From Another Point of View

I have been observing (with great interest) the financial pundits, the financial talking heads who tell you what to do with your money. I conclude that in most cases, when they talk about the present they have 20/20 vision; when they talk about the past they have 120/20 vision and predicted everything that later happened, and when they talk about the future they have mud on their binoculars.

  It is because of this that the HeadLess Chicken Association, which considers it should have the monopoly of running round headless spouting blood, guts and idiotic behaviour are said to be contemplating breaking with tradition and holding a cross-national synchronized sit down strike in Trafalgar and Times Squares this Sunday, complimented by a Monday morning cluck-in on the steps of every stock exchange they can locate.

  It is an unfortunate characteristic I feel, that the headless chicken copy association calling themselves “financial commentators”, actually do have heads, because boy, do they use them, and I do so wish they wouldn’t because the nonsense that comes out of them I can do without.

  In this last crisis nearly all of them failed to foresee even though it was staring them in the face for ages, this crisis that nearly all seem to think we have been stimulating ourselves out of, “Why, why, why?” they have all clucked. “Why did this melt down happen?” It would be more to the point if they asked why the melt-up happened in the first place, because it seems to me self evident, that you can’t have a melt down, if you have not first had a melt-up, don’t you think? If it did not melt up, it could hardly melt down could it? Or am I simple minded?

  “When will it end? Where is the floor?” they clucked. “I think” (Really? Are you serious?) “It will end this afternoon/tomorrow/next week/next month/next year.”

  I see. You do see why the chickens get upset, don’t you? Since I am sympathetic with the chickens, may I tell you a fairy story? One apoppatim (I like saying things like that, they amuse me even if they confuse you but they make sure you are not asleep at the page), there was this company where the boss and the treasurer sat down one day, and the treasurer said to the boss, the following succinct words, “the till is empty”. The boss said “oh dear.” The treasurer, being a paid up member of the Money Men Club said “But it is not a problem.”

  Now, MMCs have a sort of vampire view of life. Vampires charge a blood tax on those who require their services and, as far as my memory serves me, are usually rich and respectable, which is a pre-requisite for vampiring. They never have any money of their own, but really are damn good at telling you what to do

  with yours, and offering to do it for you when you could perfectly well do it yourself without them, and – naturally – they charge a vampire tax for doing so, termed (in the trade) “a commission”. It’s just a No Responsibility Tax you see. When you charge it, you don’t give a damn what happens later as it’s not your money anyway, see? They do not say “2% of what you put where I tell you to put it will belong to me, and your fate is my fate” – Ohhhhhhh ho ho ho no. Neit. For-GET it. “I will get mine now,” they say, “while the getting is good. If you think I am going to put MY money where I tell you to put YOUR money, you got rocks for brains and even those rocks are stupid.” No Responsibility Commission Tax - you see that, don’t you? It’s not hard.

  Step 1 that you learn in MMC school is “Convince” and you have to do that before you can charge Commission (this is called the Two Cs and is engraved on every Money Man’s heart) and in our fairy story the treasurer went straight into Convince Mode and said, “that is not a problem boss that the till is empty. I will sell some bits of YOUR company and get you some more money for ME to spend, OK?” (that was where the bated breath came in). “Wow!” said the boss, who immediately thought of the fancy new car he would buy with what he had not earned, “can you do that? How?” “I’ll just make a piece of paper, saying the piece of paper gives the holder 1,000th of your company. You won’t ever actually have to give it to him, so it does not change anything really. You just have to fill his ears with hogwash for 3 hours once a year. I call it a Company Hare. Sorry, I mean a Company Share.”

  “And you mean they will buy it?” What the MMC should have said was “Yes, because it is a good place for them to keep their money, rather than in the bank which is just a pile of rocks with a nice door that is not worth 2 cents really and anything you give them they run straight round to the Stock Exchange (=their private casino) with it anyway and at least your pile of industrial God knows what is worth something while their “bank” isn’t worth a hill of beans.” But he did not say that – MMCs have an aversion for truth from birth, it is one of the requirements to be an MMC. Instead, an evil gleam came into his eye and seared like a searchlight across the Moneyscape. “No” he said. You see, if he had said “yes” there would be one sale and one commission and that would have been the end of it. But the art of true MMCing, just like in a casino, is to Convince the punter to play the same money 100 times, so that, by taking 1% each time, you get it all in the end, see? Neat heh? So treasurer said “NO! You will have to pay them something each year out of your profits in return for using their money. I call it a DIVIDe your profit and give them the END bit which is whatever you can’t stuff in your own pockets first (you get first bite see), or “dividend” for short.” (That was the Convince, now comes the Commission , as each time “A Dividend” is paid, he can get some more “Commission” for the hassle and bother of receiving it for you and lending it to someone else while you are not looking, while pretending it is in your account which it isn’t really. All of which you could perfectly well do for yourself without his help. Who needs help to fall off a cliff?)

  Then, you see, some other MMCs in The City got jealous and said to one another “this clown in Lesser Fiddle By the MoneyPit has got it all to himself. That won’t do. Let’s do some CCing ourselves. We’ll call his basically risky bit of paper “a stock” and then we’ll set up somewhere to buy and sell them and we will call it “A Stock Exchange” – of course it has nothing to do with exchanging, but has everything to do with our Commissioning every time we buy and sell their bits of paper for them, as we wont allow them (the company owners) into OUR Stock Exchange, and that way they have to pay us each time. Neat, heh? We should really call it “A Stock Sales Tax Monopoly” but that doesn’t Convince so well, does it?

  Then, you see, in our fairy tale other MMCs sat in VERY expensive offices that they had bought with the Vampire (commission) tax, and Thought Deeply.

  “Well”, they Thought, Why don’t WE buy the stock of people who want to sell it and then hope to hell the company does not hit a wall before we can unload it to somebody else after Convincing them it is worth more than we paid for it. That way we can be a Market Faker, I mean, Market Maker. How bout that? Hey!” (“Hey” means the light bulbs went on) “Hey, that’s an idea, why don’t we Convince the Punters to give us their money to Buy the Shares with, on our exchange, and that way we can get a commission on 1) Company X when we “issue” his shares for him on OUR exchange and 2) when we sell them for him on OUR Stock Exchange and 3) When we buy them for some other punter on OUR exchange and 4) when we collect the divid-end for him, which we can then immediately run off with and go gambling for our own account with his money at his risk. Ain’t THAT neat? Good hehe? One cherry, four bites and we get to play the ponies with his dough. We’re getting good at this. Let’s buy a second Roller.”

  You know all this is a pile of codswallop because any old clown can get onto eBay and sell anything he’s got including his grandmother to the highest bidder and that works just fine without an MMC in sight. If they sold their shares instead of their grandmothers, there is no earthly reason the whole thing would not work just fine. That is why the MMCs need laws to keep their Stock “Exchange” as a Money-opoly which is just like the board game expect that this one sticks it to you

  in your real life wallet.

  Any-way, things went on like that very nicely, with the punters Convinced, and the MMCs richly Commissioned. And the Punter
s made some money on their INvestments and did not suffer too many DEvestments when their stock tanked due to the mother and father of all crashes – there was the South Sea Bubble and a couple of minor pops and bangs, presided over by the Head-in-the-Sand Sleeping Ethics Commission and that was about it. (The Sleeping Ethics Commission is important as it provides all punters with sleeping pills. This organization commissions outstanding examples of Sleeping Ethics in the financial sector, much as a museum commissions remarkable works. For example they commissioned the outstanding Sleeping Ethics of MadDog who they certified as OK dude until a bunch of mucho-pissed investors started screaming that their investment was now in the form of a yacht and houses registered to MadDog. The Sleeping Ethics Commission had to back track on that one, but soon got back on the rails and signed off on this guy’s wife keeping $2.5 million of other people’s money to keep her living in the style to which she had grown accustomed to living with on other people’s money, which was good. An honest thief should not have to work after all.

  This Sleeping Ethics Commission is an important part of the mix, as the punters believe they are hard at work when in fact, they a) are a trade protection outfit that prevents foreigners (who are second class compared to Americans) from servicing A-merican punters who might wake up if THAT happened and b) are otherwise fast asleep when not c) exterminating the odd financial weakling who doesn’t have money to fight them, just so they have something to point to showing their own Ethics really are asleep too.

  Then, not so many years ago, a lot of ambitious MMCs who wanted to Get Rich QuickER (called “GRQ-ing” in the trade) and had the Sleeping Ethics Commission in their back pocket, got together over their 45th floor pizza on Fall Street one commission-free lunchtime and said “This sucks. Life is too quiet and we all make money too slowly, Agreed?” The 45th floor almost imploded with the chorus of “AGREED” and some thought a sonic boom had happened. Then their leader, whose name was “What Goes Up Does Not Have To Come Down While I am Standing Under It”, said “I think these Punters will believe anything, yes?” “YEA !!!!!!!””. So let’s forget about this old-fashioned last-century idea of Convincing them to BUY on the basis of the return – the Divid -end they get. Let’s hot potato that one. Instead we scream at them “Stock A is going to GO UP LIKE A SATURN ROCKET, BUY NOW NOW NOW before it does. Get Rich Quick! We like GRQing, so they probably will too. Agreed?” “AGREED ! ! ! !” ! “Hit the phones fellers. Commissions are no longer limited by the real world, order your next Caddy now”.

  So Up Up Up, the stocks went, all supported by air, imagination, fast talking and everyone had the GRQ ride of their life. In fact they were not supported by ordinary air, but by Confidence Air, sometimes called “An Air Of Confidence”, the Confidence resulting from the effective Convince (which was needed in order to get the Commission and the next Caddy). So now the 2Cs became the 3 Cs – Convince=Confidence=Commission. The Convince being that The Stock You Bought Today Will Go Up Tomorrow/Next Week/Soon/Sometime/For no known reason/Therefore Pay Commission, Sorry, strike that, BUY NOW”

  The same Fall Street Clubs met sometime later, I think in a company called GoldMan Whacks You or it could have been at SeeYouLata Brothers, not sure which, but somewhere round there. Their leader addressed them. “See? Told you! They swallowed it, Hook Line and Commission. So let’s divorce things from reality even more, because I had an idea last night which I call Deceivatives. So you see all these banks out their have lent money to buy houses to people who are never going to be able to pay, and if they had more money, they could lend more money to more people who can’t pay, and by Convincing, we could get more Commission. So we can do that by buying a whole bunch of this dogshit debt using a Convince Fund to do it, and then we can unload this shit debt real fast before it tanks and sell shares in the Convince Fund (for a commission) to banks and stuff. Just make damn sure that when that pack of cards comes down you are off at the Hamptons and not standing underneath, OK?” “What fool is going to believe that poison is worth the paper it is written on?” said one doubting Thomas who was fired after the meeting. “Point” said the leader. “Maddy, how much are we paying the Standard & Muddy crowd?” “Lots”. “OK, tell them to stamp these dogshit poisoned Deceivatives with the biggest stamp they have in the box – quadruple A quadruple plus or whatever shit stamp they use and we will pay them their standardly muddy cut OK. Do it.” So they Dunit, and Standard & Muddy stamped it twice to be sure, and the Head in the Sand Commission went on Head in the Sanding, and all their staff with an IQ of 15+++ got their Financebans out and went on Looking The Other Way before they went into a three year trance. The leader on Fall Street asked for agreement and the “AGREED” that shook Fall Street practically brought the whole lot down prematurely. Off to the Hamptons, sorry – off to the phones they went. I forgot, Convince = 1, Hamptons/Monte Carlo/Wherever Expensive = 2. Silly me. This working for a dishonest living thing is hard. Then the Stupid Bank which is the other name for nearly every bank in the western world, didn’t bother to lift the covers and see what crawled out, bought the Deceivatives by the Ton, complete with Standardly Muddy sleeping pills and Head in The Sand snores from the Sleeping Ethics Commission and promptly fell asleep for some years until the poison had rotted their financial guts beyond any hope of repair.

  Standardly Muddy should maybe be called Standardly Moody, because the stamp they use depends on how the mood takes them. For example, they might call up Those Who Decide and say “we are looking at reviewing Greece, Spain and Portugal, what rating should we give it?” And The Power might reply “Well, we want to trash the Euro because it looks like competing with our freshly printed dollars supported by Air of Confidence, as a reserve currency, so just rate them as trash OK?” “done” said Standardly Moody or Muddy. “but what about California? We are thinking of reviewing that and it is just as bad as Greece, maybe worse but we rate it a lot higher.” “Are you mad? That is an A-merican security you are talking about.” “Got it, no problem. Consider Greece trashed. Greece gets a B, Calibrokia gets an A. That work OK?” “Fine” “but if we trash the Euro, maybe some Americans will get hurt?” “collateral damage. Buyer opportunity. Get with the program.” “sorry I spoke. We’ll get onto Foolberg and get them to get the message out that the Euro is trash. They can maybe even put up a European Crisis Monitor to show everybody what trash it is, but we’ll make sure they do not do the same thing for the bankrupt American states or for the US itself.” “Now you are thinking.”

  You see what I mean? The rating and the mud surrounding it is how the mood (or the payment) takes them. So in this case, Standardly Muddy/Moody signed off Can't Pay Deceivatives (Called “CPD”s in the trade) as Caviar class Deceivatives, and banks all over the world, smelling the heady perfume of the Air of Confidence which exploded out of the box the Deceivatives came in, ate LOTS of the stuff mis-labeled as caviar with great gusto, smacked their profit lips and clamored for more, while the financial rot woke up in their stomachs and went to work eating their guts from the inside. A pretty good melt-up followed as one clown looked at what the next clown had paid for a Deceivative or a Company Hare, crossed off whatever value he had previously put it at in his books, and wrote the new number the other idiot (called “Talent” in the trade) had paid for it. This is a procedure called “Mark to Fart It” in the trade, which means that all the other fools (aka “Talent”) do whatever the biggest fool (aka “Talent”) does. They call it “Mark to Fart it” (yes I know it is coarse, but I did not develop these practices, I merely tell them to you like they are, and in my book they are what they are). Anyway, they call it “Mark to Fart it,” because first you Mark it up in the books, which means later on it will Farts its Confidence air that ballooned the price up to where you marked it. Confidence air turns bad after a time so when it escapes explosively and the price goes through the floor the balance sheet is upset by the smell and the profit/loss entry takes the express elevator to Australia to get away from the odor of Financial eau d
e Ghastly.

  So the “Talent” had a great time melting things up by following the tail of the “Talent” in front, lemming style and making HUGE fictional Mark to Fart it profits on the basis of which they paid themselves non fictional bonuses and got THOSE out of harm’s way ASAP. Meanwhile the fox, and Goldman Whacks you was a dilly, sees the last of the lemmings going over the financial cliff, and says “I’m outa here.” And he back pedals from the cliff so fast he gets wheel spin.

  But as some wise fellow observed who was banned from financial spheres for such heresy, “What melted up, may well sometime melt down” and the obvious answer is, when the Confidence goes out of Air of Confidence, all you are left with is plain old air, and plain old air never kept a price up yet and gravity takes over. Mind your feet.

  Recently, this is exactly what happened when the Can’t Pay Mortgage Holder quite predictably sooner or later got round to Can’t Paying. Then the fellow who had this piece of Deceivative paper said the equivalent of “where’s my End of the Divi, then?” (It probably sounded like “Qui es my diniero, rocks for brains?” to which the response was “there isn’t any” which lead to “Why Not?” and the response of “The Can’t Payers are Can’t Paying, and so they have not paid anything for us to divvy up and give you the end of. See? Simple, what part of that don’t you capisce? But don’t let it bother you; we’ll sell their house out from under them.” “how much for?” “Well, not for much, because every one else is selling other people’s houses out from under them too, and cutting the price to get (some) money back quick before the rest of the shit hits the fan.” “So what is this piece of paper you sold me worth?” “Not a whole lot.” “But I have jazillions of this on my books which I have Marked to Fart It. What do I do?” “O, you do? I forgot. Well – heard of Slim fast? There is another cure going the rounds I’ve heard, which is called Take A Bath. You could try that. Jump The Window is a permanent cure I hear, too. Gotta go, my bonus-bought Roller/Caddy/Lambo is triple parked with somebody else’s – we are all off to a Convince party, ‘cause we suckered u gud, (don’t you think?) and Can’t be Late, ‘cause now we Gotta Celebrate.”

  Now Foxy Goldman Whacks You, creator of some of the best Deceivatives together with their co-creator Poison Pilson, watched this and when they decided that the balloon had melted up as far as they could melt it and the Air of Confidence was starting to leak out of the many holes in the balloon, they reckoned they had go into fox mode and pin the sucker before someone else did. So the guy who controlled the Pin looked round and said “is their anyone we know who has a lot of this Air of Confidence, value-free stuff?” and someone told him “Yup. SeeYouLata Brothers has got bundles of it”. “Oh. Do they owe us anything?” “Lots”. “Oh. Do we have any assets of theirs?” “lots” “grab it all”. That put the “melt” in “MELTDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and then everyone that called himself “bank” found himself with big handfuls of air – swimming pools of it - and no Confidence in sight

  SeeYouLata Brothers said “Ouch. We’re found out. We’re dead” and everybody who had SeeYouLata Brothers Shares said “who’s running that joint? Fat the Wok? SELLLLLLLLLLLLLL and SELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL all others like them FASSSSSSSSSSSSTER than you can say ‘Lambo” and before everybody else unloads their bits of newly-Confidence-free Air. The Talent goes into Unload Mode and see who can most fastest for least.

  And everybody else said “SSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLL” and that is the end of the devil’s tale as the whole pack of cards came down and all the preprogrammed computers said: “sellsellselsellsellsellsellsellsellsellsellsellsellsell”.

  The Talking Heads then said “Where will it end?” And for them, I have a lesson in simple math, even you can do it:

  Real share value price due to return (dividend as a percentage of cost)

  + (plus) Air of Confidence = Get Rich Quick price

  By waking up our second brain cell and by getting up a good head of steam and a strong coffee we can do some Reverse math:

  Get Rich Quick price - (minus) Air of Confidence = Real Share Value price

  So where is the floor, where does it end, O Talking Head?

  Do you need – let’s see – three guesses enough or would 10 be closer to the requirements of your mental capacities?

  Ever heard of that ‘50s thing? Real Share Value? ROI? Return On Investment? That stuff before Take-a- Fall Street worked it over and repackaged it as ROH - Return On Hopes?

  Warren Buffett had all that figured, about the time he threw out his first set of diapers, which is why his Berkshire Hathaway stock gently bobbed along in the swells, while everybody’ else’s was observing the world from a hole in the Fall Street sewers they made when the Confidence went out of the Air on the 41st floor and they drilled a hole in the pavement that made BP jealous. Mind your feet. At least BP got oil. All everybody else got was shit.

  Floor? The floor, is called “real value” boys and girls, or it was before the MMCs worked it over and blew it up to the 41st floor with Air of Confidence. You think they were standing underneath when it came down? Ha!

  The floor is wherever the price is merited by the dividend, and the end is when prices get there. That is, unless Convince gets back Confidence first and we can all walk on Air again. That is what OhHaHa and his Helicopter Ben friend are trying to accomplish on the basis that if you spray fertilizer on beans from a crop duster they grow, and therefore spraying paper on the populace will make the economy grow. I can’t understand how they figure that. What are the people supposed to do with paper? Plant it?

  So everyone is asking “why why why?” and the bottom line, is, the MMCs fooled ya, boys and girls. Gotcha! Pretty good too, if you ask me.

  Now perhaps you understand why the chickens are upset, because, as a chicken sees it, they are good to eat whereas MMCs go up in a puff of metallic smoke if you try and roast them. The chickens are upset about being confused with a bunch of parasites who play fast and loose with your money on the Convince Commission Game and then when their whole Air of Confidence castle in the sky comes crashing down and the pieces of paper lie forlornly on the ground, turn to you and say “Oops”.

  Of course they have a wrinkle to this. They have the Oops Plan. Plan B. They turn to the “The Government” (which is a bunch of clowns you put there, gave total authority to, and then went to sleep) and say “Hey listen, I lost a whole bunch of my Convince Commissions which I accumulated over the years by playing fast and loose with your boss’ money and that really is unacceptable and makes my books look terrible. I mean loosing customer’s money, who gives a damn? but loosing my own, getting my own knickers caught in my own rip-off machine, I mean, that is just Not On and my Roller is at risk. So here’s the deal, either you give me a whole bunch of your employers money – those same guys we just finished ripping off real good - or I will shut my doors and say its your fault and then there will be 25 million people throwing rocks at your doors and windows in Bowing Street and Pain in the Ass avenue and you won’t be able to sleep nights. So got the pic? Gimme a zillion trillion jillion - whatever money they have that I did not yet lose for them or Commissioned them out of, or just go borrow it from another country or print it, I really don’t care - and give it to me right NOW, or you a going to loose your job next defection - I mean election. Is there any part of that you did not understand, dink head?”

  Now if I was the government, all bright eyed and bushy tailed and freshly woken up from many years sleep with my head in the sand spending money I did not have to bribe the masses (using their own children’s funds) to keep on voting for ME ME ME, I’d have a reply ready. “Jazzillions of loans? Sure! See these things here? They are called h.a.n.d.icuffs and they are nice and cosy. Step right into them and we’ll go off in your now nationalised Roller/Caddy/Lambo/yacht/airyplane or whatever and get your loan, then you can go and break rocks in a respectable establishment for the next century and a half – that’s what you get if you wake me up from a nice Head-In-the-Sand sleep
bribing people with their own children’s money so I can keep my job.

  Me? Give me the chickens any day.

  LET THE TALENT GO, PLEASE

  The Fall Street banks and the Champs de Stealit banks and the London Flighty banks that have had to be bailed out with taxpayer’s money have been setting aside great big container ships full of our grandchildren’s money so their Talent will stick around.

  For example Goldman Whacks You (the sub-prime Poison Pill packagers and vendors) set aside $8 billion (which obviously comes from their taxpayer handout, or they would not have it to set aside) for salary and bonuses for their “Talent”.

  Accordingly, I am writing this as the Children’s Representative and I Am Pissed on their behalf. Pissed. Seriously Pissed. Seriously Pissed with Purple Anger candles – like roman candles but smellier.

  Goldman Whacks You, you will remember, is the outfit that used their pin to prick Lehman Mothers, which blew up when the Whacks You pin let the Air of Confidence out of there Deceivatives they were holding, and their explosion blew up the entire world-wide financial soap bubble bath, that all the banks had been using to conceal their unmentionables, namely that they were in the bubble bath and not wearing any solid asset undies to cover their liabilities when the soap blew up and turned into a few spots of a funny colored something on the banking carpet.

  So Goldman Whacks you, since all their “Talent” there had done such an outstanding job of wrecking the world-wide economy, set-aside amounts of over $400,000 (over 4 times Buffett’s salary) for every employee in the company. Since it is unlikely that the receptionists and cleaners make $400,000 each (if so may I apply?), some Goldman Whacks You people are indeed doing nicely from having their hand deep in the taxpayer’s grandchildren’s pockets and purses to maintain the lifestyle the poor dear things have grown accustomed to and keeping them in Dom Perignon, Cohibas, Lambos, gold plated condoms and so on – things that are so vital to their fragile mental healths, without which they might wilt and end up sleeping under a bridge. If the bridge will have them, which is not a given.

  Sarkozy who sits over the Champs de Stealit banks had a good idea, namely, that robbers should not profit from their robbery, and suckering poorer people into losing their all by buying houses any idiot can work out that they cannot pay for, and smoking cigars and drowning the butts in Dom Perignon of the Fall Street cigar clubs on the proceeds, is as good a definition of robbery as I know. Elegant well spoken, respectable robbery.

  Therefore, I have a suggestion for President Oh Ha Ha and for anybody else who is running their country by borrowing from our children and grandchildren without their consent, and a suggestion for anyone who has a grain of unbrainwashed brain left between their ears (if any still exist), if such people have survived the fallout from the Fall Street Talking Reality Bender Bombs. Make it law that, when a bank requires state funds to survive, then, total salary, bonus and benefits for each employee is limited to $70,000 per year – hardly a starvation wage – and that all amounts above this are subject to 100% tax, the proceeds of which can go towards paying for the taxpayer’s losses which THEY are responsible for in the first place. In the case of SEC personnel and other supervisory bodies asleep at the wheel, the limit should be $50,000, which is already an outrageous price to pay for people who bring their beds to work and leave their brains at home.

  We’ve heard over and over again that the Fall Street Gang and their International Other Country Counterparts have gramophoned at us that these high salaries are needed so that these bankers can retain their “Talent” in the face of a competitive market for such “Talent”.

  Of course, every rip-off artist wants to employ the best confidence Tricksters in the business, that is to be expected and Talent has a price.

  “Talent?”

  Talent for what exactly?

  “Talent” for gambolling other’s money on the New York and other private banker’s casinos where, bidding against one another, they inflate the price of stocks out of any relation to its earnings and hence out of relation to any real value?

  What does this “Talent” do, you ask?

  Well, this Talent is an executive suite bonus booster mechanism. It is a Boss Bonus Booster, or B3 for short. You see, if Banks did not gamble on Stock Exchanges for their own personal benefit every single cent they can somehow beg borrow or steal, then the banks “results” (and their share price) would be in line with the service they provide and considering what that is and how “talented” they are at their real job, that would be about one millionth of their current share prices. THAT would do almost nothing much for the Bank Boss Bonus you see, who would be reduced to getting honest pay for honest work. Disgusting state of affairs.

  But Bank Bosses designed a system to Boost Bank Boss Bonus, and keep the poor dears – bank executives - from having to do an honest day’s work and ensure they make enough money each year to keep several hundred thousand kids alive in Africa, kids who have no food and die because they cannot eat.

  This is how they work the Bank Boss Bonus Booster and it all depends on Air of Confidence:

  You see (we will keep it simple) a “bank” was a supposed to be a place where you put your money where it would be safer than under the mattress.

  Then the “bank” said, “Lookit. We will take their frigging money, and stick a number on a piece of paper telling the punter that we have X much of their money somewhere where nobody can get at it (except us of course). Of course, that will be complete hooey, as the instant they give us their moolah, we will spend it, but the suckers will fall for it because we will print a pretend figure on their “statement” of missing money which tells them how much of their money we have run off with.

  Next we take this money of theirs which they think is there but which isn’t, ‘cause all we have to give them is a printed a number on a piece of paper and ink is cheap, and then we will go and give it to the “Talent”.

  The “Talent” will look at a lot of very expensive screens run by Foolberg that tell them what the other “Talent” is doing with that Talent’s punter’s money in our banker’s private casino Stock Exchange club, which (to keep the punter’s fooled) we will call a “Stock Exchange”. Sounds good heh?

  Now, all the “Talent” wants the price of the “stock” to go up because then, the “Talent” can make $400,000 (at least) bonuses every year, not from any real value, but from the air of Confidence the huffing and puffing “Talent” has blow into it. Because if the price goes down “Talent” eats hamburger – or nothing at all - like the rest of mankind.

  Now at the end of the year, the Head Wanker (sorry, Banker) does the numbers, and marks all the Stocks they hold (WITH your money which you think is on your account but isn’t) and they Mark it to Market. This is fancy for meaning they look at the Foolberg screens and see how much the other “Talent” has inflated the price up and stick it in their books at that price. This price, you understand, has nothing to at all to do with anything real life value, it is just the Air of Confidence Bubble Price, mind the pins.

  Now then they compare that with last year’s inflated bubble balance sheet and say. “This yah, we have made X jazillion Air of Confidence Bubble profits, and hence the percentage we voted for ourselves as our cut amounts to Y jazillions. In order to keep up this sham, we have to pay off our “Talent” cronies who fabricate this Air of Confidence out of whole cloth, or they won’t keep pushing the price up. Then the price would come down to where it represented value instead of air, and then we would have no bonuses and would have to work for a living instead of stealing for a living. OK? Sign here.”

  So you see how important the “Talent” is. For their BossBonus, though not for anybody else. So when I say they are a bunch of B(w)ankers I am being rudely kind, they are really a bunch of outright confidence tricksters and criminal thieves, except that the politicos have not dared to create laws making this kind of theft illegal. Instead, to please their banker buddies, they create laws making that kin
d of theft nice and legal.

  Occasionally, the Wankers (sorry Bankers) get drunk on their own publicity and invulnerability to real world facts and the whole circus hits the wall as it just did when somebody got careless with the pins and the whole cloud of soap bubbles blew up and just left a few spots of soap (the only real value there was) on the very fine banking carpets and marble halls, walls and bathtubs. You see

  Value (soap) + Air of Confidence = Wanker Bonus.

  No Air of Confidence, no bonus, see?

  It is not complicated.

  Now when the circus does hit the wall, the bankers blackmail the politicos, the politicos hand the Wankers tankers full of your children’s cash to shut them up and bribe them and pay them off, and then the punters threaten to get pissed which is a problem.

  So then the Politicos, to shut the punters up, talk about Wegulating the Wankers.

  But the punters may still be pissed so Politicos talk about taxing the banks to get the punter’s grandchildren’s money back which sounds good and so that “there will be something to pay the banks if (when) this happens again.” Now if there were any politicos with spine (future politicos have a spineectomy at birth) people like President Oh Ha Ha would simple say: “Law. One. To be called a bank, you are not allowed to play in the national casinos, aka stock exchanges. If you use one cent in any manner that is not the Banks own shareholder funds including borrowing against any asset, your Licence to print money – cancel that, your bank licence – is dust. Got it? Is there any part of that your “Talent” cannot understand?”

  Of course, since they pay one another off, the banker-presidential-legislator axis is a spine free zone, so no politico worth his weight in bullshit is going to legislate that a bank is only allowed to do things with your money that you agree with after being duly informed of what the hell he plans to get up to with it.

  The really juicy bit, is they do all this not with THEIR money but with yours, which YOU think is sitting on your account because they print a number on a piece of paper, but which, just like any good Ponzi scheme, is not there really because they are paying some of your money to themselves and the rest the “Talent” is using in their private casino.

  So this “Talent” trails the punters and their 401s along like a comet’s shower of sparks, buying stocks whose price is supported by an Air of Confidence that other “Talent” will want to buy it more tomorrow and hence that the price will go UP and therefore BUY NOW!!!!! (Pay commission now please, as we are NOT sticking OUR money in that shit).

  This irresponsible cigar smoking “Talent” is the Lambo driving “Talent” that talked the Confidence into the Air so that prices went up with the Air of Confidence they created.

  As usual, the innocents pay the price, but when they are also required to pay $400,000 salaries to RETAIN the irresponsible “Talent” that just emptied their pockets so that it can carry on and empty whatever they missed first time round, “Talent” that ought to be booted out of the door yesterday and dumped in a passing garbage truck, that is excessively rich for my stomach and causes me to vomit in public, aiming for their shoes and anything else I have a hope of hitting. Just give me a second as I’d like to eat some putrid fish first.

  The “Talent” should be let go, and allowed to look for work in labor markets that compete for the same skill sets, such as the cat burglar talent market and the auto theft talent market or the confidence trickster market for which they are indeed extremely highly qualified as they have a University Degree in

  Confidence Tricksterness.

  “Investing will make you free” Oops, better update that, “Investing will make you rich”

  It’s about the same level of trick

  One help tricks you into cooperating in getting physically killed

  The other help tricks you into cooperating in getting financially killed

  So of COURSE they are scared the “Talent” will mosey off over to the competing Wank, I mean Bank.

  No “Talent” bonuses paid with your money, and its bye bye to the Boss Bonus Booster because there are no “Talented” Financial Engineers to make Boss Bonus Booster Bubbles.

  At your expense of course.

  Just make like a sheep and go on cooperating.

  ‘Course they love you.

  Everybody loves a sucker.

  Isn’t it nice to be a loved sucker? Doesn’t it give you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling?

  Simple.

  So I say, 1) let the talent go please and 2) block “banks” from gambolling with anything other than their shareholders own liquid, paid-in-cash-on-the-nail cash. And if they lose it, good riddance to them.

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  GOD AND THE SPIDER