Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
"Jazz On A Summer's Day", 1959 Newport Jazz Festival.
Bert Stern was a still photographer who got the opportunity to take a film crew to the 1959 Newport Jazz festival. With limited time and film, Stern and his crew set out not just to record a musical event, but to record a social experience.
For the most part, he succeeds, although there is more than enough footage of a boat race on Chesapeake bay that day to last me for the rest of my life.
The film cuts from performances to reactions of the crowd, as any concert film would. It's interesting to see the wide difference in clothing styles that appealed to people in 1959. Everything from men in suits to greasers in denim can be seen dancing and grooving along with the music.
People living nearby the festival can be seen partying on their roofs and dancing, booze in hand, to the music. People of every age are shown bopping along with whoever is on stage at the time.
Highlights: Anita O'Day's spot-on performance, in spite of the fact that she's well into her much-ballyhooed drug and booze habit (in a recent radio interview she said she couldn't remember doing this gig after even watching the film); Louis Armstrong, Jerry Mulligan, and the rather out-of-place, clearly there for the kids but dressed to the nines and behaving himself, Chuck Berry. Older jazz guys have no idea what to make of Chuck, and one guy, in an attempt to "jazz up" Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," starts playing some rather odd clarinet runs. Think "Sweet Little Bar Mitzvah."
There's a nice bunch of extras on here, too, including an interview with Stern that expalins a lot about what was going on.
If you like jazz, or documentaries, or just good music, this is a keeper.
If you like jazz, or documentaries, or just good music, this is a keeper.
Monday, July 9, 2012
The LIBOR Scandal Explained
Attempts to manipulate free markets invariably end badly - after all, they are, supposedly, by their very nature, free.
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Over the past few weeks, the exposure of the Libor-rigging scandal has monopolized the headlines of the financial press and inveigled its way onto the front pages of every major news publication in the world through the sheer size and scale of the story.
Something as big as this just CAN’T be hidden from the public.
Only... it can.
It has been. It no doubt still is to a certain extent. I’m not going to go through all of the events of the past few weeks as you are no doubt familiar with them, but [simply understanding how LIBOR works makes for a simple conclusion].
I’m afraid it’s rather obvious. Given that almost half the reported inputs that help establish the Libor rate are discarded immediately, Barclays simply CANNOT have manipulated the Libor rate alone. Period.
What’s more, to effectively ensure the rate is set at the price required, you’d need to not only establish the highest and lowest 25% of prices, but then ensure the remaining 50% average out to the required rate and, based on the fact that there are 16 banks that submit rates, that would mean about 13 of the 16 involved would need to be complicit.
As a very good friend of mine put it earlier this week; at best this is a cartel, at worst it’s outright fraud on a scale that is completely unprecedented.
So for five years there have been attempts to fix the Libor rate and, take it from me, during that time, many inside the financial industry were familiar with the rumors of such manipulation but it was another huge scandal with such highpowered connected interests that it would no doubt be brushed squarely under the carpet. Forget ‘too big to fail’. This was ‘too deep to prove’.
Libor is so important to so many people in the financial industry that the question of why it was manipulated really ought to be framed differently:
Assuming you COULD manipulate something as important and potentially beneficial as the Libor rate with such ease for years, why wouldn’t you?
The answer to this question would ordinarily be:
"Because it’s illegal and government regulators would throw the book at us"
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So, working from the ground up; we have a set of traders looking to produce the best profits they can for personal gain, the major bank they work for and who should be supervising them with a need to disguise the level of its own funding costs and above them all, a government seeking to keep borrowing costs down in the middle of a gigantic financial storm. From such alignments of interest are the greatest of conspiracies born.
In my humble opinion, the Libor scandal (which has a LONG way to go before it has played out and which will claim a LOT more scalps) will mark a fundamental change in the treatment of financial conspiracy theories in the media. The sheer amount of coverage it will undoubtedly receive will signal a shift in attitude towards the exposing of such scandals rather than the blind-eyes that have been regularly turned in recent years.
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But perhaps, most-of-all, watching how quickly those in high places begin to throw each other under the bus, it will hasten the end of many other possible government conspiracies as exposing such events becomes an exercise in self-preservation. Prime amongst conspiracy theories that may soon be finally proven to be either valid or the figments of overactive imaginations, are those alleged in the gold and silver markets.
The allegations concerning precious metal price manipulation predate those surrounding Libor by decades but until now day they have remained similarly acknowledged within financial circles and ignored without. That may well be about to change.
Unencumbered by liability, the rising price of gold has always been a barometer of governmental failure to protect the purchasing power of fiat currency and the best indication of the damage that inflation does.Forget inexorably rising gold prices. Forget the corrections that shake loose hands from the wheel at every turn. In the broader context they carry far less relevance than the intrinsic values that gold provides a consistent yardstick to.A look at the value of assets measured in ounces of gold remains the most consistent way to get a sense of their real value and the charts below demonstrate all too clearly the true performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and average US house prices over the long term when measured in gold ounces.
If the long-stated claims about government-sanctioned, bank-led manipulation of precious metals markets put forward so eloquently by the likes of Ted Butler, Bill Murphy & Chris Powell at GATA as well as Messrs. Sprott, Sinclair, Davies et al are eventually proven to have any validity whatsoever, the fallout from the Libor scandal will prove to be (to use the words of Jamie Dimon) just another “tempest in a tea pot” as the precious metals are the very underpinnings of the entire global financial system. Conspiracy or no, it would be a blessed relief to get closure no matter what the truth turns out to be.
As for the full note by Grant Williams, which has much more in it, it can be found below
In my humble opinion, the Libor scandal (which has a LONG way to go before it has played out and which will claim a LOT more scalps) will mark a fundamental change in the treatment of financial conspiracy theories in the media. I'm in complete agreement over the significance of the LIBOR manipulation. We have before us a clear manifestation of the fact that our "free markets" are, in an unrealistic best of cirumstances, a soft corporatist tyranny. The manipulation of these rates--essential to the circulation of capital at the most basic level--are clear evidence of a massively-coordinated and rigged system. Those who would tirelessly reject the possibility of such a long-term fraud being perpetrated by such a large number of colluding interests (who must have been actively involved) now have before their eyes undeniable proof of that reality. While this still-unfolding revelation of broad criminal enterprise should be a game-changing opportunity to re-evaluate the supposedly benign nature of the government-media-financial complex, it is unfortunately just that--an opportunity, and one that will be surely be drowned out by a media suppine enough to move on to other things, and a government content to impose a mind-numbingly slow trickle of fines (at least for US-involved institutions). Will this shake up the media dynamic?. Conventions about transparency, "the need for oversight" and the importance of reigning in "rogue traders" will continue to be parroted, and we will see a bit of political fodder be made out of it since there is an election coming up. What you rightly see as evidence of concerted, flagrant, and undeniable abuses are never going to be covered with the enduring type of intensity that might ignite the structural changes you describe.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
The End Game: 2012 And 2013 Will Usher In The End" - The Scariest Presentation Ever
The End Game: 2012 And 2013 Will Usher In The End" - The Scariest Presentation Ever
Global Macro Investor "previously co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for GLG Partners, one of the largest hedge fund groups in the world. Raoul came to GLG from Goldman Sachs where he co-managed the hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives in Europe... Raoul Pal retired from managing client money in 2004 at the age of 36 and now lives on the Valencian coast of Spain, from where he writes." It is his writing we are concerned about, and specifically his latest presentation, which is, for lack of a better word, the most disturbing and scary forecast of the future of the world we have ever seen....
And we see a lot of those.
Consider this:
We are here...
We are here...
We don’t know exactly what is to come, but we can all join the very few dots from where we are now, to the collapse of the first major bank…. With very limited room for government bailouts, we can very easily join the next dots from the first bank closure to the collapse of the whole European banking system, and then to the bankruptcy of the governments themselves.. There are almost no brakes in the system to stop this, and almost no one realises the seriousness of the situation.. The problem is not Government debt per se. The real problem is that the $70 trillion in G10 debt is the collateral for $700 trillion in derivatives…. Yes, that equates to 1200% of Global GDP and it rests on very, very weak foundations. From an EU crisis, we only have to join one dot for a UK crisis of equal magnitude.. And then do you think Japan and China would not be next?. And then do you think the US would survive unscathed?. That is the end of the fractional reserve banking system and of fiat money. It is the big RESET.
It continues: Bonds will be stuck at 1% in the US, Germany, UK and Japan (for this phase).. The whole bond market will be dead.. Short selling on bonds - banned. Short selling stocks – banned. CDS – banned. Short futures – banned. Put options – banned.All that is left is the Dollar and Gold
It only gets better. We use the term loosely: We have around 6 months left of trading in Western markets to protect ourselves or make enough money to offset future losses.Spend your time looking at the risks of custody, safekeeping, counterparty etc. Assume that no one and nothing is safe.After that…we put on our tin helmets and hide until the new system emerges
And the punchline
From a timing perspective, I think 2012 and 2013 will usher in the end.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
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