Faber fiction & the Goldman gang

Marc Faber seems to make a rather common mistake: that of making a distinction between the free market and government, without recognising that the "third way" is the way the world works now - that is to say, the merger of state and corporate powers, aka fascism.
He even says this:

I think Goldman Sachs is a very honest firm. They have a very strict compliance department compared to the others — they're like an angel. But they targeted Goldman as it stands as a symbol of Wall Street.
Maybe the intention is not to hurt Goldman Sachs, but just to gain popularity with the middle class and the lower class of America, so they will perceive Mr. Obama to have done something against the evil of Wall Street.


What. The. Fuck. Like an angel? I had to play that bit twice to see if any irony was being projected, but no.
Let's have a look at some key players here.

• Henry Paulson - 74th United States Treasury Secretary. Previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.
• Lloyd Blankfein - current Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. After the nomination of Hank Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush, Blankfein was announced as his replacement.
• Greg Craig - former White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. He has represented Goldman Sachs.
• Gary Gensler is the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama. Spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, becoming the company’s co-head of finance.

The list goes on, but you get the picture. It's other banks too, they're all complicit, but calling Goldman Sachs an angel because it complies with regulations (???) is an enormous misunderstanding of the situation. The government is in bed with the bankers, and scared of the CIA-military complex, and acts accordingly. It's like a symbiotic organism of bully-boys, back-scratchers and back-slappers - an old boys club. Like Celente says, Harvard Princeton Yale, bullets, bombs, banks.

They're like an international gang of financial terrorists, as Max Keiser has often said. They hid billions of debt for Greece when they joined the EU, and you can bet the farm they are short Greek bonds right now, all the way, leveraged up to the hilt. They are going to make a lot of money when Greece defaults, like they did with Iceland. Actually, they will be doing Greece a favour, like Soros did when he knocked us out of the ERM. But when the debt is all re-financed, it will be the Greek people who suffer most in the short term, because that's essentially their money that Goldman Sachs just sucked out of the system. The fact that it's measured in euros is good for GS because it will keep its value - if it were drachmas, the currency would inflate and the play would be less lucrative, which is the only reason Britain is safe from this kind of predatory action, unlike the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain).

You hear the defence, often from people in the industry, that they're smart, they're good at their jobs, they work hard, they're a money making machine, that's what they do, and you must be jealous to attack them, or ignorant - implying that they're doing "God's work" to use Blankfein's phrase, some mysterious mission that we're not able to comprehend.
There's no mystery. These guys simply don't know how to make money. They're not entrepreneurs. They don't create wealth. What are investment banks? They're casinos that gamble. With other people's money. They certainly don't respect their clients, they don't genuinely go out looking for worthy ventures to invest in. They invent derivatives instead. They front-run, they short the things they're telling their clients to buy - all this is well-documented.
So no, they're not smart, they're autistic. They're not a money-making machine, they're a money-sucking parasite. They contribute nothing to society but bribes and corruption. They would not exist were it not for their buddies at the Fed and in government, and in their alliance with the military elements.

Indeed, bad as GS are, the major problem is central banks, particularly Fed policy, and indeed the existence of the Fed. Everything else, all the corruption, is just a symptom of that. You give a select few unelected people complete control of the money supply, and what do you expect? It will only all come to a head when everyone realises that dollars are just that - pieces of paper, backed by a government's promise which, as we all know equals... zero. It never ceases to amaze me just how long these fiat currencies have managed to last. I guess it's a mass hypnosis, a big waking dream, or nightmare, that we're all a part of and are on the verge of waking up from.

The trigger could be anything. Drop in the dollar. Chinese revaluation. Commercial property bubble burst. It doesn't matter - the system is so out of balance now, the pinprick to the bubble could come from anywhere, at any time. And the longer this eerie calm exists, the bigger will be the pop.

Hot air breathing dragon

Prick:

Duncan Bannatyne has taken issue with Pakistan-born James Caan's non-domiciled resident tax status and it has now led the fiery Scot to issue an ultimatum to his fellow Dragons – he will not invest alongside any Dragon that does the show using offshore companies.

Trust the BBC to find the leftie entrepreneurs.
I wonder how he feels about the bailouts? You know, the biggest robberies in world history, by an order of magnitude? I have a feeling he might be OK with them.

Greece invented chaos

Black Friday for Greece tomorrow?

The markets turned against Greece again on Thursday, driving up its borrowing costs to record levels on doubts that the EU will provide a credible rescue.

As usual Trichet's being a cunt:

The yield on the Greek 10-year bonds eased slightly to 7.35pc after Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, said he did not expect Greece to default on its loans and that he is confident the country will solve its own budget problems

Erm, or they're guaranteed to default, JC. You wouldn't be helping anyone to accumulate a short position in euros and euro bonds would you? For example, oh I don't know... Goldman Sachs?

Cool Aid?

Another good one from Dalrymple, who, like me, is baffled by the belief that foreign aid is a "good thing":

The New York Times on March 10 quoted a United Nations report to the effect that aid given to Somalia was not reaching the people most in need of it, that is to say the malnourished and the starving.
I would not be telling you the truth if I said that, when I read the news, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Can there be anyone left in the world who thinks that aid will go only, or even mainly, to the people most in need of it? By comparison with such a belief, faith in Father Christmas is a model of rational expectation. At least the presents arrive, even if Father Christmas doesn’t.
...It is therefore not in the least surprising that aid to Somalia is not reaching the neediest; it would be very surprising, indeed it would be absolutely astonishing, if it were. Neither is it surprising, however, that it should be reported as if it were surprising (unsurprising news not being news). For otherwise, the fact that aid does not reach the neediest would be a threat to our sense of power, our feelings of omnipotence. How could a few lousy uneducated Somalian gunmen be thwarting our infinite benevolence?

Same goes for charity as a whole. As Camus said, "Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity."
But that's another story.

Ayn Rand Land

I've never got Ayn Rand, and "followers." To fully disclose, I have not read her, so what I have heard is second-hand. But I've read enough libertarian literature to get what she is about.
And why have I not read her? I started one (The Fountainhead), but it was badly-written, verbose and boring. And for me, that says all I need to know about her. It was self-absorbed, not really interested in the reader. Is that then "noble selfishness?"
Anyway, she supposedly venerated "capitalist" types like railroad owners (railroad owners?!) and CEOs of big corporations. Greed is good, altruism is bad, therefore these guys are heroes.
There's just one problem: Corporations have nothing to do with free markets! Never had, never will. Railroads were built through private funding? No, it was the taxpayer. They were just another piece of state apparatus. I wrote about this before, and it seems to be an idea that needs to be repeated over and over until people start getting it. Worlds such as those described by Rand are not capitalism. It's fascism. The merger of state and corporate powers.
A real free market would look something like a street market: lots of individual stalls, few brands or big hitters. But it would be busy, bustling, self-regulating and - well - happy, and sad, and messy, aspirational, and full of intent.
Dalrymple wrote about Rand, and although his criticism is not the same as mine, he still gets the same kind of vibe from her and her cultish followers. This appatrently led to quite a few hysterical comments. Hardly surprising, as they are a confused bunch. And not libertarians, at all.

Socialist surrealism

Just came across an excerpt from one of Dalrymple's books, which reminds me why I read the guy. Some of his stories are way out there. But none more so than this one, recounting a time when, more or less by accident, he managed to join up with a group of British communists on its way to the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in North Korea in 1989:

I went several times during the festival to Pyongyang Department Store Number 1. This is in the very centre of the city. Its shelves and counters were groaning with locally produced goods, piled into impressive pyramids or in fan-like displays, perfectly arranged, throughout the several floors of the building. On the ground floor was a wide variety of tinned foods, hardware and alcoholic drinks, including a strong Korean liqueur with a whole snake pickled or marinated in the bottle, presumably as an aphrodisiac. Everything glittered with perfection, the tidiness was remarkable.
It didn't take long to discover that this was no ordinary department store. It was filled with thousands of people, going up and down the escalators, standing at the corners, going in and out of the front entrance in a constant stream both ways - yet nothing was being bought or sold. I checked this by standing at the entrance for half an hour. The people coming out were carrying no more than the people entering. Their shopping bags contained as much, or as little, when they left as when they entered. In some cases, I recognised people coming out as those who had gone in a few minutes before, only to see them re-entering the store almost immediately. And I watched a hardware counter for fifteen minutes. There were perhaps twenty people standing at it; there were two assistants behind the counter, but they paid no attention to the 'customers'. The latter and the assistants stared past each other in a straight line, neither moving nor speaking.
Eventually, they grew uncomfortably aware that they were under my observation. They began to shuffle their feet and wriggle, as if my regard pinned them like live insects to a board. The assistants too became restless and began to wonder what to do in these unforeseen circumstances. They decided that there was nothing for it but to distribute something under the eyes of this inquisitive foreigner. And so, all of a sudden, they started to hand out plastic wash bowls to the twenty 'customers', who took them (without any pretence of payment). Was it their good luck, then? Had they received something for nothing? No, their problems had just begun. What were they to do with their plastic wash bowls? (All of them were brown incidentally, for the assistants did not have sufficient initiative to distribute a variety of goods to give verisimilitude to the performance, not even to the extent of giving out differently coloured bowls.)
They milled around the counter in a bewildered fashion, clutching their bowls in one hand as if they were hats they had just doffed in the presence of a master. Some took them to the counter opposite to hand them in; some just waited until I had gone away. I would have taken a photograph, but I remembered just in time that these people were not participating in this charade from choice, that they were victims, and that - despite their expressionless faces and lack of animation - they were men with chajusong, that is to say creativity and consciousness, and to have photographed them would only have added to their degradation. I left the hardware counter, but returned briefly a little later: the same people were standing at it, sans brown plastic bowls, which were neatly re-piled on the shelf.
I also followed a few people around at random, as discreetly as I could. Some were occupied in ceaselessly going up and down the escalators; others wandered from counter to counter, spending a few minutes at each before moving on. They did not inspect the merchandise; they moved as listlessly as illiterates might, condemned to spend the day among the shelves of a library. I did not know whether to laugh or explode with anger or weep. But I knew I was seeing one of the most extraordinary sights of the twentieth century.
I decided to buy something - a fountain pen. I went to the counter where pens were displayed like the fan of a peacock's tail. They were no more for sale than the Eiffel Tower. As I handed over my money, a crowd gathered round, for once showing signs of animation. I knew, of course, that I could not be refused: if I were, the game would be given away completely. And so the crowd watched goggle-eyed and disbelieving as this astonishing transaction took place: I gave the assistant a piece of paper and she gave me a pen.
The pen, as it transpired, was of the very worst quality. Its rubber for the ink was so thin that it would have perished immediately on contact with ink. The metal plunger was already rusted; the plastic casing was so brittle that the slightest pressure cracked it. And the box in which it came was of absorbent cardboard, through whose fibres the ink of the printing ran like capillaries on the cheeks of a drunk.
At just before four o'clock, on two occasions, I witnessed the payment of the shoppers. An enormous queue formed at the cosmetics and toiletries counter and there everyone, man and woman, received the same little palette of rouge, despite the great variety of goods on display. Many of them walked away somewhat bemused, examining the rouge uncomprehendingly. At another counter I saw a similar queue receiving a pair of socks, all brown like the plastic bowls. The socks, however, were for keeps. After payment, a new shift of Potemkin shoppers arrived.
... But this is no joke, and the humiliation it visits upon the people who take part in it, far from being a drawback, is an essential benefit to the power; for slaves who must participate in their own enslavement by signalling to others the happiness of their condition are so humiliated that they are unlikely to rebel.

Comedy and tragedy. Creepy, poignant, and incendiary. Brings to mind 1984, but also Dawn of the Dead.
Slavery is deeply entrenched in people, it seems. To submit to this horror is surely worse than death.
But then so many of us in the western world do much the same - that is a pointless, strenuous, going-though-the-motion type "occupation", for our own little palette of rouge.