Market Ticker

I recommend reading Karl Deninger at https://market-ticker.org/ ; I don't know if his archive back to 2007 are available to non-subscribers, but he's been documenting these issues, quite well presented, since 2007. The bottom line is, for the 2007/8 crisis, there are hundreds if not thousands of people guilty of fraudulent misrepresentations, and for inventing their own laws, with no reprecussions. I think the most egregious case is the "robo-signing" and MERS case (which are intertwined), which appear to involve thousands of cases of perjury, non of which were prosecuted, or even investigated -- but the publicly available evidence is damning enough, even if no justice official decided to investigate. But why go back so far? So far, the recent wells fargo fraudulent account opening case [0] has resulted in a slap on the wrist and no one being charged. I don't know who committed fraud specifically, and it seems no one who can find out wishes to find out either. In 8 years, someone like you is going to ask "but who specifically committed fraud? this always comes up". There are clear examples of fraud; if there aren't clear examples of who committed that fraud, it is only because the powers that be decided they do not want to know. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scandal#Effect…

This is a great piece. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232617 It's written by a disagreeable, cantankerous man, but he used to be the CEO of an ISP in Chicago years ago. He knows what he's talking about.

I submitted the following: "I would Make America Great Again by forcing the medical monopolies to break up, by prosecuting them under 15 USC (the Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman Acts), which the President can direct to be done on his own, without input from Congress. This would cause prices of medical goods and services to drop by 50-80% or more, solve many of our economic problems, and usher in a new era of prosperity. See the writings of Karl Denninger for details, www.market-ticker.org." If we don't do this, and if it isn't done within a year, the Federal Budget and economy are headed for collapse. See: https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231661

It is well known by people who pay attention to Financial markets, that government officials from the Treasury often end up working at places like Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae and a myriad of other "private" and quasi-governmental corporations. This is often a two way street... look up; Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson and more. These are the big notable cases. Go read http://zerohedge.com or the http://market-ticker.org they point this stuff out all the time. There is ZERO reason to believe this doesn't happen for ALL sectors of government. So, I would say, the burden of proof would land on the shoulders of those who say that it DOES NOT happen.

http://tickerforum.org/ Search for 'Genesis'. Ignore the political discussions, and don't bother with context, just find the few posts where he elaborates enough that you don't need the context of the rest of the thread. Or start reading his blog, http://market-ticker.org/ starting back at the beginning around 2006. He's unabashedly conservative/libertarian, but he has had the strongest grasp of the mechanics of the financial crisis going all the way back to 2006 of anyone I've yet seen, even vs famous economists like Krugman. Originally an engineer, made his fortune as an entrepreneur, now manages his money from Florida, blogs about the crisis, and runs that discussion forum for investors.

> Because if you expect the value of your cash to rise, you would probably hold onto your cash. Right, that's why the computer industry doesn't make any money. > This, again, happened during the Great Depression Yes. A large part of what made the Great Depression last much longer than the Depression of 1920-1921 was that insolvent businesses were given money instead of being allowed to fail. One might compare this to recent events, and have a look at the present employment rate of the U.S. population: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=1631

If anything, the US is implementing the worst aspects of gigging. If you want a truly market-oriented gig economy, in the US at least the following factors among many others must be addressed. * Healthcare costs. This is non-negotiable. On an unsustainable path, and will collapse soon. Read around at Karl Denninger's Market Ticker site. He makes the point more forcefully than some would be comfortable with, but we're in a pretty dire, advanced stage so strong words and stronger action are warranted. [1] * Payment term games. Small vendors abound with stories of customers yanking their chains, playing legalistic games around hyper-specific terms of delivery, or flat-out spuriously denying payment, etc. Once you climb the value ladder this tends to diminish quickly (at sufficiently high levels of operation, you become a key troubleshooting component of their organization, and they take care not to piss you off), but very small operators (1-10 man shops) preyed upon by big customers is unfortunately all-too-common to hear about. I'd prefer to see a Brandeis quote-styled mitigation. He said, "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." Some kind of information exchange, similar to a central clearinghouse of blockchain-secured documents in a transaction: if either side raises a dispute, the documents become viewable by all, with classification by…

Well, I'd say that calling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- along with a major recession to rival that of the Great Depression -- within a 6 month time window was a pretty good prediction. The other predictions that I can recall were related to that: the collapse of consumer credit availability, investment money being driven to treasurys despite the US predicament, problems with municipal bonds. He also warned about PIIGS pretty early, and that the measures that were being taken would only result in kicking the can while increasing the pain. But perhaps that's more of a stopped clock kind of prediction. As I said, I haven't followed him much lately, and he admits that he gets an F in terms of predictions for 2012: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=215356 Regarding the freshness of his views: his post was written to his current audience (he runs a forum for investors). I don't think he had any idea this would end up on HN, if he even knows what HN is!

True. So take a look what this guy found out: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=240767

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232617 I found this to be interesting.

With all that human effort and market efficiency, why isn't Amazon getting shorted like crazy, based on ratio trends like this...? https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232505

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949 The crux is making it easier for consumers to get health care information, putting more choices in the hands of the patient, and creating a mechanism to encourage price sensitivity even if people don't pay for their care directly.

Karl provides more detail in his write up than I could cover, and he links to two US Supreme Court cases in regards to the price issue https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949

An alternate view: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230060

There is a very good bullish article on Blackberry. http://market-ticker.org/post=228889

I'm not sure i buy into the whole idea that they are spending so much money on infrastructure and then they will "turn on a switch" to be profitable. Google is building, but they are still profitable. Here's an interesting dissection of amazon's earnings (complete opposite perspective from the article): http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3190940.

That's how it worked previous to BB10, but BB10 no longer uses BIS. This person disagrees with the original story: http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?singlepost=3242634

Here is ticker guy's take on it. "Facebook: Looking For Bagholders: Don't let it be you." http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2337946

Also note that the "birth-death" model fudge-factor they used for April was 226,000 which was about double what it was for March. Watch out for revisions as well: "February was revised down from -651k to -681k (-30,000) and March was revised from -663k to -699k (-36,000). See a pattern there? That's 66,000 jobs that were reported as existing but revised out later." http://market-ticker.org/archives/1026-Unemployment-Fried-Day.html

Early (i.e. existing) Covid vaccines are NON-STERILIZING, unlike almost every vaccine given to kids. There are sterilizing Covid vaccines in development, e,g. delivered nasally directly to the upper respiratory tract, but none have yet reached the market. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243127 > To be sterilizing a vaccine must prevent infection. Since you never get infected you never replicate the virus and thus do not shed it. If you do not shed it the potential path of the viral life-cycle for that particular infection ends with you and thus you cannot pass on or cause a mutation. You are sterile against that disease; from the point of view of the virus you are a lifeless rock. Among commonly-used sterilizing vaccines are MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), Varicella (chicken pox), OPV (oral polio) and others. The only time that such a vaccine fails is when you do not build immunity (such as due to immune compromise.) This is extremely rare and the protection from such vaccines tends to be either decades-long or lifetime. > A vaccine that is not sterilizing permits the virus to infect you and replicate and as a result you can infect others. Technically it is not a vaccine at all (which by definition prevents infection); it is a prophylactic therapy. Such a "vaccine" instead acts to reduce or eliminate symptomatic disease. You don't know you're sick and you don't get sick. You don't go to the hospital and you don't die. Unfortunately since you don't know…