Friday Night Weekly Wrap Up

It is Friday! A short 4 day week, but it certainly seemed to go by very slowly. I just received my Allen Brothers USDA Prime Beef order by UPS. Included are Prime Beef hamburgers for opening NFL Sunday as well as 8 8oz Filet Mignons that have been aged to perfection for the last cookout of the year next weekend. Take that all you vegetarians!

While readership has been light on the site for a while, I did notice that I have not heard from the original loyal reader Kevin for a while. i hope all is well and Kevin is just on vacation. Gawains Ghost has also been MIA, but I imagine he is feverishly preparing for the NFL opening weekend.

I am a bit burnt out tonight, so I think I will cover some items that caught my eye and then move on to the more fun stuff we always have on Friday nights.

Weekend Reading
The Automatic Earth has a true work of art up today, and I would recommend you spend some time reading the entire article (Ilargi's intro and the J.S Kim expansive commentary) because it captures what is truly at risk now that the market manipulation has many thinking all is well.
Through The Prism of Fraud and Poverty
Truly, there is no Plan B.

Deflation Conquers All
It seems the ravages of deflation excoriates all in it's path:
States Face Drop in Gambling Revenues
Impossible! Inconceivable!

The Real Evil of Purposeful Inflation
There exists a line of thinking that to escape the huge debt load of the US, we could inflate it away over time by engineering "elevated" inflation. I will not debate such thinking as it implies the central bank can in fact target anything with any success. Instead I found out what the real evil of sustained inflation could be (from Clusterstock):
New America Foundation Urges US To Inflate Our Way Out Of Debt

A new paper from the New America Foundation urges that US to adopt a policy of moderate inflation in order to allevieate the massive public and private debt burden.
Authored by Chris Hayes, the Washington DC editor of the Nation, the paper argues that too much debt will have a deadening effect on the economy, as people are consigned to “debtor serfdom” and the government cannot afford to provide basic services because of the cost of making its debt payments.
“The surest way to avoid such a fate is to jettison a central, indeed the central axiom of post-1970s neoliberal global capitalism, and that is to embrace a period of moderate, sustained inflation,” Hayes argues.

Ok, so whats the possible downside?:

Fortunately, not everyone in DC is jumping on board the inflate our way to debt-freedom bandwagon. Daniel Indiviglio a the Atlantic spells out a number of problems with the idea.

Ready for the lead off item of terrible consequences?:

It would more or less make future Keynesian stimulus spending from debt impossible.

No more Keynesian stimulus! This evil must be opposed at all costs! I mean, Paul Krugman would be out of a job if this happens.

China and Gold
There has been plenty of rumblings about China and what they may or may not be doing min regards to gold. Zero Hedge has a great guest post up that covers all the bases:
Guest Post: What The Heck Is Going On With China

Friday Night Entertainment
Time to move on to more pressing matters, like a mixed bag of fun!

Movie Quotes Restructured for Finance
This week I had a bit of interaction with the great site Illusion of Prosperity and the author Stagflationary Mark. I had remarked, regarding all the commercial properties being built in China that had nobody to lease them:
"If you build it, they will come? Maybe they could try baseball fields on the roofs of the buildings?"
To which Stag Mark responded:
GYSC, Field of Ponzi Dreams! ;)

And this got me thinking about a certain scene near the end of the film "Field of Dreams" and how a perfect quote could be made by substituting some words. Here is what I came up with:

Closing scene when the poor retail trader sees his long since debt imploded dad as a younger entry in the ponzi scheme:
"I had not seen him until later in the pyramid, worn down by redemption's!"

Of course I could not think of anything else but this kind of word play all week and so I offer two more modified movie lines for your enjoyment (hopefully!).

From Star Wars; A New Hope (Episode IV):
The scene when Darth Vader is told how the Death Star is now the ultimate power in the universe, so he responds:

"Don't be too proud of this high frequency trading technological terror you've constructed. The ability to front run your own clients is insignificant next to the power of the derivatives market."

Last one is from "The Godfather II" and the scene is when Michael wants Tom Hagen to agree to kill Roth at the airport:

"Mike, is it worth it? You've won. You got paid out at 100 cents on the dollar for your hedges. Do you want to wipe everybody out?
"I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my counter parties."

A little attempt at humor. Very little!


From the Department of Cool
Forget "run flat" tires and just go airless instead:

Very Wild!

How about a 5mm diameter gold piece hammered into a sheet a half meter square (small nugget at bottom of photo):

Now you know what malleable means.

It is not the size of the chicken in the fight, but the size of the fight in the chicken. Remember, size matters not!:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Film Clips
Inspired by Stagflation Marks unicorn cartoons, I found the key scene form the animated film "The Last Unicorn" in which King Haggard tells where all the unicorns have gone. Voice work by Christopher Lee (Count Dooku, Sauroman):


While not a film, one of my favorite scenes anywhere is a flash back scene from "The Highlander" series. Skip ahead to the 2:15 mark and you will see a tension filled head to head meeting between long time foes that cannot hide how much they hate one another:

Chilling.

Rock Blogging
After I was inundated with requests (haha) I will try and find some playable music for the masses.

Starting off with a great song that was on the "Silence of the Lambs" soundtrack, minus the disturbing imagery, try out Q. Lazarus with "Goodbye Horses":


I stumbled upon this wicked live show at Donnington of AC/DC and "Thunderstruck":


In the face of the manipulated bull market that will not quit, I will channel Dido and never throw up the "White Flag":


A song I used to listen to while boxing training was Iron Maiden's "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" because it is inspirirng. For the best part, skip ahead to the 3:00 minute mark for the ultimate "keep going" push:


Last call! Time to close the show for tonight.

A little while back I gave some grief about somebody bringing up "Waynes World" in the comments section. I will credit the film with one major achievement, the band Queen finally got some of the credit they richly desreve as one of the finest bands of all time. Here is the song that caught most by surprise, but not if you already loved the band, "Bohemian Rhapsody:


Leave a comment, any comment, if you had a good time and....

Have a good night.