Friday, August 14, 2009

Friday Night Send Off

It is now Friday and I will be off on vacation around noon tomorrow. Next weeks weather is looking perfect, which just two weeks ago seemed like too much to hope for.

Friday Night Entertainment
I saw some good items today, but to be honest I have one foot out the vacation door and feel unable to write any thought provoking blurbs. Instead I will do an extended entertainment section. If you hate this section, just tune back in on August 24th for the regular write ups. I stand by the blogroll to the left as the best collection of content on the web, so there is always plenty to read.

FED Chairman Game
Saw this game over at Clusterstock and it is an amusing time waster! The FED Chairman Game allows you to set interest rates for 4 years and monitor unemployment and inflation based on your inputs. Of course this game is just silly, I played anyway!

I pegged the FED funds rate at 10% and kept it there for 8 quarters (2 years). My result? Unemployment after 2 years of 10% and inflation clocking in a -3.0%! I caused deflation! Funny that we are in reality at ZIRP and we have 10% unemployment and deflation anyways. Go figure.

Play the game here.

Film Clips
Last post I referenced the classic film "They Live". Below is the relevant clip when the hero puts the magic sunglasses on for the first time and what he sees (skip to 1:30 mark):

Love what the cash has printed on it!

While not a film, my favorite cinema over the past couple of years was HBO's series "Rome". The progression of Octavian to Emperor Augustus was amazing, and there were many plot lines which were a nice take on history. Of course the action was great, and in this scene (warning very violent) we see one of the lead characters have to face his death in the arena. Great acting, great action, great music, what else is there?:


I was very upset when I read that a remake of the classic film "Red Dawn" is in the works. I have no idea how you can redo such an iconic (to my generation anyway) film, nor how to change the story line to fit today's landscape. Rumor is Russia uses China to invade the US, but China could just buy the US, so why fight for it? (Kidding)

Anyways, the most chilling scene in Red Dawn is when the colonel tells the tale of what happened to America. The line that scared me when I was younger:
"Last I heard there were a Billion screaming China men?"
"There were"

Enjoy, but skip ahead to the 5:15 mark for the big scene:


Rock Blogging
So you want to make some noise? You want to feel the bass vibrate your sternum? Ok, no problem.

I will lead off the night with a song that features a bass line that is thunderous, vocals that will blow you away, and a rhythm section that fills in nicely. On a second note, for all the guys and gals, some advice:
Buy some flowers (men) or beer (women), dim the lights, be nice for a day, load this song, and then see the results. 60% of the time, it works every time! Enjoy Garbage with "#1 Crush":

You can thank me after I get back from vacation.

I love the film "Walk the Line" and I still cannot believe Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sang their own lyrics for the film. Please enjoy a personal favorite, with "It Ain't Me Babe":


Now I had played the above tune before, over a year ago, and while I was looking for it, I saw the following song, which I really love as well. I played it the same night! As there were no comments on that post that night I will offer Sha Na Na and "Those Magic Changes" once again for your review:


Up front, I hate metal that features screaming. I hate metal that vibes nasty. That said, I can tolerate such things for a start to a song that features the guitar method known as "rolling chords" that is just plain wild. Listen, maybe, just to the first 30 seconds of Pantera with "Mouth for a War":


1 more or 2 more? Ok, 2 more!

Any song that starts off with the lyrics "Silver Coins..." is bound to get my attention. Add to that, it is Don Williams, and you get "Gypsy Woman":

Nice!

Sadly, it is time to close the show. I think you, the readers, may not realize just how much fun I have on Friday night adding this kind of content. I would hope there is something here for everyone to enjoy.

So what to close with? Very little in the requests.

“Hey, do you like ‘Flock of Seagulls?’
“I can see you do!”
-the film “The Wedding Singer”

This song by the Gulls is hacked on as an 80’s music relic, but I love relic’s!! Enjoy “I Ran”:


Have a good night, and a good week.

15 comments:

Lisa said...

Great Friday night blogging, G. Enough here for me to extend it into Saturday. Have a wonderful time away from the daily grind!

EconomicDisconnect said...

Lisa,
Thanks for the kind words. I will decompress over the week off and come back with even more snark! Thank you so much for all your support!

Watchtower,
If you knew my real name you would understand that I had to fight every day, for 3 years, in grade school, due to provoking. After grade 3, even the 6th graders would not bother me. I guess I have always been a fighter.

Anonymous said...

GYSC

"advice:
Buy some flowers (men) or beer (women), dim the lights, be nice for a day, load this song, and then see the results. 60% of the time, it works every time! Enjoy Garbage with "#1 Crush""

LOL

After 32 years of marital bliss I can safely say that the flowers would go a lot further then that song would when it comes to swooning my most valuable asset:-)
This one might work out a lot better in my case:

Ernest Tubb with Willie Nelson - Waltz Across Texas (1979)
http://tinyurl.com/kjqkb3

That was playing when I asked her to merry me, works every time:-)

I do like Gypsy woman very much though.
LOL
Kevin

EconomicDisconnect said...

Kevin,
Thanks for the tip. I will try it out this week. We all have missed you my friend.

Anonymous said...

GYSC,

I have been tied up dealing with a vandalism out at my farm and the insurance company and contractors, The house out there got trash about a week and a half ago. I thought I had got away from this crap when I left CA but as things get worse I guess no where is going to be exempt. That house has been vacant for the 4 years I have owned it but I had an exclusion in my farm policy that covers all bet 500 in damages, I think it will be well over 10k in repairs. I got lucky as in most cases a vacant home isn't insurable.

Kevin

GawainsGhost said...

Enjoy your time off, GYC.

I would concur with Kevin, except that I have different tastes. Flowers are nice, lillies or sunflowers, but I would go with a good red wine or even better a nice champagne. And the ulitmate makeout album is Electric Warrior by T. Rex.

Too bad there aren't any videos of the better songs on that album on YouTube, but I've always found "Lean Woman Blues" to be particularly romantic, in an unrequited love kind of way.

Lean love
All you give to me is lean love
I'm like a beggar in the sand
With the sky in his hand
And I'm blue

Black day
All you give to me are your wild ways
Well you're the love of my life
And then you gorge me with a knife
And I'm blue

Lightening
All the heavy world is frightening
I'm like a beggar in the sand
On the beach of the land of you
And I'm blue

Now if that don't make you all weepy, well, you either don't have a heart or you've never been in love.

Anyway, yeah, I found that fix the Fed test interesting. I set the interest rate at 19%, the highest I could, and endend up with unemployment of 4.69% and an inflation rate of 2.26%. But of course the test is rigged. It wouldn't let me reinstitute Glass-Steagall, return to the gold standard, repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and the Fed, end fractional reserve lending, imprison Congress, and execute by Chinese water torture every executive at Goldman Sachs.

By the way, in case you missed these clips over at the Big Picture, here is a good interview with Taleb on why the Fed is not fixing the fundamental problem.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/08/roubini-and-taleb-back-together-again/

And he's exactly right. The policies implemented are punishing savers, rewarding failures, and transferring private debt to public debt. This is not capitalism, and it sucks.

Also, this clip from Comedy Central is hilarious.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/08/john-oliver-scares-mba-students-straight/

Finally, Max Keiser interviews Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge. Very interesting.

http://maxkeiser.com/

Have a nice week.

watchtower said...

Colonial BancGroup shut down by federal officials

"WASHINGTON – Real estate lender Colonial BancGroup Inc. has been shut down by federal officials in the biggest U.S. bank failure this year."

"While losses on home mortgages may be leveling off, delinquencies on commercial real estate loans remain a hot spot of potential trouble, FDIC officials say."

http://tinyurl.com/rcf544


Green shoot?

Anonymous said...

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, pushing his plans for revamping the U.S. health-care system, said Americans are being “held hostage” by the risk that insurers may cancel or deny medical coverage when they get sick.

“It’s wrong,” Obama told an audience at a town hall yesterday in Belgrade, Montana, about eight miles northwest of Bozeman. “It’s bankrupting families, it’s bankrupting business, and we are going to fix it when we pass health- insurance reform this year.”
http://tinyurl.com/oy3epx

Somehow the fact that bailing out the banks by the FED, Treasury by our corrupt politicans and throwing main street under the bus which is basically turning our still insolvent US banking system into an insolvent country seems to have escaped any mention.

Sad days indeed.

Kevin

GawainsGhost said...

Well, GYC is on vacation and incommunicato, so I know he won't read this till he gets back. But I'm going to throw this out there just to be a thorn in his side.

Just read an interesting article in BusinessWeek. Viacom is coming out with a new version of the video game Rock Band starring . . . the Beatles!

This is notable because it marks the first time the notoriously analog band has allowed their music to be stored in a digital format. But the tracks, including all of Abbey Road, are embedded in the program, so you can only listen to them while you're playing the game.

Still, it's progress. If they were to digitalize the Beatles catalogue and re-release it, sales would be through the roof. By the way, did you know that there are only three bands that have sold over 1 billion albums? They are Elvis, the Beatles, and George Strait. Believe it or not.

Welcome back, GYC. He he he.

Jeff said...

Get

Enjoy your holiday!

Safe travels if head out somewhere.

Talk to you when you get back.

Anonymous said...

Revolution coming with next meltdown

Americans are not going to put up with the "Wall Street Conspiracy" ripping off investors and taxpayers much longer. Wall Street got rich sticking us with mountains of debt for generations to come.

Expect a major house-cleaning, a second American Revolution. We predicted the "Great Depression 2" around 2012. Well, we doubt taxpayers will passively sit one more time, like in the 1930s, in 2000, and the past few years. Next time voters will take a page from the history books about past revolutions in the American Colonies, France and Russia. A perfect storm will erupt in a massive global credit meltdown, bringing down Wall Street and the clandestine $670 trillion shadow central banking system. And the collateral damage will be massive and widespread, in areas such as these:

•Lobbyists' power is lethal to our values. Special interests are running and destroying American democracy, will self-destruct.

•Derivatives: Cap 'n trade will crash worse than subprime. The Goldman Conspiracy's spending millions lobbying for trillion-dollar derivatives.

•"Too-greedy-to-fail" big banks will trigger harsh backlash. Banks pay huge bonuses yet modify only 9% of 4 million stressed home loans.

•America's wealth gap will trigger grass-roots rebellion. Wall Street's greed is so pervasive, gluttonous and obvious the rest will rebel.

•The "Goldman Conspiracy" will be a target for retribution. Goldman's hubris is most egregious and flagrant. Their arrogance will backfire.

•Wave of creative destruction will revive commercial banking. Investment bankers are killing commercial banking, Glass-Steagall will return.

•Secrecy protecting Wall Street's unethical behavior to end. Wall Street's control over Washington's lawmaking will come to an end.

•The Fed's shadow banking will collapse under excess debt. Central bank balance sheets overdrawn, feeding new bubble with cheap money.

•A "Black Swan" of huge unintended consequences. Next bubble, highly unpredictable, huge collateral damage on Wall Street.

Make the most of this new bull. Then get out -- before you're the collateral damage
http://tinyurl.com/nhna7d

Ya think?

Kevin

Anonymous said...

Outbursts at Barney
Frank's Town Hall
http://tinyurl.com/n9rtte

This lying, corrupt little pompous ass is so full of crap it makes one wonder what the people of that state are thinking.
Giving this guy the shove out the door is what desperately need here.

Kevin

Lisa said...

Just a couple of news items for y'all:


(US) US may wind down cash for clunkers program next month - WSJ
- The government may as soon as today announce a plan for winding down the program.
- In California, the surge in buyer interest that occurred when the program was first launched has dropped considerably because of shortages of popular cars such as the Toyota Corrolla and Ford Focus.

**Note: An earlier CNBC report disclosed that more than 200 NY auto dealers had withdrawn from the cash for clunkers program on reimbursement delays.
---------------------------
(US) Recent FT feature comments on a letter sent to Pres Obama from a group of 60 of the more liberal members of the House, urging the president not to exclude the "public option" from health care reform
- Says "Americans deserve reform that is real - not smoke and mirrors... passage in the House depends upon inclusion of it"
- Feature notes that the letter underscores the divide with a more centrist Senate, where Chairman of Finance Committee Max Baucus and Chairman of Budget Committee Kent Conrad insist that a bill including the public option would not pass in the upper chamber

watchtower said...

Stocks jump as Bernanke says economy near recovery

"NEW YORK – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has told investors what they wanted to hear: The economy is indeed on the verge of recovery."

http://tinyurl.com/nmybk6

"It's all good!" - Casey Serin

GawainsGhost said...

Lisa, in The Millionaire Mind, there's a story about a guy who worked at a car dealership. They had this old clunker they couldn't sell, so the manager told him to take it down to the junk yard and get what he could for it. The junk dealer paid $500 to take it off his hands.

Shortly thereafter this customer came into the dealership. He had the same model car as the clunker, and he wanted to buy a used engine for it. So the manager sent the dealer back to the junk yard to purchase it. The junk dealer sold it to him for $500.

Bells rung, light bulbs went off, in the dealer's head. This junk dealer just got 100% return on his money, and he still has the rest of the car--the tires, the chasis, the brakes, the windows, everything else--to sell. So the dealer quit his job and started a used trucks parts business, and became a multi-millionaire.

This is how stupid the government is. They mandate destroying old cars because they have no concept of how to make money, only how to waste it.