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Tuesday, September 30, 2014
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical
society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version
is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war
effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is
waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the
victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of
society intact. - George Orwell
Name the six greatest artists of the 12th Century AD. Take your time. Here's a hint: one of them sculpted the masterpiece above: the KarlSchreinn.
Or does that make it too easy?
The 12th Century AD was extraordinarily eventful. Surely, the great artists working at the great courts thought themselves to be tremendously important. We know the Karlsschrein (Shrine of Charlemagne) in Aachen Cathedral was made at the command of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Fred II has had many books written about him. Yet, the name of the sculptor is now forgotten. In fact, every single celebrated "genius" of that century is currently forgotten. Yet some of the artwork is priceless. Because it is currently thought to be beautiful and historically important.
In the world of post modern academia, both the idea of beauty and the idea of historical importance would be considered quaint relics of a semantically primitive age. In the post modern world, Beauty and Historical Importance would be considered "relative." While "Genius" is considered to be absolute.
In fact, what is "relative" is the importance of post-modern ideas. Take a post modern artist like Any Warhol. You would find an absolute Post Modern concensus that the print of Marilyn Monroe is an artistic masterpiece, and that Warhol is a "genius," or at least an important artist.
But in 1000 years will anyone remember Warhol's name? Will anyone looks at his images? Nobody knows. But one thing is sure. If, in 1000 years, the ideas of Post Modernism are thought of as "quaint" and "semantically primitive," every single artist working in that idiom may be considered irrelevant, or, simply, "decorative." And every artwork not intricately linked to some important historical event to lend it importance, may be worthless.
Which brings us around to Ancient Art. What's so great about the image above of the lion and the bull minted by Croesus of Lydia in 545 BCE?
Well, it's the first gold coin in the history of the world. The first. What could be more historically important? And, if you're familiar with the symbolism of the image, it tells a fascinating story about religion myth, and conquest in the 7th Century BCE.
Have you ever heard of Julius Caesar? What might be the importance of a contemporary portrait rendered by an artist of obvious talent?
Will there ever be a time in human history when this artwork is considered irrelevant? Highly unlikely. Because the importance of this artwork is not linked in an way to topical academic fashion. It does not need to to be dignified by essays filled with technical vocabulary. That is it beautiful is obvious even to those who would argue tirelessly that such a thing doesn't really exist.
And it will be important as long as Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire are thought to be historically important.
How about Alexander the Great? Have you heard of him? If not you could read any one of hundreds of biographies. Many were written in the 4th century BCE. And hundreds have been written since. He's really a fascinating figure. He conquered most of the known world, in his day. The contemporary portrait above is extraordinarily beautiful. And the story behind its minting is fascinating.
Is the artist who engraved it a "Genius?"
Gee wilikers, could there possibly be a less interesting question in the history of art and ideas?
There is no doubt that the NGC Ancients grading program has become the standard of the US Ancient coin market. Americans want graded coins. Europeans not so much, at this point. Yet the enormous increase in the ancient coin buying population is clearly coming from US buyers who are moving from US and World coins into Ancients, where relative rarity, beauty, and historical importance clearly still yields tremendous value compared to the US and World markets, in spite of the recent run up in prices.
But, for those not used to Ancients, where no two coins are exactly alike even from the same issue - even from the same dies - understanding grades and assigning value is still often a daunting task.
The beginner often looks first to the Overall Grade. Mint State grades almost always command a premium over lesser grades. But even rank beginners can tell the difference between a Mint State Caesar portrait of awful style and a terrible strike and a beautifully engraved and well struck Caesar portrait:
Choice VF CAESAR PORTRAIT: $17,500
MINT STATE CAESAR PORTRAIT: $6000
CAN YOU TELL WHY? (I'm sure you can)
It's encouraging that US collectors are making distinctions on elements other than the grade. However, There are a few hard and fast rules that will keep new collectors from making horrible mistakes:
1) THE SURFACE GRADE IS NOT IRRELEVANT. A 1/5on the surface indicates a coin that has been altered to the point it is NO LONGER FUNCTIONALLY AUTHENTIC. Be careful, even with coins that have been expertly altered so that they look great. This is functionally the same as a forgery. It will never have much resale value. Think of the Mona Lisa. If an expert restores small portions of the background that have been cracked or dirtied with age - well, that's probably fine, it's still the Mona Lisa. But if a vandal spray paints the canvas black, and an expert comes in and repaints the Mona Lisa - well, really, it's not the Mona Lisa anymore- even if it looks great.
A 2/5 will indicate a coin with some problems - perhaps a bit of smoothing in the field. Depending on the issue, while a problem, it is not necessarily devastating. It will affect the value but, depending on the issue, the coin can retain real value. Especially if most coins from the issue exhibit the exact same problem. However, if there is extensive surface damage or problems, the value can certainly suffer.
A 3/5 can be absolutely fine. Usually the problems are scrapes and digs. If these are faint and in the fields they may not detract much from the price at all. A small scratch RIGHT ON THE FACE even if the coins is 4/5 can be a real problem for many collectors, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, an unobtrusive banker's mark in the field might just make the coin more interesting while dropping the grade to 3/5. USE YOUR DISCRETION.
2) The Strike is also vitally important. A 5/5 is obviously great. 4/5 usually indicates some centering issues, if these are minor and all the relevant images and legends are still on the flan, this can be okay. Especially if most coins from an issue display the same problems. But if important design elements are off the flan: the value will certainly be compromised. Know your issues.
3/5 on the strike is very very tough on resale value.
Fine Style: Vitally important for most ancients. Yet, this is very subjective. NGC is as good as anyone at identifying Fine Style. Yet any two experts can still disagree. Sometimes a coin just strikes someone as beautiful and someone else will disagree. Sometimes, though not technically Fine Style, a coin can display a "BOLD" or "Interesting" style - especially with archaic coins - that is just as valuable. Develop your own taste. You should be able to tell what you feel is a fine style. Then you will never be disappointed with a purchase.
FINALLY AN ELEMENT NOT DEALT WITH IN THE GRADING PROCESS THAT CAN GREATLY AFFECT THE VALUE: DIE STATE and METAL QUALITY: a coin struck from fresh dies can greatly enhance the eye appeal, and thus the value. The same goes for a coin struck on beautiful metal. A coin struck from Rusty and/or Worn dies can greatly adversely affect a coin value. Look at the Caesar coin above. The metal quality is atrocious. The die state and metal quality is not accounted for in the grading process. Take this into account.
Probably most people would agree that the people paid by the U.S.
government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties. Most
people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem
only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that
regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it,
and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their
government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were
once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid
by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who
have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations.
Our
financial regulatory system is obviously dysfunctional. But because the
subject is so tedious, and the details so complicated, the public
doesn't pay it much attention.
That may very well change today, for today -- Friday, Sept. 26 --- the radio program "This American Life" will air a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation, and the public will have no trouble at all understanding it.
The reporter, Jake Bernstein,
has obtained 47½ hours of tape recordings, made secretly by a Federal
Reserve employee, of conversations within the Fed, and between the Fed
and Goldman Sachs. The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has
arrived.
First, a bit of background -- which you might get equally
well from today's broadcast. After the 2008 financial crisis, the New
York Fed, now the chief U.S. bank regulator, commissioned a study of
itself. This study, which the Fed also intended to keep to itself, set
out to understand why the Fed hadn't spotted the insane and destructive
behavior inside the big banks, and stopped it before it got out of
control. The "discussion draft" of the Fed's internal study, led by a
Columbia Business School professor and former banker named David Beim,
was sent to the Fed on Aug. 18, 2009.
It's an extraordinary
document. There is not space here to do it justice, but the gist is
this: The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage
its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out
problems.
Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to
keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks.
That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because
they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them.
The
report quotes Fed employees saying things like, "until I know what my
boss thinks I don't want to tell you," and "no one feels individually
accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through
consensus." Beim was himself surprised that what he thought was going to
be an investigation of financial failure was actually a story of
cultural failure.
Any Fed manager who read the Beim report, and
who wanted to fix his institution, or merely cover his ass, would
instantly have set out to hire strong-willed, independent-minded people
who were willing to speak their minds, and set them loose on our
financial sector. The Fed does not appear to have done this, at least
not intentionally. But in late 2011, as those managers staffed up to
take on the greater bank regulatory role given to them by the Dodd-Frank
legislation, they hired a bunch of new people and one of them was a
strong-willed, independent-minded woman named Carmen Segarra.
I've
never met Segarra, but she comes across on the broadcast as a likable
combination of good-humored and principled. "This American Life" also
interviewed people who had worked with her, before she arrived at the
Fed, who describe her as smart and occasionally blunt, but never
unprofessional. She is obviously bright and inquisitive: speaks four
languages, holds degrees from Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. She is also
obviously knowledgeable: Before going to work at the Fed, she worked
directly, and successfully, for the legal and compliance departments of
big banks. She went to work for the Fed after the financial crisis, she
says, only because she thought she had the ability to help the Fed to
fix the system.
In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate
Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who
regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)
The
job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had
imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people;
if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming,
the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay
it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view
that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply
to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator
and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the
regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."
This sort of thing
occurred often enough -- Fed regulators denying what had been said in
meetings, Fed managers asking her to alter minutes of meetings after the
fact -- that Segarra decided she needed to record what actually had
been said. So she went to the Spy Store and bought a tiny tape recorder,
then began to record her meetings at Goldman Sachs, until she was
fired.
(How Segarra got herself fired by the Fed is interesting.
In 2012, Goldman was rebuked by a Delaware judge for its behavior during
a corporate acquisition. Goldman had advised one energy company, El
Paso Corp., as it sold itself to another energy company, Kinder Morgan,
in which Goldman actually owned a $4 billion stake, and a Goldman banker
had a big personal investment. The incident forced the Fed to ask
Goldman to see its conflict of interest policy. It turned out that
Goldman had no conflict of interest policy -- but when Segarra insisted
on saying as much in her report, her bosses tried to get her to change
her report. Under pressure, she finally agreed to change the language in
her report, but she couldn't resist telling her boss that she wouldn't
be changing her mind. Shortly after that encounter, she was fired.)
I
don't want to spoil the revelations of "This American Life": It's far
better to hear the actual sounds on the radio, as so much of the meaning
of the piece is in the tones of the voices -- and, especially, in the
breathtaking wussiness of the people at the Fed charged with regulating
Goldman Sachs. But once you have listened to it -- as when you were
faced with the newly unignorable truth of what actually happened to that
NFL running back's fiancee in that elevator -- consider the following:
1. You sort of knew that the regulators were more or less controlled by the banks. Now you know.
2.
The only reason you know is that one woman, Carmen Segarra, has been
brave enough to fight the system. She has paid a great price to inform
us all of the obvious. She has lost her job, undermined her career, and
will no doubt also endure a lifetime of lawsuits and slander.
So
what are you going to do about it? At this moment the Fed is probably
telling itself that, like the financial crisis, this, too, will blow
over. It shouldn't.
RECALLING HATE Jewish residents of Mechelen, Belgium, gathered this month to remember the Holocaust.Credit
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
SARCELLES,
France — From the immigrant enclaves of the Parisian suburbs to the
drizzly bureaucratic city of Brussels to the industrial heartland of
Germany, Europe’s old demon returned this summer. “Death to the Jews!”
shouted protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Belgium and France.
“Gas the Jews!” yelled marchers at a similar protest in Germany.
The ugly threats were surpassed by uglier violence. Four people were fatally shot in May
at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Jewish-owned pharmacy in this Paris
suburb was destroyed in July by youths protesting Israel’s military
campaign in Gaza. A synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, was attacked with
firebombs. A Swedish Jew was beaten with iron pipes. The list goes on.
The
scattered attacks have raised alarm about how Europe is changing and
whether it remains a safe place for Jews. An increasing number of Jews,
if still relatively modest in total, are now migrating to Israel. Others
describe “no go” zones in Muslim districts of many European cities
where Jews dare not travel.
Photo
GERMAN WORRY The
synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, where a firebomb landed this summer
but failed to ignite. For Jews in Germany, “this has very, very deep
meaning,” said one synagogue member.Credit
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
But
there is also concern about what some see as an insidious “softer”
anti-Jewish bias, which they fear is creeping into the European
mainstream and undermining the postwar consensus to root out
anti-Semitism. Now the question is whether a subtle societal shift is
occurring that has made anti-Jewish remarks or behavior more acceptable.
“The
fear is that now things are blatantly being said openly, and no one is
batting an eyelid,” said Jessica Frommer, 36, a secular Jew who works
for a nonprofit organization in Brussels. “Modern Europe is based on
stopping what happened in the Second World War. And now 70 years later,
people standing near the European Parliament are shouting, ‘Death to
Jews!’ ”
This
is not the Europe of 1938. French leaders have strongly condemned the
violence. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany this month led a rally
against anti-Semitism in Berlin at which she told Germans, “It is our
national and civic duty to fight anti-Semitism.”
Europe
has seen protests and outbursts of anti-Semitism whenever the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has erupted, and some analysts say this
summer’s anger is a cyclical episode that like others will fade away.
Some note that the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents this year
in France, for instance, is well below some years in the 2000s.
Yet
as European support for the Palestinian cause and criticism of Israel
have hardened, many Jews describe a blurring of distinctions between
being anti-Israel and being anti-Jew.
With
Europe still shaking from a populist backlash against fiscal austerity,
some Jews speak of feeling politically isolated, without an ideological
home. Many left-wing political parties are anti-Israel. Many right-wing
parties, some with anti-Semitic origins, are extremist and virulently
anti-immigrant. And many Jews who have voted with the Socialist Party in
France and Belgium worry that those parties are weak and becoming more
dependent on fast-growing Muslim voting blocs.
Even
among those inclined to condemn racism in any form, fighting
anti-Semitism is no longer seen as a priority, with Jews often perceived
as privileged compared with Muslims and other minorities confronted
with discrimination.
Many
younger Muslims often seem alienated in Europe. Struggling to find work
and frustrated by their lack of acceptance, a small but vocal group of
them has become inflamed by the politics of the Middle East, especially
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
European
officials are deeply concerned that radical Islam, nurtured in the
Middle East, could take root in Europe. Mehdi Nemmouche, a French Muslim
arrested in connection with the killings at the Jewish Museum in
Brussels, fought as a jihadist in Syria. A French journalist who was
held captive in Syria until April said Mr. Nemmouche had been one of his
torturers.
“We
are a microcosm of the Middle East,” said Philip Carmel, European
policy director for the European Jewish Congress. “The Middle East is
being imported into Europe.”
Visits
to some of the flash points of the summer violence revealed a picture
of what Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France has called a “new
anti-Semitism.” In Sarcelles, the Paris suburb where pro-Palestinian
protests spiraled into riots, the alienation of France’s immigrants and
minorities lies just below the surface. In Brussels, the headquarters of
the European Union, some secular Jews described a changing atmosphere
and questioned whether it was time to leave.
And
in Wuppertal, Germany, a city proud of its commitment to religious and
ethnic diversity, the attempted firebombing of a synagogue exposed
underlying tensions that became even clearer this month when,
unexpectedly, a group of Muslim men patrolled a neighborhood wearing
makeshift uniforms that said “Shariah Police.”
The French Melting Pot
On
the afternoon of July 20, a siege mentality gripped Little Jerusalem,
the Jewish commercial district in Sarcelles. A crowd of young Jewish men
had gathered at the synagogue as a pro-Palestinian protest was held a
few blocks away. France’s Interior Ministry had tried to ban the
protest, which spun into a riot. Cars were burning. Young men were
throwing rocks as the police fired tear gas. A Jewish-owned pharmacy was
set on fire.
“We
were all concentrated here to defend the synagogue,” said Levi Cohen
Solal, 21, who joined the human cordon outside the synagogue. “Everybody
was scared.”
Blocked
by the police, the rioters never reached the synagogue, but Sarcelles
became a televised symbol of France’s new anti-Semitism — a depiction
many local residents did not recognize. A working-class suburb where
generations of immigrants are packed into government housing, Sarcelles
is a melting pot of religions and ethnicities, where many people speak
of a largely peaceful coexistence.
To
many residents, the demonstration, which was organized by outsiders on
social media, was an indictment not of Sarcelles, but of France. Youth
unemployment is soaring, especially in immigrant havens like Sarcelles,
and many French-born children and grandchildren of immigrants have
become alienated from French society.
“For
the past four or five years, we have felt a growing insecurity,” said
David Harroch, who runs a Jewish bookstore in Little Jerusalem. “My
customers tell me how worried they are about the climate here, the
situation. A lot of people have left.”
Israeli
officials predict that as many as 6,000 Jews will migrate from France
this year, a stark reversal from the 1950s, when Sephardic Jews, Arabs
and others began arriving in Sarcelles from North Africa. A booming
economy made work plentiful.
But
during France’s recession in the late 1970s, the city’s ethnic groups
became pitted against one another for limited public resources. Rahsaan
Maxwell, a political scientist who has studied Sarcelles’s ethnic
groups, said the Sephardic Jews had incurred resentment because they
were better organized and able to mobilize politically to win certain
perks from the elected local council: a special Jewish section in the
local cemetery, widening of a road in front of the main synagogue,
kosher offerings at an annual city dinner for the elderly, and
segregated swimming hours for men and women at a city pool.
In
his 2012 book, “Ethnic Minority Migrants in Britain and France,” Mr.
Maxwell wrote that Sephardic Jews became so influential that “when
Israel was at war with Lebanon in the early 1980s, Sephardic Jewish
activists in Sarcelles were aggressive about using it as a litmus test
for local politicians to see whether they supported Israel and the
Jewish people.”
Yet
many Jews and Muslims born in that era grew up together without rancor
in government housing. Not far from one of the city’s storefront mosques
is a small Superette grocery owned by a Muslim family. One of the
owners, Abdel Badaz, recently stood behind the counter with a childhood
friend, Mickaël Berdah, 36, a Jew whose family emigrated decades ago
from Tunisia. They both criticized the riot as the work of young
troublemakers.
“When
you’ve grown up in the neighborhood, and you know everybody, there
isn’t that kind of hate,” Mr. Berdah said. “When there is that kind of
hate, it is at the roots, something about the way parents have educated
their children.”
“Look,” he said, as a bearded Jewish man in a dark suit and skullcap walked by, “there’s one.”
But
when asked about Gaza, Mr. Ismael became agitated, rambling and warning
that the world was hurtling toward a catastrophe. He said he had seen
video of an Israeli bomb hitting a funeral in Gaza. “Somehow, some Jews
control politics, information, business and finance,” he said. “I’m not
talking about the Jews here. I’m talking about Jews in general.”
And a lot of morons believe that right here in the United States (see the editorials at 321gold.com)
Photo
FRANCE, JULY 20
A pro-Palestinian protest in Sarcelles, which officials tried to ban,
descended into rioting. Outsiders organized the demonstration.Credit
Thibault Camus/Associated Press
“Jews, in general,” he added, “only let you see what they want you to see.”
In Brussels, Heightened Alert
Music
rose from the center of Brussels on Sunday, with joggers and bicyclists
moving freely down city streets as the seat of the European Union held
its annual no-car day. It had the giddy air of a street fair, if less so
for the city’s Jewish organizations, which the police had placed under
heightened security since two recent incidents.
The
first happened the previous Sunday, Sept. 14, which marked the European
Day of Jewish Culture. As people gathered to dedicate a plaque at a
Holocaust memorial, youths hurled stones and bottles until the police
arrived. Three days later, a fire erupted on an upper floor of a
synagogue in the city’s Anderlecht district; the authorities are
investigating the incident as arson.
It
was the May shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels — and the
subsequent arrest of Mr. Nemmouche — that attracted international
attention, as four people were killed, including two Israelis. But there
have been smaller incidents that received less notice: a Turkish shop
owner in Liège who posted a sign saying he would serve dogs but not
Jews, a voice on the intercom of a commuter train that announced a stop
as "Auschwitz" and ordered all Jews to get off.
“This
summer, I started to see the world in a different way,” said Marco
Mosseri, 31, a native Italian who works in the automotive industry in
Brussels. “I was scared. I spent several nights without sleep. For the
first time, I was thinking that maybe I could die from my religion.”
With
its chocolate shops, Trappist beers and gray gloom, Brussels is the
center of Europe’s sprawling bureaucracy, a symbol of the loathed
policies of austerity. But Brussels also embodies the demographics
transforming much of urban Europe, with generations of Muslim immigrants
and their descendants now representing roughly a quarter of the
population.
The
Jewish community is small, about 20,000 people, most of them
assimilated, secular Jews like Mr. Mosseri, who usually do not draw
attention to their heritage. (A recent report issued jointly by two European Jewish organizations found that 40 percent of European Jews hide
their Jewishness.) Now some secular Jews say they have stopped wearing a
necklace with the Star of David, or allowing their children to wear
T-shirts for a Jewish summer camp on public buses or trains.
And since the start of the conflict in Gaza this summer, many describe social media, especially Facebook, as a swamp of hatred.
“I
have friends who are never political and they are posting things about
Gaza every day,” said Ms. Frommer, the employee of the nonprofit
organization. “It seems like an obsession. Is your obsession because you
want to save children, or because you have a problem with Jews?”
In
a city so devoted to politics, the issue of Israel can seem unavoidable
to some Jews, even those who strive to be apolitical or tend to be
critical of Israeli policy. Ms. Frommer grew up in Brussels, but then
left for college in Britain, followed by a long stint working in
Cambodia. When she returned to Brussels four years ago, she was struck
by how much more polarized life seemed. Her Jewish friends were sticking
closer together as office chatter now sometimes bore a sharper edge.
This
summer, one of her Belgian colleagues repeatedly mentioned the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “He would often try to bring up the
subject when I tried not to,” she said. “Then the subject would shift
from Israel to Jews. Then it was, ‘Were there really six million Jews
killed in the Second World War?’ ”
Nor
was the comment isolated. There have been signs that anti-Jewish
sentiment transcended the immediate backlash against the Gaza war. In
Hungary, the rise of the far-right Jobbik party has brought concerns
that anti-Semitic views are gaining mainstream traction.
In
Italy, extreme right-wing activists were blamed for a flurry of
anti-Jewish graffiti, including Nazi swastikas, on buildings in various
cities. In Rome, fliers calling for a boycott of
at least 40 Jewish-owned stores appeared last month with the signature
of the far-right group Vita Est Militia. Italian investigators were also
looking into whether such far-right parties were building alliances
with extremist left-wing groups.
Photo
BELGIUM, MAY 25 Police officers helped arrange flowers in front of the Jewish Museum in Brussels the day after a shooting there killed four.Credit
Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto Agency
In
Brussels, several pro-Palestinian marches were held this summer, most
of which were peaceful, but a few bore an anti-Semitic edge, including
shouts of “Death to Jews!” While Belgian politicians quickly condemned
the shooting at the Jewish Museum, some Jews felt the response to the
protests, including that of the center-left Socialists, was tepid at
best.
“The
Socialist Party is afraid, because of the votes here in Belgium,” said
Dr. Maurice Sosnowski, an anesthesiologist and prominent Jewish leader
in Brussels. “In Belgium, they are not willing to speak loudly, because
there are a lot of Muslims.”
In
the nonprofit world of Brussels, the politics of Israel, which some on
the European left view as essentially the pursuit of racist objectives
against Palestinians, have made it difficult to keep the fight against
anti-Semitism high on the agenda.
“Some see it in conflict with the anti-racism movement,” said Robin Sclafani, director of the Brussels-based group A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe.
The organization, also known as CEJI, provides anti-discrimination
training to teachers, social workers and others. Ms. Sclafani said she
now receives numerous requests for training sessions to combat
discrimination against Muslims, yet there is little interest in
workshops on anti-Semitism.
Right now there are only three world reserve currencies: the dollar, the euro and the yen.
The Euro and the Yen are dying. Stagnation, aging populations, mass unemployment, overwhelming tax burdens: vast structural problems that are insoluble.
Money is now flowing out of Europe and Japan into the US. And as it does the dollar will only rise and rise. It's a one way bet. And this will keep pressure on gold. And put a floor under US assets.
And this will add ballast to the absurd claim that the dollar rise is proof of a recovering US economy.
Here's the huge and obvious problem. There is no US growth either. We simply have the deepest and safest markets in a deteriorating financial universe. But the structural problems here: wage stagnation, mass underemployment, growing wealth inequality and tremendous unfunded liabilities, - all dependent on perpetual negative real rates - will, in short order, be EXACERBATED by a STRONG DOLLAR.
The very false emblem of our "recovery" will crush our ability to export, and push a stagnant economy back into outright recession.
Then the game will be over. There will be no more engine (no matter how feeble) for global growth.
Confidence will finally falter. The dollar will have to be devalued.
And then Gold and Hard Assets with experience the final thrust into a hyperinflationary spiral in a world that is otherwise in a mass depression.
Obama is defending Goldman Sachs & of NY Bankers in their bid to
include Derivatives in the free trade agreement with Europe and to
ensure they cannot be regulated by Europe. Obama insists, at the bank’s
request, that subject US banks to EU regulation will complicate the
regulatory landscape unnecessarily. The banks are lobbying hard for that
position from the White House. Obama wants derivatives IN EVERY MARKET globally to be exempt from foreign regulators just in time for the next bubble.
Obama
argues they are hedges against exchange rate fluctuations, but
derivatives also bet on purchases of real estate and mortgages,
commodities, food, their sales or purchases in the future. This includes
the toxic bombs that wiped out so many banks - mortgage derivatives,
including the so-called CDO’s (mortgage insurance).
The EU is now
putting pressure on the US by threatening to exclude any discussions on
financial services altogether from the trade agreement unless Washington
agrees to Brussels’ demands to put regulation on the table. The EU is
arguing that the existing transatlantic dialogue between watchdog
regulators and other international venues is not entirely adequate for
regulatory matters. Indeed, the US has far too many regulators compared
to just one in Europe including London. The mortgaged backed securities
required approval by SEC, CFTC, Fed, Banking regulators, etc. at least 7
approvals of US regulators but they all follow each other anyhow, Huge
waste of resources. The EU is correct on this debate.
Derivatives created by the NY banks are an important part of the
target with the US free trade agreement. The EU has for a second time
granted an extension of the deadline due to efforts to oversee the
global derivatives market. The U.S. regulators have completely failed to
achieve any breakthrough in the main points of contention. This was
reported by Business Insider
. Nonetheless, this move could have big consequences for the financial
industry on both sides of the Atlantic. It was Robert Rubin who sought
to gain the exclusion of regulation for banks under the WTO to export
derivatives. However, the derivative nightmare is still fresh in Europe
where it created the most damage. These negotiations could see banks and
insurers left out of what would be the biggest regional trade agreement
in the world, covering almost half of global output.
The two sides were the standstill at odds over the design of clearing
houses to secure such trade. Creating independent clearing houses to
help in the future to avoid risks while operating together in the
respective legal systems is essential. Creating such a system is not
enticing because these toxic-bombs can be so toxic nobody fully can
determine the risk.There are obviously deep concerns about impending
losses, whereas a further delay would mean a setback for the intended
regulation of the face value 710 trillion US-dollar market.
Nevertheless, it has been the complexity of the derivatives market is
considered as the core problem of the financial crisis 2007-2008. The
controversy between Obama and the EU is his relentless protection of the
NY banks. As the European banking crisis gets far worse, the previous
optimism was Obama expecting trust in America but that is fading in
finance rather rapidly. The greatest problem is neither the heads of the
banks nor anyone in Washington fully understand what happens in a such a
market during a meltdown do to the deep complexity of the structures.
Obama has subject the entire world to US regulation prosecuting
foreign banks that do not obey US sanctions, but at the same time he is
trying to prevent and European regulation of US banks. They are lobbying
Obama to exclude them from any European regulations. Furthermore, the
U.S. regulator CFTC demands that the European clearing houses must
comply with their regulations when they operate in America, instead of
being able to rely on rules of their home regulator. The US wants to
exclude NY banks from European regulation when operating in Europe.
Come December 15th, 2014, some resolution must be reached or EU banks
must cooperate with US regulators. The current stalemate puts pressure
on the US banks to have significantly higher capital buffers for deals
by U.S. firms ready and in place to conduct business only through
clearing houses in those countries that are recognized by Europe. The NY
banks want to be excluded that requirement – huge mistake if they win.
Retirement savings gap widens between rich and poor
By Melanie Hicken@melhickenSeptember 18, 2014: 7:06 PM ETIn
2013, households in the lowest income bracket had a median savings
balance of just $13,000, while those in the top income bracket had
median savings of $452,000.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
When it comes to retirement savings, the gap between the rich and poor is growing dramatically.
Last year, the typical 55- to 64-year-old household had just $111,000
saved in their 401(k)s and IRAs, which would translate into just $500 a
month in retirement income, according to a report from Boston College's
Center for Retirement Research that analyzed recent Federal Reserve
data.
Related: Retired women: How I'm getting by
But when you break down the savings by income brackets, the numbers look even bleaker.
Households in the lowest income bracket -- those earning less than
$39,000 a year -- had a median savings balance of just $13,000. Meanwhile, those in the top income bracket -- those earning $138,000 or more a year -- had a median of $452,000 saved.
And that's a gap that has widened significantly over the past decade.
America's wealthiest saw the value of their median retirement savings
grow by 24% between 2004 and 2013, while low-income households couldn't
even keep up with inflation as they watched their savings shrink by
nearly 20%, according to the Federal Reserve's inflation-adjusted data.
One Of The Smartest VCs Of All Time Has An Ominous Warning For The Tech Industry
Respected venture capitalist Bill Gurley is sounding the alarm on the startup industry. Gurley says the current environment reminds him of the tech bubble that formed in the late 1990s.
Every incremental day that goes past I
have this feeling a little bit more. I think that Silicon Valley as a
whole or that the venture-capital community or startup community is
taking on an excessive amount of risk right now. Unprecedented since
‘'99. In some ways less silly than '99 and in other ways more silly than
in '99.
Gurley adds, "No one's fearful, everyone's greedy, and it will eventually end."
Gurley is a partner at Benchmark. He's invested in Uber, OpenTable,
and Zillow. Benchmark has invested in Snapchat, Quip, Yelp, and many more.
Private companies are raising giant sums of money — some as much as
$500 million, says Gurley. When you have that much money, you have to
spend it, so companies are upping their "burn rate," or the amount of
money they're willing to lose to grow their businesses.
Gurley thinks the burn rate for companies is the highest it's been
since 1999. He also thinks that the number of people working at
money-losing companies is the highest it's been since 1999. People think
nothing of working at companies that are losing millions of dollars a
year because there's an overwhelming feeling of optimism right now.
If a downturn suddenly hits the startup world, Gurley thinks it's
going to take "massive" amounts of "gymnastics" for companies to
readjust their businesses to cut down on the burn rate.
This is all being driven by the low cost of capital. It's relatively easy for startups to raise money right now.
All the money sloshing around in the startup world is leading to
secondary problems. Landlords in San Francisco are trying to lock in
startups to 10-year leases. Gurley thinks this is a sign that landlords
believe their rents are at a record high, and they want to lock in the
rate. If landlords thought the price was going to be higher, they
wouldn't be asking for 10-year leases.
Gurley isn't cutting back on his investment, though. He's trying to
be selective. He also says he's trying to advise his companies to be
smart with their money.
But there's a problem with that. You can't afford to be conservative when all this money is flying around:
That's really difficult because if you
have a competitor that's going to double or triple down on sales and you
just decide, "Oh, well I'm not going to execute bad business decisions,
I'm just going to sit back," you lose market share. So, choosing not to
play the game on the field doesn't work, so you're left with trying to
advise someone to be pragmatically aggressive with some type of
conservative backdrop or alternative strategy in case the world shifts.
But it's hard.
But things have been pretty good since then.
And earlier this year, when Box tried to IPO, but couldn't make it to
the public markets, some people wondered if the bubble was finally
bursting. But it managed to raise money on the private markets. And then
there's Square, which seemed to be struggling, but has managed to raise
another $100 million.
A downturn is coming at some point, and companies should be prepared.
But, figuring out timing of these things is nearly impossible.
Fed Keeps ‘Considerable Time’ Pledge as Growth ‘Moderate’(Does 'Moderate' mean Non-existant?)
By Jeff Kearns and Steve MatthewsSep 17, 2014 6:29 PM ET
Save
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Fed officials have stuck to their commitment to
keep interest rates near zero for EVER AND EVER AND EVER a "considerable time" after their bond
buying program ends in October. AND THEN RESTARTS IN 2015. Fed Chair Janet Yellen held a press
conference after the announcement. Here's everything you need to know in
two minutes. (Source: Bloomberg)
The Federal Reserve
stuck to its pledge to keep interest rates near zero for a
“considerable time” FOR EVER AND EVER AND EVER after it stops buying assets, even as it VAGUELY outlined (WITH NO DETAILS) a
strategy (Does 'strategy' mean bluff?) to exit from six years of unprecedented easing.
“The labor market has yet (WILL NEVER) to fully recover,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a press conference today after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee in Washington. “There are still too many people who want jobs but can’t find them.”
Yellen
added that “inflation has been running below the committee’s 2 percent
objective,” a contrast to the panel’s July statement that it was
“somewhat closer” to its goal.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) —
This week’s Federal Reserve meeting is perhaps the most closely-watched
gathering of the year as the U.S. central bank prepares the groundwork
for an eventual liftoff in interest rates.
YEAH SURE, IN ABOUT 1000 Years.
There are several
moving parts for investors. Here are eight things to watch for clues on
when the central bank might a liftoff of short-term interest rates and
what the tightening cycle might look like.
The Fed will release
its policy statement and economic projections at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen will follow up with a press conference at
2:30 p.m.
Interest rates:
No change
here. The Fed will keep its target fed funds rate in a range between
zero and 0.25% . where it has been since December 2008.
GEE YA THINK!
Asset purchases:
For
the seventh straight meeting, the Fed is expected to taper its bond
buying program by $10 billion, bringing QE3 down to only $15 billion per
month. The central bank might decide to remove language from the
statement that asset purchases “are not on a preset course” as officials
have signaled they intend to end the program after at the Fed’s next
policy meeting on Oct. 28-29.
WOW THAT'S A TIGHT MONETARY POLICY
Forward guidance: The biggest potential change for
the market would be any change to the Fed’s pledge to keep rates low
for a “considerable time” after the central bank ends its asset purchase
program, expected in October. Any change in this pledge at this week’s
meeting would be a sign “as the start of the countdown to policy
tightening,” said Millan Mulraine, economist at TD Securities. WHOA WATCH OUT FOR THAT LANGUAGE CHANGE - IT COULD SIGNAL FURTHER LANGUAGE CHANGES SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE.
Description of labor market:
Analysts
will be watching closely to see if the Fed repeats its concern that
there is a “significant underutilization of labor resources.” With the
August job report surprisingly weak, most Fed watchers think there is no
burning need to change this description.
GEE THE LABOR MARKET IS SURPRISINGLY WEAK? SURPRISING TO WHOM?
FANTASY Dot plot:
Following
the meeting the Fed will release an updated “dot-plot” showing where
each member thinks is the appropriate target Fed funds rate at the end
of 2015, 2016 and for the first time 2017.
The current median is for rates of 1.13% at the end of 2015 and 2.5% at
the end of 2016. Michael Hanson, economist at Bank of America Merrill
Lynch, said there is a good chance that there will be upward drift in
the 2015 and 2016 dots. He expects the median dot for 2017 to be in the
3.25% to 3.5% range, just below the 3.75% long-run funds rate. “The risk
is for markets to push rates up, particularly on the short end of the
yield curve, in response to the dots.
Economic projections:
The
Fed will be updating their economic projections for 2014 and 2015. Paul
Ashworth, economist at Capital Economics, said the Fed might lower its
mid-June 2014 unemployment rate forecast slightly from 6.0% to 6.1%. But
the Fed’s forecast of growth and inflation this year seem about right.
The Fed is forecasting 2.1% to 2.3% real GDP growth this year and for
inflation, as measured by the personal consumption expenditure index, to
average 1.5% to 1.7%. “With little pressure to change their 2014
projections, we see no reason why officials would want to make any
revisions to their 2015 forecasts either,” Ashworth said.
WOW 2% GROWTH FROM THE ALWAYS OVERLY OPTIMISTIC FOLKS AT THE FED - TIGHTENING HERE WE COME!
Exit strategy:
The
Fed could agree on, and publish, an update of their exit principles.
The Fed last published these principles in June 2011. The Fed has
operational questions to decide like how it can hike the fed funds rate
with such a large balance sheet. Other issues include whether to stop
reinvesting proceeds of maturing assets and whether to sell assets from
its balance sheet.
EXIT STRATEGY? WE DON"T NEED NO STINKING EXIT STRATEGY
Name the six greatest artists of the 12th Century AD. Take your time. Here's a hint: one of them sculpted the masterpiece above: the KarlSchreinn.
Post Modern concensus that the print of Marilyn Monroe is an artistic masterpiece, and that Warhol is a "genius," or at least an important artist.
How about Alexander the Great? Have you heard of him? If not you could read any one of hundreds of biographies. Many were written in the 4th century BCE. And hundreds have been written since. He's really a fascinating figure. He conquered most of the known world, in his day. The contemporary portrait above is extraordinarily beautiful. And the story behind its minting is fascinating.
