Has a Major Top Been Reached?

I dont usually brag but maybe it is time I should. I called the crash of 2008, just days before it began (click images to sharpen):


















I also called the bottom in 2009, again just days before the actual bottom was put in:



















Including a very specific call on General Electric (GE):



















Check out this chart of GE, which shows just how accurate and prescient this call was:























I have never before or since recommended GE, and I probably will not again for a long time, if ever. I post this stuff not to gloat, but rather to show that I have a pretty good sense about these things. All of the texts I am quoting can be found using google. Here is an example. These calls are real, though they are haphazardly strewn about the web.

I have been waiting for confirmation before posting, but truth is I think the top was in two weeks ago. Now I am not saying I am always right, because "The Bernank" can rally the market any time he wishes, via the printing press. This actually happened last August when the markets looked like they were ready to collapse. Being somewhat wise to his antics, I made the following post, inset onto a chart of HL(Hecla Mining Company, a silver miner):


















Notice that the market rallied immediately following that post. I was wrong then, because I was calling for a major move down. But I made the perfect hedge call for silver to rally hard if Bernanke did something stupid to try to prevent a necessary correction. Well, Bernanke did do something stupid, and we call it QE2. Hecla Mining Company's Dec $6 call options went on to be worth 6 dollars, a nearly 3000% gain. All based on the possibility that Bernanke would print. Well, print he did. And now, he needs to do it again. The market is starting to demand it. A correction is even more necessary now than it was last august. But printing more money is too dangerous an option for this political season. There is a political price to be paid for printing money, because they are basically stealing money from the poor and the retired and giving it to the rich every time they print. I have explained how that works ad infinum and ad nauseum in previous posts. Suffice it to say I see no way for them to stop the correction at this time. Hence the top call here.

Note: I am not a registered investment advisor, and those people can all KMA, because they're a bunch of blathering idiots.

How a $50 billion company can evaporate overnight

Facebook is supposedly worth $50 billion. I have to laugh at that because I know that it isn't worth even a small fraction of that price. At any given moment, another company could come along and completely eviscerate Facebook overnight. Let me give just one example of how simply and quickly it could happen.

There is a portion of the population that seems to love having their every movement and action traced, tracked, logged, recorded, and whatnot. Dumb as these people are, their numbers are growing, and they do present a wealth of new business opportunities. So let's say someone forms a new company, with a website called fbfriendsync.com.

Our hypothetical Friend Sync offers the following wonderful service: it tracks your location (via your phone) and compares that data with the location of all your facebook contacts (if they opt in of course). For example, if one of your facebook contacts is at the bar or club next door to where you are on a friday night, this wonderful service will let you know. But not only that, it can go back in time and tell you all the previous places you both just happened to be at at the same time. It would help find people with the same interests, based on the locations visited. So its as much a match.com as it is a facebook. But considering the fact that most people dont really know most of their facebook contacts, a service such as this is very valuable for providing conversation starters. It could also bring up a map that shows where all your contacts are, so you can arrange a quasi-spontaneous meeting if you happen to be going to that same place. "Quasi-spontaneity" is the key to any app like this. But that is a story for another time.

Ok but how does it actually destroy facebook? Because it is very easy to transfer your facebook data to another site. I mean very very easy. Like 1 button click easy. And once everyone does that, the value of facebook completely evaporates. Facebook has little control over its users data. Facebook cannot copyright your name, your favorite movie, your favorite color, your friend's names, or any information like that! (Though I am certain they will try once the time comes.) So Facebook really has no value at all. What of yours do they really own? They may claim to own it all but obviously that will not stand in court. So they have very little legal protection to prevent a competitor from coming in and overthrowing them overnight. Once a new site comes along that offers a service facebook doesnt, the whole userbase will migrate in an exponential move that will seem like it happened all at once. It WILL happen. It is only a matter of time.

Facebook is sort of like an apartment complex. They may own the walls. But they dont own whatever you put up on your walls. They may claim they do but like I said that is absurd and will never stand in any court. So if you want to take all your stuff off their wall and move it to someone else's wall, there really is nothing they can do. They can't even make you wait until your lease is up! If they somehow manage to keep their rights to your photos and media, then it is not too terribly difficult in today's world to generate new photos. At any rate, going back to the apartment analogy, even if the apartment complex did own the stuff on their walls, it would not prevent people from moving. That precarious right does not add any value to the property. So the question is, what value does facebook have? The obvious answer is very little. About as much as the Hindenberg, the day before it blew up.

What Makes An Apple Rotten?

Why is Apple such a ridiculously huge and successful company? What is their basic formula?

We know Apple makes a lot of money because they employ slave labor. And we know they sell a lot of units, so they are able to command a very cheap price per unit from all their suppliers. And we know that they offer products that are locked down and oversimplified, which is appealing to a certain segment of the population.

But is that it? I think all of those factors pale in comparison to the product placement. Apple makes a great deal of its money from the zombies staring at the tv screen every night who see the apple signet (on every single notebook on every single tv show, for example) and immediately go into idol worship mode. They are subconsciously convinced that they must possess this symbol because the idols that they worship on tv all seem to possess that symbol. It is simple idol worship, programmed into the masses using the powerful high bandwidth direct download link that we call television.

Apple is a zombie exploitation company. People should not buy their product on PURE MORAL GROUNDS. Why is that so hard to understand? I do not understand why or how so few people comprehend basic morality. There is no reason for any rational person to tolerate what Apple does to advertise their products.

And no, it does not matter whether or not Apple directly pays actors and directors to shovel that symbol onto the screen whenever possible. It makes no difference. Basic morality demands that you admonish that symbol itself, including the company it represents, regardless of the role they played in misusing that symbol. Tolerating this is like tolerating an ad that is literally pasted onto your contac lens. I get the feeling that many people simply would not care if all these mega-corporations' symbols and signets were pasted all over their contac lenses. If you have any foresight at all then you already know that that is the next step if you continue to enable the tactics Apple uses. But whatever. So I just pity the foo who watches tv and hope and pray that their stupidity doesnt screw me over too badly.

Symbolism is very powerful in our culture. Abuse of symbolism should not be tolerated. The societal penalties for abuse of symbolism should be severe. In the case of Apple I do believe it will completely destroy the company once broad recognition of this abuse becomes clear to the masses. Especially when they find out that Apple destroyed more American jobs than it ever created.

At what point did a small and innovative company morph into a behemoth monstrosity that invades people's subconscious minds while simultaneously tracking their body's every movement?

Charting the Fiscal Trainwreck

http://grab.by/9S7A
Average monthly tax revenue:
















http://grab.by/9S7B
Average monthly tax revenue for the first quarter:





















What do these graphs say? In the first quarter of 2011, US Federal Tax revenue is down 10% compared to the first quarters of 2007 and 2008. While 10% may not seem so bad, you have to keep in mind that the federal government has borrowed and spent no less than $5 Trillion in the last 3 years in a madman's attempt at propping up the economy (and therefore propping up tax revenue).


Charts made from data taken directly from www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts.pdf

Ignorance and Bliss

I refer to the season finale of V (2009) Season 2. I'm not saying there is a literal reptilian queen casting bliss on the entirety of humanity. However, it makes for a strong metaphor that in many ways can be taken quite literally. The people who control this planet are part of a death cult, and the powers they wield against us could be described as black magic, for lack of a better phrase. Instead of mind controlling us through "bliss", they stage events that capture our attention. Events like 9/11. We do not literally stand there staring up at the sky, but our attention is stripped away and forced to be focused onto something we had not planned. In many ways it is the same effect as if we were all just staring blankly up into the sky. If you take away the sensationalism of the idea of some lizard queen casting a spell on us, and look at strictly the empirical data, it is clear that we are being influenced by an occult force very similar to the fictional bliss. It is this force itself that is responsible for most of the lack of any intelligent discourse in politics.

Now if you look at Washington DC you see it is full of occult symbols. That is no coincidence. Washington DC is nothing but one large festering stinking occult ritual. How else do you describe democrats and republicans quibbling over an absolutely meaningless disagreement about 2% of a massive deficit. 2 percent... that is the difference between them. It is nothing. It only makes sense if you see them for what they are. Both parties are completely controlled by very powerful forces that we cannot understand. We know little about these forces, except that they are there, and they are real. The first step in changing this paradigm is to remove all the occult symbolism from Washington DC. ALL of it. Either that or sit helplessly and watch the country implode as these politicians discuss more and more absurd nonsense.

Above all else it is critical to understand that the reason there is no difference between these two parties is because they are both under the influence of the same force, and that force is most likely tied directly to the landscape and the surrounding architecture. It may not make much sense to the scientifically minded skeptic, but then again wifi wouldnt make much sense to the scientifically minded skeptic from the 19th century. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation behind the forces at work here, but unfortunately we cannot afford to sit around waiting for that explanation before acting.

1 in 12 Workers Still Jobless Since Start of Depression

Forget the unemployment rate. Everyone knows it is so gamed it is meaningless. 9%? 16%? 22%? What number you pick is all about how you want to spin it, truth be damned. But there is a number that cannot be spun: The employment-population ratio. This is the percent of people who are employed.




Looking back over the half century, the employment-population ratio typically runs at around 60%, +/- 5%. When this current recession began, it was at 63%. Now it is at 58%. That means that 1 in 12 Workers who had a job in 2007 no longer have a job. In other words, 1 in 12 Workers are still jobless since this Depression began.

Now here is the most amazing tidbit of all.


Look back at the numbers from the 1982 recession, which was previously the worst recession of the last 50 years. Right now we are at just about the 2 year marker, past where the recession ended. (Where it supposedly ended anyway.) Notice how at this point after 1980's recession ended, the employment-population ratio was already back at its pre-recession peak. That is what an economic recovery looks like. What we're in now is nothing of the sort.

We need to create 16 million jobs to get back to 63%. That gap grows by almost 2 million a year. In case you are curious, a 1983-1985 style true economic boom recovery would create 390,000 jobs a month. Each and every month over a 3 year period. That is what a true economic recovery looks like.

9 Millions Jobs Not Saved or Created!

Remember when Obama said he would "save or create" 3.5 million jobs by 2011? Now that it is 2011, how far off was he from reality?

I tried to get all the BLS data on screen at once so I could take a screenshot. In the screenshot below, I have circled the 3rd quarter 2008 total labor force of 154.6 million, as well as the number of employed at 145.3 million.

http://grab.by/8nsn



I have also circled the same numbers from Novemeber 2010. They are 153.95 million total, and 138.9 million employed. My god we have lost 6.4 million jobs in 2.5 years. Keep in mind that even a population growth of just 1% yields an extra 3 million potential workers each year. With a participation rate of roughly 2/3, that means we need 2 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. If we dont get those jobs we can safely say those jobs were "lost". If we had 145.3 million jobs in 2008, and population grew at 1%, with a 2/3 participation rate, then 2 years later we should have 148 million jobs at the very least, if not over 150 million. Instead we have just 139 million. That means in reality there are 9 million jobs missing from this economy, bare minumum. And this is AFTER 18 months of so-called recovery. Shocking.