Author: admin

Is it really so different from this?

(h/t @noalpha_allbeta)

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Lzz_UZ6F2x0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Years ago, before everyone had in-car navigation systems, I held on to an amusing little thought about traveling on the freeways: when you witnessed a huge backup on the other side (that is, traveling the other direction), and it went on for mile after mile, and then it finally cleared, you were put in the unusual position of actually knowing the short-term future of all the poor souls who, farther up the road, were zipping along, blissfully unaware of the hellacious backup that would soon face them. I would glance at the dozens of drivers enjoying their 70 MPH care-free spin, knowing that their lives were about to get worse really soon. As tragedies go, it doesn’t exactly rank, but it was still an amusing realization of the power of fortune-telling.

I am going through precisely that same experience now, except it’s with myself. For a variety of reasons, I am going through all the posts I’ve ever written for Slope. I am presently up to May 2008, and that is a particularly fascinating point in time, because the market had experienced a rather hearty slump (which I enjoyed immensely) and then began an unrelenting and inexplicable recovery higher, which I’ve tinted in green.

So my “driving on the highway” experience in this case is that I am both the observer (that is, Tim Knight doing this in late October 2013) and the observed (the Tim from over five years ago, expressing his increasingly-frustrated thoughts about the market’s climb, after having tumbled over 300 S&P points earlier). I sound like a kid whose favorite toy had been snatched away……..probably because that’s exactly what it felt like.

On my post from May 13, I wrote, “I have no index exposure at this time. I simply find the potential for a breakout too disturbing, and the reluctance of the market to fall, no matter what the news.” (Please note that these old posts lack graphic images, because they didn’t survive the move from Typepad to WordPress).

A couple of days later, I had become so disgusted with the market that I decided to only write one post on my blog per day which, for a blogoholic like myself, is pretty extreme: “Until the markets get enjoyable (e.g. bearish) again, I’ll be returning to my “one post a day” format after the close. A lot of folks have become accustomed to my frequent intraday posts, and I’ll do that again if sanity returns, but until then, it’s back to the old routine.”

On May 15, I was really approaching the breaking point: “It’s hard to remember a time that I felt so disenchanted with the market. I enjoy charting, and I enjoy trading, but when the world seems turned upside down like it is, the whole affair loses its charm………..You can tell from my tone I’m feeling pretty miserable about the market. I can deal with markets, be they up or down, as long as they make some kind of sense to me. This one doesn’t. So it’s discouraging for someone who wants to analyze price action to be faced with what appear to me to be baffling contradictions. So I’m sorry I don’t have anything more inspiring to say.”

And the next day, I openly mused about whether one should just throw their hands up and buy, just like everyone else was doing: “Does one simply dive into these stocks? Some do. And they have, by and large, profited handsomely from doing so. The difficulty is figuring out when the music is going to stop playing. Was today the top for these stocks? Or is the top several years and many hundreds of percent away?”

On the exact day of the recovery top, I had become so morose that readers started sending me emails to try to buck up my spirits: “I’ve been deluged with emails from folks telling me that the top is in and everything is going to start plunging again. While I genuinely appreciate the heartfelt sentiments – – – I know they are from true believers, and I know they are offered to make me feel better – – the grotesque fact of the matter is that the U.S. Government, whose principal drivers are colluding directly with their Wall Street buddies, has mortgaged the future of the country in order to bail out the zillionaires in Manhattan. This sounds like aluminum-hat-wearing type drivel, and I’m sorry that it does, but I truly believe this to be the case. Were it not for all of Bernanke’s meddling, the meltdown would have continued in all its full glory. As it is now, the day of reckoning has been simply delayed.”

Well, the “day of reckoning” started happening at that very moment. But just like those folks driving on the road at the top of this post, there was just no way to tell at the time what was about to take place. (I’ve tinted the “when will this rally end?” whining period in the chart below).

Of course, the “relentless” rise hasn’t been for two months this time…….it’s been for nearly five years. And I can tell you, reporting directly from the heart of the Silicon Valley, the zeitgeist around here is 1999 and 2007 compressed together and supercharged. I present you a snapshot I made of the magazine sitting at the grocery store a few days ago:

A baby. Wearing Google Glass. Good God. And in a fitting exhibition of the total lack of self-awareness, the words chosen are as close to “It’s Different This Time!” as they could muster (Specifically, “This time, the tech explosion doesn’t have to end in tears.“) People never learn. Ever. Even the really smart ones.

I’ll close with this blast from the past. I scanned for you a comic from late 1999 from This Modern World. The same people reveling in the present bubble (which dwarfs the Internet bubble) would still find this little snippet amusing, particularly since they would figure the world has become a lot wiser since then. (Click on it to give yourself a better chance of actually making out the words).

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/48uQDrU9DgM/story01.htm Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

Wolf Richter   www.testosteronepit.com   www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter

Consumer spending, the foundation of the US economy, has not exactly been growing at gangbuster rates. With one big exception: auto sales. Accounting for about 20% of total retail sales, they’ve been phenomenal, booking double-digit growth rates, and the industry has been wallowing in its own exuberance. But in September, there was a downdraft. The calendar got blamed. And in October, there was the 16-day government shutdown and the debt-ceiling debacle. It hit auto sales hard.

Some manufacturers started muttering unprintable things under their breath. Hyundai CEO John Krafcik worried out loud that the debacle could chop off 10% from October sales. A Kelly Blue Book survey painted an even grimmer picture: 18% of potential buyers said they’d outwait the conniptions in Washington before buying a car or truck. Now that the debt-ceiling can has been kicked down the road into next year, there are rumors that auto sales have picked up again. Halleluiah. Even if true, October’s quarter panel may have gotten dented.

Our favorite hope mongers got slammed on Friday by the Reuter’s/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. It continued its ugly cascade into purgatory. At the end of August, it was 82.1; consumers were feeling OKish. Then it came unglued: 77.5 at the end of September, 75.2 in mid-October, and 73.2 today, the lowest reading since December 2012, when consumers had been contemplating the dreadful but now forgotten fiscal cliff.

Much of the dive is based on the economic outlook index, which plunged from 73.7 in August to 67.8 in September, to 63.9 in mid-October to 62.5 today. The “solution” in Washington has done nothing to assuage consumers. Plus, the dive had started before the Washington conniptions became acute and may be seated more deeply.

But industry soothsayers had been spewing retail optimism for weeks. Consumers intend to goose their spending by a breath-taking 11% to $646, found management consulting firm Accenture in its pre-holiday shopping intention survey conducted in September and released October 7. OK, so Accenture counts big retailers among its clients, and it might have had an agenda.

But even in its soothing ointment there was a fly: the disparity between the few who benefited from the Fed’s policies and the many who got clobbered by them. Of the respondents, 18% would spend less than last year, and 62% would spend the same. That’s 80%! The remaining 20% would increase their spending, by a lot! 16% by up to $499; and 4%, the real beneficiaries of the Fed’s policies, by over $500. The determination of shopping on Black Friday is the “highest in five years,” the report said. And gift cards, the greatest ripoff of all times, are still number one on consumers’ shopping lists.

Ah yes, the inexplicable American consumer, the strongest creature out there that no one has been able to subdue yet! According to Accenture, this will be a hopping holiday season for retailers.

So Deloitte, another mega consulting, tax, and audit firm, weighed in with the results of its survey, conducted in mid-September before the shutdown debacle, but released on October 21. According to it, these inexplicable American consumers would boost their holiday spending by 9.1%.  

They weren’t alone, way out there on that limb. On October 3, the National Retail Federation forecast that holiday sales would increase 3.9% to $602.1 billion, based on government and industry data. While that doesn’t look huge, given that we have about 2% inflation, it’s higher than the 10-year average growth of 3.3%.

“A realistic look at where we are right now in this economy,” is what NRF CEO Matthew Shay called it. A mix of “continued uncertainty in Washington and an economy that has been teetering on incremental growth for years,” he said. “Retailers are optimistic for the 2013 holiday season.” Even more optimistic was the NRF’s digital division, Shop.org, which forecast that online holiday sales would jump by 13% to 15%!

But on October 16, a shopping-season fiasco occurred at the NRF. Its holiday consumer spending survey found that the average shopper would spend $737.95, 2% less than last year, in contrast to the 3.9% increase it had forecast two weeks earlier. And to fit more gifts into their squeezed budgets, consumers would slash “self-gifting” by 8% to $129.62, the lowest in years.

“Americans are questioning the stability of our economy, our government, and their own finances,” a humbled Shay said this time. He expected consumers “to set a modest budget … as they wait and see what will become of the US economy in the coming months.”

In the same survey, 51% said that the overall state of the economy, and Washington’s meddling in it, would impact their spending plans “a little” or “a lot” during shopping season. And 79.5% said they’d cut corners, whittle down their shopping budgets, and spend less.

That was before the government’s presumed out-of-money date, October 17. With the doomsday can now safely kicked into early next year, shouldn’t everything be hunky-dory? Um, only a week later, on October 25, a new NRF poll found that the number of consumers who said their spending plans would be impacted by the economy jumped from 51% to 57%.

Alison Paul, head of Deloitte’s retail group in Chicago – remember Deloitte’s hype-infused survey above, predicting a veritable shopping frenzy with 9.1% growth? – retorted to Bloomberg and its incredulous readers that the shutdown might have impacted consumer sentiment, but not enough to throw off the economy during shopping season.

Then Gallup put the best spin on a crummy situation. Holiday spending intentions were up 2% to $786, the highest since 2007, it said on October 21, based on a poll conducted during the early stages of the shutdown. That 2% “growth” would be about the rate of inflation. So stagnation. This is how they twisted it, without a scintilla of evidence: “Now that the shutdown is over, consumers’ Christmas spending intentions could change, and perhaps” – emphasis mine – “swell further, resulting in an even more robust holiday retail season than the October data indicate.” A leap of faith. Gallup was practically giddy in its extrapolation, but has since gotten slammed by Friday’s plunge in the Reuter’s/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index.

Hope mongers are trying salvage the situation. And maybe they’re trying to come to grips with
what consumers are actually going to do in this quagmire of an economy where only a few benefit while the vast majority struggle to make ends meet, which is about the only thing that even the most gloriously optimistic survey confirmed: any growth will have to come from the few who can splurge. The rest of the consumers are simply too strung out; and now they're getting even more skittish, and they’re retrenching.

Selling airline tickets to our increasingly pauperized consumers is an art. Hiding price increases is an even greater art. While there are people who don’t worry about the price as they luxuriate in first class, others aren’t so lucky. For them, the industry has a special treat: squeezing their hips. Read…  The Indelicacies of Hiding Inflation.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/cJGwRu74N6U/story01.htm testosteronepit

Submitted by The World Complex

One more time–the distinction between human- and algo-trading

The markets do not act like they once did. The trading in certain stocks is operating on time-scales so small that they cannot be in response to human thought. Not only are certain individuals able to access key information before others and so respond to news releases faster than the speed of light, but certain entities have free range to post and cancel orders on a microsecond basis, and queue-jump by shaving off (or adding on) tiny fractions of a penny from their orders.

Stocks traded by humans tend to make significant moves on a timescale of minutes to days. Even when there is a news event that radically changes the apparent value of a company, if there are only humans in the market, the move takes time to occur. Below are a couple of charts for Detour Gold (I currently have no position in this stock)

Normally, when looked at on a ms timescale, the graph is not really distinguishable from a straight line.

The little squares occur because all the price-changes I saw in the course of the day were a penny. On this scale it scarcely matters which axis is the current price and which is the lagged-price.

Once the algos get involved, the millisecond phase space plots get a lot more interesting. Some of them are works of art! Below, some plots for Century Casinos (I have no position in this one, either). Data here.

 

 

Nice to look at, but maybe not so nice to trade against.

Remember the adage about playing poker: If you don’t know who the sucker is . . .

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/M-Zbb3TG3UE/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The rollout of Obamacare to date has been, as many predicted, the case study of everything that is wrong with a mandatory government-conceived, supervised and enforced program. Ignoring for a minute the daily embarrassment the Obama administration has to face with the well-documented failings of the HealthCare.gov website which on second glance should win Obama the Nobel Price for coding in Fortran (or  Cobol), and which seems set for a full-blown overhaul that would force a delay of the mandate whether Obama wants it or not, the several million “glitchy” lines of code have become the greatest gift the GOP could have asked for. A gift, which as the saying goes, keeps on giving. Because one of Obama’s suggested loopholes has been to advise people who can’t or won’t sign up online, to do so using old-fashioned means: by paper, pen or phone. Unfortunately, that’s where the rabbit hole just goes deeper, because as Politico reports, the glitches that started on line have rapidly shifted to the world of phone and mail, as virtually every pathway of enrolling into the enforced healthcare program is now hopelessly bottlenecked, if not entirely shut.

From Politico:

With the supposedly state-of-the-art $600 million HealthCare.gov portal malfunctioning, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to go ahead and try to get health coverage by mailing in a paper application, calling the helpline or seeking help from one of the trained “assisters.”

 

But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.

True. But at least Obamacare’s failure means way more government jobs as the demand for people with the absolutely most basic set of rudimentary skills – being able to concurrently listen and/or read and type has soared. Which in an insolvent welfare state – with or without a ministry of happiness – is all one can ask for: more stimulus for everyone… especially if due to the same state’s gross incompetence in doing one thing right.

As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:

“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

 

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

 

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.

This is where it gets really funny:

Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

 

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

 

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

 

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.

Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.

And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:

Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

 

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

 

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.

Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

 

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

 

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

 

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

Sounds like a hint for the US Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness to enforce the directive that swimming in paper equates to at least 8 out of 10 hedons on the happiness scale. Otherwise, some subversive, terrorist tea-party elements may float the wild suggestion that epic government failure may not equate to joy.

Finally, and it goes without saying, at this point there is no way Obamacare’s initial enrollment target of 7 million Americans over the next 5 months ca realistically be achieved.

Health industry experts have serious doubts about whether these quaint tools could get the Obama administration a good way towar
d its first-year enrollment target of 7 million Americans in the exchanges by the end of March.

 

“There’s no way a call center can handle 7 million enrollees between now and March,” said Dan Schuyler, director of exchange technology for Leavitt Partners.

 

The National Council of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters, more of whom are getting certified every day to help people sign up. They’re getting the clear message from the administration — only use paper applications if nothing else works.

 

“We’ve been strongly urged to enroll people online and the paper application is the last resort,” said Michele Cullen, manager of the navigator program for the Genesis Health System in Illinois and Iowa.

…

 

The approaching Dec.15 deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1, combined with the paper and call center challenges, have left advocates trying to enroll people any way they can while keeping their fingers crossed that HealthCare.gov will improve.

 

“At this point, we’re three weeks into enrollment,” Ng’andu said. “We’re not going to wait. … From our perspective, we need to get individuals informed. We need to get them shopping.”

Shopping… with a gun to their head. But stepping back from the glitchy trees and looking at the forest of errors, one wonders how long before Obama instructs the GOP to shut down the government once more with the same demand as last time: delay Obamacare.

One wonders if Obama’s agreeing to all GOP demands would be measured in hours or in minutes this time around. Then again, one doesn’t – after all it’s nothing but more political theater.

As for the ordinary American man or woman, well they too have a recourse. Just dial: 1-800-F U-CKYO

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hw-ELo7WuW4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The rollout of Obamacare to date has been, as many predicted, the case study of everything that is wrong with a mandatory government-conceived, supervised and enforced program. Ignoring for a minute the daily embarrassment the Obama administration has to face with the well-documented failings of the HealthCare.gov website which on second glance should win Obama the Nobel Price for coding in Fortran (or  Cobol), and which seems set for a full-blown overhaul that would force a delay of the mandate whether Obama wants it or not, the several million “glitchy” lines of code have become the greatest gift the GOP could have asked for. A gift, which as the saying goes, keeps on giving. Because one of Obama’s suggested loopholes has been to advise people who can’t or won’t sign up online, to do so using old-fashioned means: by paper, pen or phone. Unfortunately, that’s where the rabbit hole just goes deeper, because as Politico reports, the glitches that started on line have rapidly shifted to the world of phone and mail, as virtually every pathway of enrolling into the enforced healthcare program is now hopelessly bottlenecked, if not entirely shut.

From Politico:

With the supposedly state-of-the-art $600 million HealthCare.gov portal malfunctioning, President Barack Obama is urging Americans to go ahead and try to get health coverage by mailing in a paper application, calling the helpline or seeking help from one of the trained “assisters.”

 

But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone — have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place. And the people processing the paper and calls don’t have any cyber secret passage to duck around that. They too have to deal with all the frustrations of HealthCare.gov — full-time.

True. But at least Obamacare’s failure means way more government jobs as the demand for people with the absolutely most basic set of rudimentary skills – being able to concurrently listen and/or read and type has soared. Which in an insolvent welfare state – with or without a ministry of happiness – is all one can ask for: more stimulus for everyone… especially if due to the same state’s gross incompetence in doing one thing right.

As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:

“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

 

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

 

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.

This is where it gets really funny:

Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

 

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

 

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

 

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.

Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.

And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:

Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

 

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

 

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.

Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

 

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

 

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

 

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

Sounds like a hint for the US Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness to enforce the directive that swimming in paper equates to at least 8 out of 10 hedons on the happiness scale. Otherwise, some subversive, terrorist tea-party elements may float the wild suggestion that epic government failure may not equate to joy.

Finally, and it goes without saying, at this point there is no way Obamacare’s initial enrollment target of 7 million Americans over the next 5 months ca realistically be achieved.

Health industry experts have serious doubts about whether these quaint tools could get the Obama administration a good way toward its first-year enrollment target of 7 million Americans in the exchanges by the end of March.

 

“There’s no way a call center can handle 7 million enrollees between now and March,” said Dan Schuyler, director of exchange technology for Leavitt Partners.

 

The National Council of La Raza, Ng’andu’s group, has been working with navigators and assisters, more of whom are getting certified every day to help people sign up. They’re getting the clear message from the administration — only use paper applications if nothing else works.

 

“We’ve been strongly urged to enroll people online and the paper application is the last resort,” said Michele Cullen, manager of the navigator program for the Genesis Health System in Illinois and Iowa.

…

 

The approaching Dec.15 deadline to get coverage starting Jan. 1, combined with the paper and call center challenges, have left advocates trying to enroll people any way they can while keeping their fingers crossed that HealthCare.gov will improve.

 

“At this point, we’re three weeks into enrollment,” Ng’andu said. “We’re not going to wait. … From our perspective, we need to get individuals informed. We need to get them shopping.”

Shopping… with a gun to their head. But stepping back from the glitchy trees and looking at the forest of errors, one wonders how long before Obama instructs the GOP to shut down the government once more with the same demand as last time: delay Obamacare.

One wonders if Obama’s agreeing to all GOP demands would be measured in hours or in minutes this time around. Then again, one doesn’t – after all it’s nothing but more political theater.

As for the ordinary American man or woman, well they too have a recourse. Just dial: 1-800-F U-CKYO

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hw-ELo7WuW4/story01.htm Tyler Durden

If one (such as everyone at the Federal Reserve) thought that the world’s greatest artificial “wealth effect” would also generate the world’s happiest people, one would be dead wrong.

Take Venezuela – Hugo Chavez’ socialist paradise, which was recently inherited by Nicolas Maduro in which he proceeded to not only completely devalue the local currency but to engineer, through such exquisite central-planning that even the Politburo at the Marriner Eccles building is green with envy, the highest returning stock market on earth in 2013. Alas, either the locals are not quite as impressed with the Caracas’ “stock market” YTD return of over 300% (which doesn’t quite cover the loss in purchasing power for what things one can actually purchase in Venezuela), or the chronic toilet paper shortages remind them that the phrase socialist utopia is the world’s greatest oxymoron.

As a result, president Maduro has decided to boldly go where no socialist has gone before and has unveiled a new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, whose primary purposes will be to enforce “happiness.” In other words,  something along the lines of the beatings will continue until happiness returns…

From AP:

Americans may have the constitutional right to pursue happiness, but Venezuela now has a formal government agency in charge of enforcing it. President Nicolas Maduro says the new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness will coordinate all the “mission” programs created by the late President Hugo Chavez to alleviate poverty.

 

Wags had a field day Friday, waxing sarcastic on Twitter about how happy they felt less than 24 hours after the announcement.

 

Oil-rich Venezuela is chronically short of basic goods and medical supplies. Annual inflation is running officially at near 50 percent and the U.S. dollar now fetches more than seven times the official rate on the black market.

Shockingly, to some average Caracans, happiness does not mean buying AMZN at a PE of N/M and selling it a PE of !Ref#. Instead, it means getting hammered.

In downtown Caracas, fruit vendor Victor Rey said he’s now waiting for Maduro to create a vice ministry of beer. “That would make me, and all the drunks, happy,” he said.

Meanwhile, others point out the blindingly obvious:

A TV journalist whose show was recently forced off the air after he refused to censor political opponents of the ruling socialists, Leopoldo Castillo, called Maduro’s announcement an international embarrassment.

Obviously Leopoldo has never heard of ObamaCare… or the NSA.

Housewife Liliana Alfonzo, 31, said that instead of a Supreme Happiness agency she’d prefer being able to get milk and toilet paper, which disappear off store shelves minutes after arriving at stores.

Ultimately, Venezuela’s current predicament may be largely blamed on one thing: reckless entitlement and welfare spending (with lots of corruption thrown in for good measure).

 

Chavez spent billions on social programs, from benefits for single mothers to handouts of apartments and major appliances.

At least he never spent hundreds of millions rolling out a untested website, whose end purpose was to prove to everyone that if one needs something broken beyond any hope of repair, just put the government in charge.

As for the US, already elbow deep in its own unsustainable socialist agenda, we can hardly wait for the latest diversionary campaign: one which sweeps the epic debacle that is Obamacare under the rug following the roll out of, what else, ObamaJoy.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Eqe3XtQ3EN8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When three weeks ago, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht – the creator of the now shutdown Bitcoin-only “alternative” marketplace Silk Road also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, some were surprised that the Feds only confiscated about $3.6 million worth in Bitcoins from Ulbrecht. Proving all doubters wrong, and that creating the first “libertarian” marketplace not subject to any rules and regulations, not to mention fiat monetary constraints, actually does pay quite well, moments ago it was revealed that Federal prosecutors had found an additional $29 million, or 144,336 BitCoins, belonging to the Dread Pirate. According to Reuters, the booty was discovered on “computer hardware” belonging to Ulbricht. The repossessed electronic money, whose encryption technologies seem to leave a bit to be desired, has now been impounded and will likely remain on the FBI’s hard disks indefinitely.

More:

Authorities said the haul represented the largest ever Bitcoin seizure.

 

Ulbricht’s lawyer could not be contacted on Friday evening (local time), but had previously told reporters his client denied the charges.

 

The currency, which has been in existence since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.

 

The US Attorney’s Office said with nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents have now collected more than $US33 million in bitcoins based on current value.

 

Ulbricht is due to appear in court within weeks to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

It remains to be seen if the Dread Pirate will be able to transact in prison using BitCoins. It also remains to be seen if leading hedge fund/PE firms such as Fortress, which recently voiced its support for BitCoin, will step in to fill the void left by Ulbricht’s arrest realizing the great monetary potential – in either USD or BTC terms – to be reaped by providing the masses with what is a truly anonymous marketplace.

Finally, for those who missed it the first time, here is some additional information on the identity and motivation of the Ulbricht:

Who is the Dread Pirate Roberts?

The court documents described Mr Ulbricht, 29, as a former physics student at the University of Texas, who had gone on to study at the University of Pennsylvania between 2006 and 2010.

 

It was here, according to Mr Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile, as quoted by court documents, that his “‘goals’ subsequently ‘shifted'”.

 

He wrote on the social network that he had wanted to “give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force” by “institutions and governments”.

 

Authorities said he took to online forums to publicise Silk Road as a potential marketplace for drugs back in January 2011.

 

In one such message, a user believed to be Mr Ulbricht allegedly said: “Has anyone seen Silk Road yet? It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”

 

Investigators said he used the same channels months later to recruit help – starting with a search for an “IT pro in the Bitcoin community”.

 

The FBI said Mr Ulbricht would appear in San Francisco federal court later on Wednesday.

And more from NYMag:

The dark Internet’s favorite massive drug marketplace, Silk Road, was shut down by the FBI last night and its alleged mastermind arrested on an array of colorful charges after a nearly two-year undercover operation.

 

Twenty-nine-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was picked up in San Francisco and accused of running the underground e-warehouse while allegedly laundering money, trafficking narcotics, and even hiring a hit man to kill one of the site’s users. Fittingly for a computer nerd, not a Heisenberg, he left a rich personal trail online.

 

According to the federal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, “Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” enabling “several thousand drug dealers” to move “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs.” The site’s sales totaled about $1.2 billion in the form of 9.5 million Bitcoins (naturally). About $3.6 million in the Internet currency has been seized.

 

Ulbricht, though, wasn’t exactly great at covering his tracks, attaching his name, photo, and personal e-mail address to Silk Road business, eventually resulting in his arrest.

…

Last year on his Google+ account, Ulbricht, who’s now charged with facilitating the sale of drugs through the mail, asked, “Anybody know someone that works for UPS, FedEX, or DHL?”

…

On YouTube, Ulbricht (“ohyeaross”) liked videos by Ron Paul, along with clips called “The Market for Security” and “How to Get Away With Stealing.” (Of Paul, Ulbricht once told his Penn State Univeristy paper, “There’s a lot to learn from him and his message of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what it means to be a free individual.”) Most recently, he followed the Vice channel.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/mcmbH3QsQm0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When three weeks ago, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht – the creator of the now shutdown Bitcoin-only “alternative” marketplace Silk Road also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, some were surprised that the Feds only confiscated about $3.6 million worth in Bitcoins from Ulbrecht. Proving all doubters wrong, and that creating the first “libertarian” marketplace not subject to any rules and regulations, not to mention fiat monetary constraints, actually does pay quite well, moments ago it was revealed that Federal prosecutors had found an additional $29 million, or 144,336 BitCoins, belonging to the Dread Pirate. According to Reuters, the booty was discovered on “computer hardware” belonging to Ulbricht. The repossessed electronic money, whose encryption technologies seem to leave a bit to be desired, has now been impounded and will likely remain on the FBI’s hard disks indefinitely.

More:

Authorities said the haul represented the largest ever Bitcoin seizure.

 

Ulbricht’s lawyer could not be contacted on Friday evening (local time), but had previously told reporters his client denied the charges.

 

The currency, which has been in existence since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.

 

The US Attorney’s Office said with nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents have now collected more than $US33 million in bitcoins based on current value.

 

Ulbricht is due to appear in court within weeks to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

It remains to be seen if the Dread Pirate will be able to transact in prison using BitCoins. It also remains to be seen if leading hedge fund/PE firms such as Fortress, which recently voiced its support for BitCoin, will step in to fill the void left by Ulbricht’s arrest realizing the great monetary potential – in either USD or BTC terms – to be reaped by providing the masses with what is a truly anonymous marketplace.

Finally, for those who missed it the first time, here is some additional information on the identity and motivation of the Ulbricht:

Who is the Dread Pirate Roberts?

The court documents described Mr Ulbricht, 29, as a former physics student at the University of Texas, who had gone on to study at the University of Pennsylvania between 2006 and 2010.

 

It was here, according to Mr Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile, as quoted by court documents, that his “‘goals’ subsequently ‘shifted'”.

 

He wrote on the social network that he had wanted to “give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force” by “institutions and governments”.

 

Authorities said he took to online forums to publicise Silk Road as a potential marketplace for drugs back in January 2011.

 

In one such message, a user believed to be Mr Ulbricht allegedly said: “Has anyone seen Silk Road yet? It’s kind of like an anonymous Amazon.com.”

 

Investigators said he used the same channels months later to recruit help – starting with a search for an “IT pro in the Bitcoin community”.

 

The FBI said Mr Ulbricht would appear in San Francisco federal court later on Wednesday.

And more from NYMag:

The dark Internet’s favorite massive drug marketplace, Silk Road, was shut down by the FBI last night and its alleged mastermind arrested on an array of colorful charges after a nearly two-year undercover operation.

 

Twenty-nine-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a.k.a. “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was picked up in San Francisco and accused of running the underground e-warehouse while allegedly laundering money, trafficking narcotics, and even hiring a hit man to kill one of the site’s users. Fittingly for a computer nerd, not a Heisenberg, he left a rich personal trail online.

 

According to the federal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, “Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” enabling “several thousand drug dealers” to move “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs.” The site’s sales totaled about $1.2 billion in the form of 9.5 million Bitcoins (naturally). About $3.6 million in the Internet currency has been seized.

 

Ulbricht, though, wasn’t exactly great at covering his tracks, attaching his name, photo, and personal e-mail address to Silk Road business, eventually resulting in his arrest.

…

Last year on his Google+ account, Ulbricht, who’s now charged with facilitating the sale of drugs through the mail, asked, “Anybody know someone that works for UPS, FedEX, or DHL?”

…

On YouTube, Ulbricht (“ohyeaross”) liked videos by Ron Paul, along with clips called “The Market for Security” and “How to Get Away With Stealing.” (Of Paul, Ulbricht once told his Penn State Univeristy paper, “There’s a lot to learn from him and his message of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what it means to be a free individual.”) Most recently, he followed the Vice channel.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/mcmbH3QsQm0/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning platform

The New Normal?

Our government and financial “leaders” tell us that things are back to normal and we are well on our way to economic recovery. They report rising GDP, declining unemployment, and record corporate profits. The legacy media propaganda machines, controlled by corporations dependent upon the government and Wall Street to funnel them advertising dollars in return for reporting falsehoods and mistruths, have been informing the masses that all is well. Just go back to staring at your iGadgets and tweeting your every thought to your followers, because the best and brightest in D.C. and Wall Street have it all figured out. The new normal is here to stay.

I guess my interpretation of normal deviates slightly from our glorious leaders’ definition. During the long-term bond bull market, from 1982 until 2007 the 10 Year Treasury steadily declined from 16% to 5%. This was normal because inflation declined at the same rate. Inflation declined from 13% to 3% over this same time frame according to the BLS. In reality, measuring inflation as it was measured in the 80?s and early 90?s would have yielded an inflation rate closer to 6% in 2007. During the decade prior to 2007, which consisted of supposedly strong economic growth, the 10 Year Treasury ranged between 4% and 7%. Even during the 2001 recession, it never dropped below 3.5%.

In a normal world an investor in a 10 Year Treasury bond would require a yield 2% to 3% above the rate of inflation. If the yield was below the rate of inflation they would be guaranteed to lose money. Only a fool, Federal Reserve chairman, or a CNBC bubble headed bimbo would buy a bond yielding less than the inflation rate. The BLS reported inflation rate has been between 2.1% and 3.2% over the last two years. Over this time frame, the 10 Year Treasury  yielded 2% or below until the threat of tapering reared its ugly head this past summer. Would this happen in a normal free market? If things are back to normal, why aren’t supposedly free markets acting normal? The Chinese and Japanese reacted normally. They stopped buying Treasuries with a real negative yield.

The only fool willing to buy negative yielding Treasuries is none other than Ben Bernanke. He thinks they are the investment of a lifetime. He is so sure they are a can’t miss investment, he buys $2.5 billion of them per day, which just so happens to be the government deficit per day. Ben now has $3.8 trillion of bonds on his books, versus $900 billion in 2008. His balance sheet is leveraged 60 to 1, versus the 30 to 1 of Lehman and Bear Stearns prior to their implosions. When even the hint of reducing bond purchases from $85 billion per month to $75 billion per month caused 10 Year rates to jump from 1.5% to 3% in a matter of weeks, you realize how “normal” our economy and financial system is functioning.

If our financial system was functioning normally and free market capitalism was allowed to operate according to true supply and demand, the 10 Year Treasury would be yielding 4% to 5% and 30 year mortgage rates would be 6% to 7%. Think about that for a minute. This scenario was normal from 2002 through 2007. That is what normal looks like. Now open your eyes and observe what your owners are telling you is normal. The slight increase in mortgage rates from 3.5% to 4.5% has brought the Wall Street buy and rent housing recovery scheme to it knees. Imagine if mortgage rates were allowed to rise to their true market rate. Housing would collapse in a heap.

Allowing Treasury rates to adjust to a true market rate, based on true inflation, would double or triple the annual interest expense on the $17 trillion national debt and blow a gigantic hole in Obama’s already disastrous $1 trillion annual deficits. Does this sound like “normal” to a rational thinking human being with the ability to understand simple math? Luckily, there are very few rational thinking Americans left and even fewer with the ability to understand simple math. We have been programmed to believe rather than think. As long as the stock market continue to rise, then everything is normal.

Do you think Ben Bernanke and his cohorts at the Federal Reserve worry about the average person who doesn’t own stocks, has to fill up their gas tank, feed their kids, make the mortgage, auto, and credit card payments, and figure out Obamacare, while working two part time jobs? Quantitative Easing (MONEY PRINTING) has one purpose and one purpose only – to further enrich the owners of the Federal Reserve – Wall Street banks. The .1% own most of the stocks in this country and their greed and avarice can never be satisfied.

This artificial prosperity plan for Wall Street has the added benefit of allowing the captured politicians in Washington D.C. to continue their $1 trillion per year deficit spending with no consequences for their squandering of future generations’ wealth. Bernanke and Yellen will never taper, because they can’t. The Fed balance sheet will continue to grow by at least $1 trillion per year until they crash the financial system again. Except this time, there will be no money printing solution. We are all trapped like rats in this monetary experiment being conducted by evil mad scientists. No one will get out alive. Welcome to the new normal. Now eat your cheese.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/pJ_wewmpB3s/story01.htm Tyler Durden