another site
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Ben’s Adam and Janet is Eve
These morons are simply naïve
The forbidden fruit
Is infinite loot
But the serpent named Keynes they believe
The Limerick King
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Visual Combat Fine Art Prints
Inquiries: banzai7institute@gmail.com
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/nOxv0E3x9R8/story01.htm williambanzai7
Ohio said on Monday that it does not have enough of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital to carry out a scheduled execution next month. As Reuters reports, Ohio is the latest U.S. state to face a scarcity after the European manufacturer banned its sale for lethal injections of prisoners sentenced to death. The European Union is opposed to the death penalty (physical as opposed to economic) and has put pressure on US States to stop the practice. If only there was an anonymous online exchange where ‘drugs’ could be bought and sold to meet the demands of those looking for a quick fix (or multiple executions) despite the oversight of various freedoms by governments.
Via Reuters,
Ohio said on Monday that it does not have enough of the drug pentobarbital to carry out a scheduled execution next month, the latest U.S. state to face a scarcity after the European manufacturer banned its sale for lethal injections of prisoners sentenced to death.
Ohio is one of a number of U.S. states which have been forced to look to new suppliers such as lightly regulated “compounding pharmacies,” or turn to new drugs for executions because major pharmaceutical companies are opposed to use of their drugs in carrying out the death penalty.
…
The Danish manufacturer of pentobarbital, Lundbeck LLC , has banned its sale to prisons or corrections departments for the death penalty. The European Union, of which Denmark is a member, is opposed to the death penalty and has put pressure on U.S. states to stop the practice.
On Monday, Ohio prison officials notified the state that Ohio does not have “sufficient quantity” of pentobarbital to carry out the execution of Ronald Phillips on Nov. 14, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
She said the state will turn to the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, which are not commonly used in lethal injections, for the Phillips execution.
We almost hesitate to note the irony that perhaps as retribution for pervasive US spying, Europe will make sure America’s terminal convicts are relegated to more obsolete methods of “expiration” – gallows, drawing and quartering, firing squad are just some that spring to mind.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/9nT8uSta9nU/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Ohio said on Monday that it does not have enough of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital to carry out a scheduled execution next month. As Reuters reports, Ohio is the latest U.S. state to face a scarcity after the European manufacturer banned its sale for lethal injections of prisoners sentenced to death. The European Union is opposed to the death penalty (physical as opposed to economic) and has put pressure on US States to stop the practice. If only there was an anonymous online exchange where ‘drugs’ could be bought and sold to meet the demands of those looking for a quick fix (or multiple executions) despite the oversight of various freedoms by governments.
Via Reuters,
Ohio said on Monday that it does not have enough of the drug pentobarbital to carry out a scheduled execution next month, the latest U.S. state to face a scarcity after the European manufacturer banned its sale for lethal injections of prisoners sentenced to death.
Ohio is one of a number of U.S. states which have been forced to look to new suppliers such as lightly regulated “compounding pharmacies,” or turn to new drugs for executions because major pharmaceutical companies are opposed to use of their drugs in carrying out the death penalty.
…
The Danish manufacturer of pentobarbital, Lundbeck LLC , has banned its sale to prisons or corrections departments for the death penalty. The European Union, of which Denmark is a member, is opposed to the death penalty and has put pressure on U.S. states to stop the practice.
On Monday, Ohio prison officials notified the state that Ohio does not have “sufficient quantity” of pentobarbital to carry out the execution of Ronald Phillips on Nov. 14, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
She said the state will turn to the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, which are not commonly used in lethal injections, for the Phillips execution.
We almost hesitate to note the irony that perhaps as retribution for pervasive US spying, Europe will make sure America’s terminal convicts are relegated to more obsolete methods of “expiration” – gallows, drawing and quartering, firing squad are just some that spring to mind.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/9nT8uSta9nU/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Given the Presidential Twitter attack, this material from July 14th 2012 may be relevant for some:
There is a real fear in the markets now and it is not being caused by Europe, LIEbor, Linda Green, London Whales, etc. The fear is focused on the structure of how prices are discovered and assets/risk are transferred to willing participants. Bad algorithms have been treacherous in the past, to put it lightly. The debate has been focused so much on the ways exchanges have destroyed their reputations by selling enhanced data feeds with your trade information in it. Every time you trade, your order is routed to a given location to be matched and whether it executes AON, filled 100 blocks in 5 minute intervals at VWAP, cancelled and readjusted stop limit, adjustments to limit order prices/sizes, etc, is recorded and given an account number.
This data is grouped and sold by exchanges and market centers to participants with computer capable of processing and utilizing the encoded “enhanced data feed”. This insight into quantifiable market participant behavior is on a material level and could be argued as being insider information.
Now imagine the smartest minds we have focused on and picture their intent not being keen on ROI but on chaos and havoc. Imagine someone has all this information regarding given perceptions of all participants within the US capital market structure, from equities to futures to commodities to currency to bonds for any given millisecond. Imagine that the Russian gov’t, Chinese gov’t, and Iran gov’t had access to this information and in a coordinated effort decided to attack and manipulate the US markets through high speed access and rapid flows of orders that could trick machines and send errant signals regarding the reality of the market at any given time.
The recent mess with Facebook and BATS have shown the vulnerabilities of our exchange centers and regulators. Most of the national focus here in the US has been portrayed as something that is contained with our boarders, however should something more sophisticated (Stuxnet and Flame?) be deployed within our market structure (perhaps through those shell brokerages tied to Al-Queada we’ve heard about) only then will the focus change. We need to recognize and consider the probability of something like this happening.
Page 2, Paragraph 3 of Economic Warfare: Risks & Responses:
Perhaps its time we pressure the CFTC and SEC to reach a definition already on HFT and get their shit in line. This whole mess of a capitalist market is primed to collapse at any moment. No one is ready, not the exchanges, not the regulators, not the participators, not the governments, no one. We have no back up should assets prices drop like they did on May 6, 2010 and not rebound. Imagine more MFG’s and PFG’s vaporizing client money as commodity prices go haywire, like the Oil Complex did. As “normalcy bias” continues to grip those involved in the debate, we must focus on the shared vulnerability to damage by a rouge nation or coordinated behavior by nations fighting a battle that isn’t on a the typical battlefield. Picture World War 3 being a financial war, not a weaponry war.Think about it.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/TqRugNB373Q/story01.htm CalibratedConfidence
With even the Federal Reserve throwing doubt on the veracity (or usefulness) of the ‘official’ unemployment data (having finally caught on to the reality we have highlighted for a number of years), Petr Pinkhasov has created a more ‘real’ unemployment index reflecting the reality of every day for the average American…
The following is an index tracking unemployment related searches on Google. The official description of this chart is the following: “unemployment, food stamps, social security, edd, disability” and so forth.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/LmOz0nA0pfY/story01.htm Tyler Durden
The last time a Tesla Model S struck an object in the road and burst into flames, it resulted in a rather dramatic stock price demise and a hastily put together PR blitz explaining that “there is nothing to see here, move along.” We wondered at the time how soon we would hear the second ‘crackle’ of battery packs exploding and sure enough, less than a month later, Jalopnik reports (as the clip below shows) another Tesla Model S has caught fire in a Mexico city following a crash. How many Fiskers went up in flames before people started doubting that company’s reassurances?
Onlookers caught video of the fire and subsequent explosions that occurred after the crash. Towards the end it shows firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.
And some color from Jalopnik voia the Tesla spokesperson:
“We were able to contact the driver quickly and are pleased that he is safe. This was a significant accident where the car was traveling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury. He is appreciative of the safety and performance of the car and has asked if we can expedite delivery of his next Model S.”
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/9hXt4zWGLYc/story01.htm Tyler Durden
While on the surface today’s bond auction of “only” $32 billion in 2 Year paper (last month and previously it was $33 billion or more, which is now declining alongside the dropping US deficit and net funding needs, if not the absolutely flat amount of debt monetized by the Fed), was uninspiring, there was some stirring beneath the surface. Specifically, the high yield of 0.323% was through the When Issued of 0.328%, while the Bid To Cover of 3.32 was above last month’s 3.09, and was the highest since the 3.63 in April. Has the trend of declining Bids to Cover finally ended? Looking at the internals shows a return to some recent normalcy, namely that the Directs took down a substantial 30.97%, the highest since February, Indirects had a modest 29.02% allocation leaving just 40% to the Dealers, which was also the lowest Primary Dealer take down since October of last year. Perhaps most importantly, the flatline in the yield which has been in the 0.3% range since August 2011 indicates that absolutely nobody belives the Fed will hike rates any time before 2016.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ezy_w1g3ZvE/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
In these climax years of industrial technocratic society, two opposing forces shape the destiny of government: the desperate effort to control everything versus the decline of the ability to carry out that effort. The result will be the loss of legitimacy and the collapse of government from the highest levels, moving downward until the real power to make anything work re-sets at a feasible and appropriate level — probably very local. This dynamic is seen very clearly in three spectacles du jour: the “national security” (spying) mess, government-sponsored accounting fraud in finance, and the ObamaCare rollout.
As history develops, people do things for the simple reason that it seems like a good idea at the time. Computer tech made it possible for bureaucrats and military apparatchiks to invade the privacy of everybody, but in the end it only had the effect of embarrassing the perpetrators and eroding a big chunk of the US government’s legitimacy. The attempt at maximum control will eventually lead to maximum resistance and, quite possibly, some sort of political revolution, perhaps starting with the death of the two dominant political parties. When political disruption finally occurs, it will manifest quickly, as criticality thresholds are breached. It has the potential of taking this society in very undesirable directions including civil war, theocracy, and war against other peoples.
The diminishing returns of computer technology applied to intelligence gathering are that it produces more mountains of data than any team of professionals can make sense of, and it prompts said professionals to make mischief with the information that is easiest to sort out: the financial records of ordinary citizens. Nothing will create political resistance more surely than messing with people’s money. The NSA apparatus is now a self-reinforcing monster that will strive for ever more control ineffectively, creating a debris path of ever more embarrassment and resentment. A lone true patriot like Snowden does more to oppose this monster than all the “freedom” and “liberty” spouting, flag-lapel-pin-wearing cowards in either political party.
The pervasive accounting fraud in the attempt to prop up an unsound banking system is even closer to criticality. A society that produces tradable goods needs sound money which functions as 1) a medium of exchange, 2) a store of value 3) a unit of account for establishing prices. The combined accounting frauds in Federal Reserve policy, private banking and securities markets, and government fiscal management is destroying all these functions. The more abstracted finance gets from real productive activity, the more fragile the system becomes. We are doing nothing now except adding more complexity and abstraction to it, causing the system to become more detached from reality. In effect, we’re opting to forego an economy based on goods in favor of one based on empty promises and paper swindles. The potential and probable consequent destruction of nominal wealth would be an event that advanced technocratic society likely will not recover from — in the sense that today’s standard of living could be preserved for billions of people worldwide. That destruction would herald a new dark age, this time without any prospect of recovery via the exploitation of natural resources, which will have been depleted.
The ObamaCare piece of the picture is a mere pathetic soap opera compared to the first two quandaries. The 2000-page law did nothing to address the core tragedy of medicine in America — namely, that it has evolved into a hideous hostage racket. You go to a hospital with a terrifying illness and you are susceptible to fleecing by the so-called “care-givers” for the promise that you may get to live. No prices for treatment are never discussed. They are presumed to be astronomical — but who cares if you end up dead, and if you do get to live, you’ll figure that out later. If you hold an insurance policy, these charges will be subject to a fake negotiation between grifting insurance companies and grifting hospitals, physicians, and drug companies. The price “settlements” are only slightly less a joke than the actual charges, and are obfuscated in documents designed to bewilder even well-educated policy-holders.
Even if you are insured, the charges may bankrupt you. A typical one-day charge for “room and board” in a non-specialized hospital in-patient bed runs $23,000 at my local hospital. For what? Half a dozen blood-pressure checks and three bad meals? You can be sure that ever-fewer families will be able to fork over $12,000-a-year for basic coverage. The ObamaCare legislation and its laughable rollout of a useless website is just a punctuation mark at the end of the soap opera script. The result eventually will be the complete implosion of the medical racket and a return to a very primitive clinic system, with payment in chickens or cords of stove-wood. The smaller number of surviving humans will surely enjoy better health, and greater piece of mind, when this monster racket expires of inertia, bad faith, and deceit.
These efforts to manage runaway hyper-complexity with more complexity are guaranteed to fail. Our prime task at this moment in history is managing contraction, and the means for doing that would be simplifying, not adding layers of complication larded with fraud, pretense, and mendacity.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/diQvN4g7PNk/story01.htm Tyler Durden
In the paradoxical New Normal media world in which the legacy creators of original content (even if most of it is designed to suit a specific agenda) are hopelessly burning cash at an ever faster pace, while those who (at least for the time being) are profitable and cater to the “social network crowd” do so on the backs of kittens, slideshows and headlines designed to attract the lowest common denominator, what is one to do? One suggestion, as the following XKCD table shows, is to rewrite history, while focusing on the only thing that matters: trolling for reads, bobbing for CPM and clickbaiting, of course.
Source: XKCD
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/E3Dms8xrWJ8/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Apple announces after the market close today. For my subscribers, I believe true valuation hovers around my base case scenario from the last Apple update. Of course, after we have crunched the numbers from this quarterly update we will have considerably more empirical data to munch on. As a quick review…
Apple’s major problem is that the vast majority of its profits come from 2 products, both of which are rapidly losing market share and are outclassed by the competition in many different ways. On top of that, the competition is both undercutting on prices and outperforming on tech. That’s a bad combination for a company that relies on fat margins to sustain their share price.
iPhone-5-vs-Galaxy-S4-Xperia-Z-Ultra
The mere diversity of the Android universe is a significant threat to Apple’s margins. Check this out…
2 40
A water-proof phone must be corny, right?
I know, many will say.. “But, But this is tablet, not a phone!!!” Well, if that’s the case, it competes mightily against both the iPad and the iPad mini (the mini hurts Apple’s historical margins and the iPad is dropping in both ASP and market share like a rock). We all know what follows rapid market share loss, right?
In early 2010 I warned on Blackberry (then RIMM), with market share loss to Android being the prime determinant… Many More Black Eyes for the Blackberry? A Complete Forensic Analysis of Research in Motion. I put significant data out in the public domain to illustrate my point and put explicit price points out for subscribers, ie. RIM Smart Phone Market Share, RIP? Was I right?
Blackberry market share vs margin correlation analysisBlackberry market share vs margin correlation analysisBlackberry market share vs margin correlation analysis
Sony Xperia Z Ultra Apple Compare
The iPhone and the iPad business franchises are still making money hand over fist, but they are also losing market share and margin – and doing so quickly…
image038image039image048
The addition of (margin) mini products and iPhone 5Cs simply evidence what is obvious, the existence of products like those below are pressuing Apple and continue to eat at its hegemony…
11 xperia z ultra 271315438590382730
On top of the fact that Apple faces extreme compeition on all fronts, common business sense begs the question, Have We Reached “Peak Premium Smartphone”?
See also:
Is Tim Cook Cooked? Market Share vs Profit Margin, part 2 – Follow What I Do, Not What I Say!
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/HLBPcZM9cSM/story01.htm Reggie Middleton
