge problem with immigrants coming in and living on the govt benefits even when they going to earn money back in their home country, etc.
No time, have to run now….Cheers, Mario
To Mario’s point:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/08-2/20130911_inequal1.jpg
Since we have gotten off the beaten path of Twitter, I figure I will jump in on this rant. I just went over my wife’s and my YTD payroll data and found that based on our taxable income this year we have had over 31% withheld for taxes. And this still isn’t enough. We will have to write checks when we do our taxes not to mention an almost 10% sales tax, property tax, city fees, etc.
I am right in the middle of the middle class. Gary since you represent the bleeding heart of America on this site , when will I have paid my fair share? How much of my time and labor will this vampire suck from my life? Please le me know what is fair and when I have bled enough to satisfy the beast so that I have something to look forward to.
You know me, the constant contrarian. There is however a twist to my opinion on Twit. Most saw no growth in Facebook and declared it dead on arrival. The mobile market however did prove its worth. You can make money in social media. Lets digress to Facebook for a minute since it has so many similarities. It has a massive audience and dominance. it is however an already fading fad for the younger generation. That will be it’s ultimate demise. It should do decent as a tradable stock for a while but unless they can pull more tricks out of it’s sleeve it will not remain a darling on wall street. While ad money is expected to quadruple in a few years their platform will not allow for them to take advantage of it. I also suspect companies the return on these ads will also diminish in time.
Now to Twitter. It’s management seems like naïve individuals that just don’t understand the future model needed to grow profits. They are novices compared to Facebook and Google. I suspect like Netflix stumbling out of the blocks they too will fall hard within the next year or so. How they recover and develop a profitable model after that is anyone’s guess. Their problems are numerous. Losing money, relatively low public participation even though they are expected to rise fast. Market dominance overseas by other players. Management that is currently clueless on how to grow the earnings stream.
I would stay away from this stock, especially after the grace period where investors accept no profitability for 6 more months. In a year from now I suspect it will languish. Will another new startup take away their current audience? have no idea. I do know that their platform is nothing special and in fact looks very messy to my eyes.
If you remember I was defending Facebook when it first came out and declared that the mobile market was going to allow them to become profitable. I also stated I will ignore these social media stocks because of the fickle nature of audience approval. Like watching TV. CBS is now on top. It can be on bottom a year from now.
What has allowed Facebook and mobile marketers to become profitable is larger screens — mainly tablets and ‘phablets’. This trend will continue, and it may even get a boost when one can ‘fold out’ a phone screen so that it is, say, 12″ diagonal. Most of us will tire quickly of seeing those screens fill up with big, in-your-face ads — but not the kids, whose brains have evolved to produce ‘ad receptors’ that are quite friendly toward any vendor who would bombard them with coupons and sales pitches, depending on where they are standing at a given moment.
Ad revenues for a few players — notably Facebook, MSFT and Google — are also about to get a large boost from tactics each is developing separately to replace cookies. All personal devices will be identifiable via a unique ID, and this will allow a handful of hardware makers and uniquely positioned online services like Facebook to cut out advertising’s middle men, including an army of cookie-trackers.
What I keep hearing from the “Twitter is a great investment” crowd is that advertisers can instantly react to situations and advertise via Twitter to the masses.
If I had a Twitter account, the fastest thing to get me to close it would be a bunch of ad tweets coming through daily. And for the teens out there who may stick with it, they dont have much money to throw the advertisers’ way. So all in all, I am not sure how Twitter can make much cash if their main revenue source reduces their user base.
Clooney also shared his feelings about Twitter. He doesn’t understand why celebrities would be on the microblogging site.
“Because you’re going to be available to everybody … So one drunken night, you come home and you’ve had two too many drinks and you’re watching TV and somebody pisses you off, and you go ‘Ehhhhh’ and fight back. “And you go to sleep, and you wake up in the morning and your career is over. Or you’re an a**hole,” he said. “Or all the things you might think in the quiet of your drunken evening are suddenly blasted around the entire world before you wake up. I mean, when you see, like, Ashton Kutcher coming out going, you know, ‘Everybody leave Joe Paterno alone,’ or whatever he said, you just go, ‘Fifteen minutes longer and a thought process and probably you wouldn’t have done that.”
Very succinctly stated, Andrew. Thanks.
John Galt is a Fictional character in a work of Fiction by Ayn Rand, and it should remain a work of Fiction.
Believe me, nobody here really wants to live in a world controlled by the likes of Ayn Rand.
I read all of her Fiction when I was a teenager, many, many times. I also read the non-fiction, subscribed to the Objectivist Newsletter and basically became an Ayn Rand devotee.
Sounded good until I made it out into the real world.
Reality had that funny way of making me wake up. For some strange reason only the very few subscribe to reality, the rest choose to live in a magical land where reality doesn’t rear its ugly head.
Andy
You’re wrong. I would not mind at all.
@John Jay – Who is John Galt?
Terry S,
Happy to inform you that John Galt is no longer with us.
It seems he joined a fringe group of Amish dairy farmers and was selling dangerous, non Corporate approved raw milk to the general public!
After a lengthy surveillance, the compound of this Enemy of the State was raided by a strike team of ATF, DEA, FBI, DHS, and DA “Heroes”!
The unarmed Galt ignored orders to “drop your weapon”, and was, of course, instantly riddled by the gunfire from the Heroic Strike Force, who, of course, felt “Threatened” by his bib overalls and aggressive posture.
Subsequently his family has been jailed for “Conspiracy”, his farm confiscated, and his cows gunned down and cremated!
So Terry, you can sleep soundly tonight, and no longer have to live in fear of the criminal John Galt!
Have a nice day, Citizen Terry, and don’t neglect to sigh up for Obamacare in a timely manner!
Surely you meant “Creamated”, John.
@Cam – 140 characters only, please.
Ha. OK Terry. Would it better perhaps if I just did the popular daily rant at Gary or rambled on about some inane political point nobody really understands or cares about? I think the set up for the economy is getting pretty interesting right now actually. We need to get this right to know what comes next. A lot of people will be expecting the Fed to double down and even Europe to finally cave in on their disastrous policies. Hopefully we don’t need to wait until every last European is out of work or on the dole before action gets taken.
Systems like Facebook and Twitter aren’t built for an investor.
No matter how much advertising they can stuff into their pages, the reality will always be that someone who would buy based on what he saw in an image or video while chatting around is a fool anyway, and therefore, doesn’t have much to spend.
Do you EVER buy anything based on advertising? Anyone of you? That’s right, you don’t. Neither do I.
So, for whom the Facebook and the Twitter were built? They were built to advance the new system of propaganda, geared to function in times when your normal school brainwashing isn’t going to work anymore. They were built by and for intelligence services, but more precisely, they were built to be used by the politically interested parties.
If need be, these can easily make the Facebook and the Twitter profitable, – say by signing a contract with the government on tiny ad placement which will be paid for wholesomely, and not because it produces any sort of spending, but simply because it would be a payback for the propaganda.
Mava, easy to agree and meanwhile Twitter was built as a cute simple way to share short infobits, like sms or a chat window or a sticky note. Now it becomes something amazing that is worth billions? Nah! Only to the wall street thieves. Now they have a big database for advertisers, that’s it. It’s a utility tool. Over the past three months it has earned the bottom spot on my list of social media priorities.
Advertising has been going on for a very long time. Don’t you think that with all that time and money spent companies would know if it works? It works. Name recognition, as well as associating a product to a lifestyle is everything.
A great example is Hershey. If you go by taste alone they would not dominate the U.S. market.
With all that time and money spent, companies quite often do NOT know whether advertising “works,” Gary. As an example, I would cite General Motors’ Saturn campaign. Did putting a zillion dollars behind ads proclaiming Saturn to represent “A different kind of company. A different kind of car” actually sell any cars? Here’s a link to a case study of Saturn’s ultimate failure.
Another thing that could be said in ridicule of advertising and ad-men in general is that the guy who thought up Saturn’s stupid, factually untrue slogan — his name is Kirk Citron — was heralded by his peers as a genius.
Regarding Hershey’s, the boom in exotic chocolates should have caused most consumers to realize by now that a Hershey bar has more in common with Palmolive soap than with cocoa-based confections. If Hershey’s has survived anyway, credit the truth of Mencken’s observation — ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public’ — rather than advertising.
Seems like a Mencken quote works well in any time period.
I think the “this is what I grew up with”/ “this is what i’m accustomed to” phenomena is very strong.
Old timey NYers love their egg creams, I think that’s what they call them. Made one to exact specs, awful, just awful.
Budweiser. Miller. Hersheys. My god, McDs serves pink slime and well…
Advertising works to varying degrees, many factors to consider.
twit :
The kind of person that makes a retarded chimp look smart.
: a stupid or foolish person
Today’s market reminds me of ’73-’75. I owned AT&T back then. there weren’t any other brokers than the standard ones, mine was Merrill Lynch. Everyone insisted that the Nifty Fifty would never go down in price, after all, that was why they were the Nifty Fifty. I lost money on T. A lot of people lost money back then.
I was in the ML office the day a new record was set for daily trading, beating out the old peak in 1929. An historic day. 16+ million shares traded.
Oh, how we have changed since then.
Or not.
Andy
Hey Cam, I hear you loud and clear, nice post. BBBBUT you’ve got to explain the humongous skyrocketing economic reality in China’s domestic economy that can only be called an outlier. Even I’m surprised by how much more rosy it is and I already know its rosier than most people think. Here it is and its just fresh confirmation of what I keep saying all along. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/10/chinas-online-shopping-spree-gets-bigger/#!http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/10/chinas-online-shopping-spree-gets-bigger/#!
This year’s online shopping barometer is off the charts and it was already off the charts last year. These are not people who are racking up their spending by charging it on their credit cards. Tmall has racked up $3 BILLION USD in its first 9 hours which is the total for the entire 24 hour day last year. 270 million online this year, Alibaba tracked the first billion rmb (USD 160 million) in the first 37 minutes.
This is not the only insane data point on China, but without going further into it here, its domestic consumption and spending is far stronger than anyone realizes and that can be comfortably taken off the table. And since it is the #1 leading indicator everyone is focusing on with respect to China, that’s a good thing to stop worrying about. China’s biggest problems are pollution and hukou reform, not the economics, not the bank debt (the banks and govt have plenty of cash and have not securitized the mortgage debt so that’s a lot of risk still off the table).
Enough on all that, like you I’m watching the commodities…a strange thing, as you said, will be they bottom here as the 60 year cycle says they are going to or not? ….I wonder…
Cheers, Mario
My first impulse to this story is to want to laugh out loud because it is so preposterous it could not have been invented as a fairy tale. Who would believe a company with no profits might overnight become one of the market titans?
It is warning sign though. A signal of a peak and a reckoning coming. Last week I was discussing my views that falling commodity prices were threatening a deflationary scenario erupting.
On one hand, we are seeing that corporate profitability has been enhanced by the steady decline in input costs these past few years and how this has led all equities higher. On the other we are treated to slowdown in sales and finished products across the globe that tells us competitive forces will soon end this profit party and bring a resolution between lower corporate costs and what consumers pay at the till.
The outcome of course will result in declining revenues and that should be expected to weigh on equity prices in the coming year. Yet how much more deflationary can it be when some high flying tech stocks (like Twitter) suddenly buckle in an environment where even the solid old stalwarts are falling?
Indeed this appears to be the setup where a combination of overpriced stocks, global excess capacity, rising savings rates and slow growth start to merge with the deflationary effects of resources in steep decline.
There are other outcomes possible of course.
Commodities such as coffee, corn and crude could begin rising again once they bounce off their bottoms. The effect would then be fed back into retail level in a new round of rising prices thus once again giving a profit boost and this could be accomplished without any of the past differences between inputs and sales being given back to consumers. Who would really divine the difference anyway?
My cynical side tells me this is a pretty good likelihood. Nobody wants to see a good party end and the best way to keep one going is to see a general boost in earnings and profits that will keep investors’ attention focused.
More ominously in the background though, the world’s number three economy is hell-bent on exporting its own deflation globally. Japan, in its efforts to save itself must by definition take a bite out of everyone else’s piece of pie. They show no signs of relenting in their current policies.
Getting back to that situation of all that excess capacity in the rest of the world, most particularly Europe, China and the US (in that order) and we can only sit dumbstruck as the obvious begins to unfold. There are no trade wars yet but the puzzle pieces are in place for conflict where export competition and currency devaluations heat up in the future.
Any gain on one side naturally represents a loss for the other and it is clear too many are chasing the same customers. The outcome is virtually always falling prices followed naturally enough by falling demand as the buyer catches on. The dreaded deflation spiral is easier to imagine once the necessary ingredients in its creation are arranged on our table for inspection.
These are the savings rate, falling consumption trends, unemployment, asset bubbles, weakening intervention policy, a negative demographic picture in most of the demand oriented developed Western nations and far more productive capacity than the world can absorb anymore.
Commodities in decline are just the canary in the coalmine that warn us demand itself has fallen even though we sometimes cannot get directly at the evidence to prove it.
I refer here to China of course which has been the primary force consuming by far the largest share of the world’s resources. It is pretty widely acknowledged they are fiddling with the books and growth is coming in lower than stated while simultaneously they have gone on a credit bender the likes of which would make any Central Banker blush. There is trouble building in the world’s factory and resource prices are reflecting this now on a global scale.
In the meantime we are slowly adjusting to the idea that Quantitative Easing may have naturally run its course as little upside seems probable for equity markets now priced more for a long awaited correction than a big flight into the skies above. I don’t have the numbers handy but there are indeed diminishing returns being seen for each dollar of fresh stimulus. Eventually it may fall to zero and this is probably when the program will be abandoned in favour of a new strategy.
So what else do we have on the table that might be ingredients for a deflationary outcome? I mean besides the fact that leverage has reached historical extremes setting up the conditions to completely wipe out the foolish and unwary. You know….just like it always does. Nobody ever learns.
Well it is pretty clear credit is not expanding quickly enough in the countries that normally do the heavy lifting where global consumption is concerned. Both Europe and America are stuck in either slow growth or outright depression depending on the country in Europe in question.
That does not give me confidence there is about to be a quick turnaround in China’s or Japan’s export fortunes. Again….this is a deflationary headwind that needs to be recognized. The linkages between consumption of goods, manufacturers, commodity prices and credit should be obvious but the inflationists fail to see it. They just continue to obsess on prices affected by policy, labour rates which are artificially created and a handful of shopping receipts.
After a blizzard of global monetary expansion that has proven unable to fill the holes left by the past asset crash in the US and elsewhere we do not seem a lot farther ahead. The business cycle has reasserted itself and it is doing so in the most obvious places as heightened unemployment has led inexorably to aggregate falling consumer demands for goods. This is basic stuff. Easing is not giving us true inflation as has become obvious and the global macro risks point decidedly towards more slowing and a corrective process from the tops we now see in some asset markets.
That is to say we are seeing our worst fears materialize right on the factory floor and at the retail shops where all this stuff actually matters. Even the Chinese are begging for work, so we have reached the last rung of the ladder when it is no longer just high-priced labour jurisdictions suffering a slowdown.
Follow the money and follow the cash flows, I guess. If we turn our attention away from what the Fed and others are doing and instead take a deeper look at manufacturing, capacity, demand and demand projections then all of a sudden it puts a whole new light on the absurdity of Twitter’s explosive price move.
This is just bait to pull in the last fish before the curtain falls.
A top is a top is a top.
When is a top a top?
Soon enough.
But not soon enough.
Remember Zbest?
Pets.com?
All the dotcoms?
Build it and they will come!
Ben or Janet will keep printing, what else can they do?
I think in addition to bailing out the big banks, the Fed is bailing out all the Insurance Companies and Pension Funds.
The Boomers are packing it in and Annuities and Pension Funds are looking at relentless draw downs to Infinity and Beyond!
Let them print, print, print!
It is better than having my savings accounts confiscated.
We might as well face the facts, we will not be returning
to the safe and sane America we old timers grew up in.
1984 meets “My name is Earl”!
That’s our reality now!
Have to agree Rick. Indeed tweeting seems more like 140 character masturbation than helping accomplish anything meaningful at all. As part of my effort to promote my work as an author, I’ve hired a publicist focusing on building content and awareness across all my main social media platforms ie twitter, facebook, tumblr, pinterest and linkedin. I’ve also noted who in the media sphere and any other experts related to #China. For the media, twitter seems nothing more than an additional place to feed out their news, so what’s so special about that and how could it possibly lead to “revenue” profits for twitter? For people with causes?…a way to rally up a bunch of followers…where’s the money? For an author like myself trying to build brand and expertise twitter serves only to point a follower to my other sites where the content information can be found…where’s the money for twitter? I’m new on twitter so now only have 60 or so followers, but even if I had 1000, I don’t see the difference or benefit for twitter on monetizing what I want. I don’t even want my publicist to do any tweets directly on twitter. I’ve instructed her to do all posts on tumblr, pinterest, linkedin and then they automatically post at twitter and facebook. Again, where’s there a revenue/profit model in this? With the others, there are ways to “engage” in broader strokes, that can lead to revenue. Hey, what good would buying the word “China” or “author” do me on twitter? Little compared to the others. “Houston, we have a problem”.
Cheers, Mario
I paid someone to build me a Twitter following of about 8000, Mario. But after tweeting some special online events to which no one showed up, I realized that ‘tweets’ are capable of producing results only when one is followed by scores of thousands of people. Any fewer than that and no one even notices you. Another thing I learned is that the logrolling that must be done to develop a following if you are not a celebrity — as in, “I’ll follow your tweets if you follow mine” — creates lists of followers that are of little or no value for marketing purposes.
so how do we play this disaster waiting to happen? Ignore it or take a tiny bet?
I guess Wall Street is the smiling cat that swallowed the Tweeter bird.
It’s a shame that 35 billion of the public’s money is going to go poof.