Monday, 7 November 2011
News............
P.S. .... this is not meant to be at all reassuring, even in the least little bit ....
Caption Contest - Birds Of A Feather Edition
Another Burning Chevy Volt Destroys NC House « SOYLENT GREEN
Europe’s veil of fear
USS Cole Attacker to Face Military Tribunal
Matthew VanDyke, Libyan Rebel?
Forever 21's Crotch Shots Too Sexy for Facebook
Who Are These Fat-Cat Few at the Top?
Official: Total Unemployed at 16.2 Percent
How Obama was playing golf until 20 minutes before Navy SEALs began mission to take out Bin Laden
Another Effort to Destroy Israel
Europe's rescue fiasco leaves Italy defenceless
Why fox hunting is more popular than ever
Delays on the mane line: lion alert shuts Shepley rail station
European court rules beekeepers must prove GM pollen is not an ingredient of honey
Arab League warns of 'disastrous consequences' for the Middle East after Syria peace plan fails
Helmand killing fields to be handed back to Britain
US warns of attacks on luxury Nigerian hotels after 150 killed
Police marksmen could be issued with gun-mounted cameras
Website offers cow killing options for tastier beef
CME "clarifies" things..............from Rico
CME has "clarified" possibly the worst memo it has ever released (the late Fri evening 1:1 margin). They really meant to say they were LOWERING all margins.
No kidding.
They just had a very crappy way of saying it, I guess. The memo sure didn't "read" that way.
So, Monday we'll see every Tom, Dick and Benny able to take on MORE risk for about 30% less cost.
Yeah, in the wake of MF Global's collapse, THAT makes a lot of sense.
Gotta love more of the Chicago way!!
Why Lindsay Lohan's Posing Nude for Playboy
See: "Explaining the Lindsay Lohan Playboy Photoshoot."
If you were a boy growing up in the late ’50s or early ’60s, the Playboy centerfold pages were a breath-catching revelation: they were the first — and for years, most likely the only — glimpse you were apt to get of an actual naked female. Now we live in an age when nothing is left to the imagination...
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Not Cannes, nor Greece, but CME goes "nuclear".............from Rico
I'm betting that this Lehman Event went pretty much unnoticed and unremarked upon.
No surprise that nothing came out of Cannes Friday, nor from Greece. Those farces continue unabated.
- BUT the CME went "nuclear" (after everyone had gone home and was on their third martini) effective COB on Friday Nov 4th, making the Maintenance Margin (traditionally 26% lower than the Initial Margin for Spec's) equal for EVERYTHING. See attached.
So?
By COB on Monday Nov 7th, millions of options and futures holders will be forced to deposit hundreds of billions with CME to avoid margin calls.
- This is already nothing short of a margin call since it is unlikely that this amount of liquidity can actually be raised in one business day, and forced liquidations of margin accounts in the US and the World can be expected. Systematic interbank liquidity is currently non-existant for Banks in EUrope and the US.
Monday will be an extremely unhappy day for many people. Heads up!
Hidden Wounds: A Soldier's Burden
Confession time - GsGf hardly has time for fakebelieve lit - Wizards, Hoboes and Orcs - whee - so what?
To be fair - some of the make it up as you go chiz hath merit - 007 stuff, the Dorian Gray tale, Animal Farm and Taming American Power can certainly serve to fire up the neurons und nuetrik, and help develop memes and counter memes to boring assetted incorrect handwringing and general doofusness in general or avalanching uber hot brainiac bona fides.
And then Nate Brookshire sent me an autographed copy of Hidden Wounds: A Soldier's Burden.
It's essential reading and ya need to put it on your must read list TODAY
Nate and Marius Tecoana deliver a power dual tale that highlights combat's post trauma syndrone in a way that is compelling and haunting.
Modern day - an ancient Army combat veteran of WWII in Europa, Korea and Viet Namn struggles with more than the VA and his dearest son's repeated deployments in the new millennium - John Dougall keeps a horrific secret sin close to his heart that ravages his mind and body far more than the three predators of time, old wounds and old age.
Flashback to NSDAP time Deutschland's wild wack Drang Nach Osten - the Russian Ost Front campaign - sliding through the ice covered steppe roads into the fir forests, vertical cliffs and snowcapped Elbrus of the Caucasas a crew of knight errants onboard a panzer IV fight their way into Nalchik.
Led by young Rudi Haas, the intrepid panzerwaffe crew survive the double Soviet encirclement of Stalingrad, literally walking out just in time to re sortee into battle with mad ad hoc desperate kampf gruppen to desperately try to stymie the Russian juggernaut and fight at mythical Prokhorovka. Xferred from one end of Das Dritten Reich's shrink shrink shrinking battle frontiers of the East to Westfront.
The Epic Fail of the Ardennes Offensive left Rudi with a massive wartime journal/diary with the love and lives of his comrades and his sweetheart Carla - a Wehrmacht nurse whose overran unit fell into Bolshevik clutches.
As 3rd Reich dies kicking and screaming in an orgy of blood, pulverized cities and organized violence on a Hitlerian scale, Rudi leads his men in their last mission - to surrender to Patton's 3rd Army. Expecting captivity, interrogation and ultimate release, instead they are machine gunned down in murderous cold blood by the older squad mates of a young PVT John Dougall.
Killing surrendering combatants is unthinkable - shocking that American GI's - who knew Victory was nigh - would commit such atrocities.
Leading the reader on a time scape of six decades, the journal surfaces again and again - taken as booty by PVT Dougall - it's soul crushing weight finally grants him one last chance for redemption and forgiveness.
World Famous Carl Prine thinks out loud about "Hidden Wounds: A Soldier's Burden" this way:
"A timeless study of pain, loss and regret, readers should think of it as a testament to an American military suffering through nearly a decade at war. There's an abiding decency to this novel, animated by the authors' shared strength of character and commitment to help others."
Israel's "Mr. Peace" Warns of War.................by Dan Friedman
Telling, coming as it does from the dean of Israel’s doves (and a key player in the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
Strike on Iran more likely than diplomatic solution, Peres says
Dan Friedman
NYC
Time to Rid the Streets of the "Occupy" Movement
By Alan Caruba
Is there any doubt left in the minds of observers of the Occupy Wall Street movement tends toward violence and is in need of control? The mayors of the cities—some seventy at last count—that are being occupied need to crack down on it.
Not all agree, of course. Among the list of the Occupy movement are the following organizations and individuals that have expressed support or sympathy:
American Nazi Party
Revolutionary Communist Party
Industrial Workers of the World
International Bolshevik Tendency
International Socialist Organization
Marxist Student Union
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Party for Socialism and Liberation
President Barack Obama
Vice President Joe Biden
Former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi
The Revolutionary Guards of Iran
Communist Party of China
Louis Farrakhan, National of Islam
Black Panthers
There are others but they all have commonalities, not the least of which is a belief in Communism, they are representative of the American Far Left, and have an affinity for class and racial warfare.
There is nothing to recommend its supporters and considerable reason to take action against the movement that claims to be leaderless, but which has already been granted a tax-exempt status as it continues to collect a large bankroll.
As Lincoln pointed out, ‘The Constitution is not a suicide pact” and this nation fought a Civil War to ensure that the Union would remain intact. Thus, appeals to freedom of speech have their limits when it comes to efforts to undermine and destroy the nation. The free speech argument has been the initial fall-back position of some mayors, but it is rapidly wearing thin.
No doubt, Mayor Bloomberg of New York has been hoping that the dropping temperature as we advance toward winter will have the salutary affect of causing the occupiers of Zuccotti Park to leave. In a cash-strapped city, the millions in overtime and other costs do not justify his forbearance, but the Mayor is a liberal so his inaction is understandable. Mayors of other cities under siege have responded timidly for the most part.
As a student of history, I recall the hippie movement of the 1960s, the famed Haight-Ashbury refuge in San Francisco, and other places where a disaffected and unhappy youth gathered to “tune out” and listen to speeches about the Vietnam War and other grievances. In general, they did not engage in violence because their focus was on drugs and “free love.”
The Occupy movement is a different animal. The object of its anger is Wall Street, banks, capitalism, and the current economic distress. One group, OurTime.org, “a non-profit organization standing up for Americans under 30”, noted that the October jobs report “reveals that young Americans hold a 15.4% unemployment rate, which marks the eighth straight month that the 18-24 demographic…”
Their anger would be better directed against a federal government that is responsible for the 2008 collapse of the housing market and major banking, investment and insurance companies, many of which were bailed out by Congress using the funds of taxpayers, the real 99%.
The youth have cause to be unhappy, but they would be better informed if they understood how poorly they have been served by a debased national educational system and indebtedness brought about by universities that thrive off the student-loan system underwritten by the federal government. Their ignorance of this and so much more is both understandable and deplorable.
You don't solve unemployment by embracing tyranny.
Further back in history, one recalls the mobs that brought down the Weimar Republic in Germany and opened the doors to the Nazi movement. Earlier, mobs led by Bolsheviks deposed the Russian czar and imposed some seventy years of Communist control there. It is not surprising, therefore, that so many communist organizations and nations support the Occupy movement or that Wall Street is its target.
In time we shall learn who the organizers of this “spontaneous” movement truly have been, but for now public safety must be asserted to rid Zuccotti Park of this gang of “useful idiots” and wherever else they show up.
There no longer is any excuse to tolerate them and plenty of communist groups who will welcome them or, if the message of “change” put forth by Barack Obama is more closely examined, they can join the Democratic Party and continue its long history of destroying the nation’s economy.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
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