Sense amongst Madness - Wit amongst Folly

Tribute to one of my favorite Financial Activist site – The Automatic Earth. Sometime a little radical and extreme, but often right on the mark and an important contribution to the conversation.

The Euro zone continues to lurch downward to financial oblivion in fits and starts.  All the while of course, professing that everything is just fine, and under control, and we have the tool necessary to deal with the problems, even if there were any which there are not.

The latest scheme to re- capitalize banks, (which don’t need re-capitalizing of course) is to ‘expand’  EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility) under the present legal authority.  Or at least one interpretation.  The plan contemplates a mysterious process where for every Euro, currently in the EFSF, they are going to make 5!  Hilarious!

“We need to find a mechanism where we can turn one euro in the EFSF into five, but there is no decision on how we could do that yet” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hat Tip The Automatic Earth

Well, good luck with that guys.  No decision yet?   You don’t say!  Take 1 and make 5 and then call it the stability fund! Hilarous!  And then ‘lend’ more money to Greece, and maybe Italy, oh, and Spain, Portugal and France’s banks.  Oh, and do let me know when you figure that one out.

United States Secretary of the Treasury and Wall Street Wise Man, Tim Geithner had this  had this to say,

“The threat of cascading default, bank runs, and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table, as otherwise it will undermine all other efforts, both within Europe and globally,”Geithner told the IMF.

Right.  Don’t want to undermine there efforts so far, ‘saving’ Greece.  5-to-1 is really going to help restore confidence and take catastrophic right off the table.  Especially after they give the cash to Greece, whose debt to GDP in 2010 was over 100% and will be over 200% in 2013.

Ok.  Everything is fine.  Nothing to worry about.

I was recently researching a purchase of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), which are the  10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.  I found the USA site first – ISBN numbers are $125 each, with numerous up-sell options, including the nifty “see inside” widget used on Amazon which lets browsers read a few pages, available for $49.95.  Once they reach their limit, they are cut off.  A cookie is sent so that if you close your browser or come back tomorrow, you are tagged so you can’t cheat the system, short of deleting cookies which most people wouldn’t go to the trouble.  That is a very handy gadget I must say.

Anyway,  here is the US site,

And here is the Canadian site below.  In Canada, ISBN numbers are free, apparently in unlimited quantities, though it takes 10 working days to approve your application.  Very handy if you want to publish 10 or 15 ebooks, (which I do) plus iphone, ipad, Kindle, KOBO, SONY reader etc. all of which require a unique ISBN.  Which adds up pretty quick.  Here is a screenshot of the Canadian site, after you get past the language selection.  Of course the entire site is available in French as well.

Quelle différence!   Something about the dry presentation and simple Red and Black is very familiar to me as a Canadian. More bureaucratic than the American site, but what a great thing to encourage ‘culture’ by giving away ISBN numbers.    For all the simple presentation though, the Library and Archives Canada site delivers the goods.    The Collections site has some great stuff – Here is a poster from the BC page of the Transcontinental Tour by Train exhibit.

Well the EURO Zone had a very busy day today, on the eve of the labour day weekend here in North America. WE, over here, actually did not have a busy day. The U.S. has no jobs ( yes, actually zero new jobs in the last month – not even 1 job was created! Hilarious! ) so nothing was going on there, and Canada is contracting so even less is going on here. But it is all temporary of course and there is nothing to worry about and everything is going back to normal very quickly. Oh, and China is barely in the black, which should be of great concern to Canadians, dependent as we are on raw resource exports (more here). (more…)

The Wall Street Journal, penned by a business professor, had this to say – from an American example, true, but we, here in Canada of course are ‘different,’

“If a disciplined investor who might have considered purchasing that median-price house in 1980 had opted instead to invest the 20% down payment of $19,910 and the normal homeownership expenses (above the cost of renting) over the years in the Dow Jones Industrial Index, the value of his portfolio in 2010 would have been $1,800,016. The stocks would have been worth more than the house by $1,503,196. If the analysis is based on 2007, the stock portfolio would have been worth $2,186,120, exceeding the house value by $1,625,850.”

But things are very different here in Canada.  What is driving housing prices in Canada? Which, umm, one day will have to be paid off.

Oh, except for Vancouver right? ‘Cause it’s so different and all those Asian buyers.  Appreciation will more than pay off the mortgage in no time and beat out the whimpy Dow Jones anytime right? Oh, maybe not.

“A real estate appraiser in Abbotsford told me that the banks have been strong arming them to “inflate appraisal values” in order to “make the numbers work”. He mentioned that RBC is the worst of the bunch.
He was saying that other than West Van, the Westside and other HAM areas the market is cold. He also went on to say that in Abbotsford if you bought a condo post 2007 you have pretty much lost money now.
He pointed to the following example: A condo which went for $220k a year ago was foreclosed by the bank, that same condo was then sold by the bank for $120k. It was put back on the market a “little while” ago at $175k and is now has the ask dropped to $150k…. The problem, no bids.
He also mentioned that he has gone to appraise some properties and will see, as an example, a 1.5MM+ property (remember this is abbotsford) with a hummer parked outside. But the owners are trying to secure a $40k loan.” Hat Tip VREAA

But still – lots of people are drinking the cool-aid.

I have a buddy here from France. He’s looking to get his permanent residence. He’s a video game programmer, I suspect makes decent but not fantastic money. He asks me “so have you started looking to buy a place?”. I told him that prices were too crazy, and I wasn’t about to spend 7 large on a POS. He says “but just think how much it will be worth in 10 years, probably double or triple”. So let me get this straight. All I have to do to retire in 10 years is buy a million $ house here. Wait 10 years, sell for $3 million and pocket the $2M as profit. Brilliant! What could go wrong? fr. VREAA

Indeed! You just move in, breathe steadily, and then make 2 Million!  What could possibly go wrong?  Oh well, As long as the economy is doing OK, we’ll all be fine. Right? Right?  Oh No!

The OECD just released its Leading Indicators for May which seem to confirm that well, actually, there isn’t really a recovery and in fact,  things are rather bad all over. (more…)

Some interesting musings on Facebook, and while I do like Facebook for lots of different reasons, it has something irritating about it which this writer has identified,

Although Facebook is properly classified as “social software,” it is more accurately categorized as mirror-ware, a whole new kind of social that consists only of us and our self-projections. And it is that mirror, that seductive invitation to reflect us and only us back to ourselves that damns us.

On Facebook, we post pictures to represent ourselves: our best, shiniest, toothiest, happiest/sexiest ponderer/wanderer/adventurer. The fairest ones of all. Or we post some other person or object as icon. Puppy, baby, six-year old self. The poor person’s version of identity airbrushing. To deepen the portrait, we post our status, likes and dislikes — bananas, skiing, taxes — and photo albums of grand vacations, graduations and celebrations. To our walls we announce opinions, as they come. What we find good, stupid, evil, sexy.

Facebook writers expect homogeneity from their audience. All readers read the same observation, and insights in the same way, regardless of who they are, what they know, what they need to know or even what they seek. Facebook writers do not select, shape or color moments and thoughts for particular readers. They trade the pleasure of imagining the absent reader for the imagined adoring gaze of selves. And they expect their friends to “like” their posts, pictures etc. immediately, and to shower them publicly with praise.

(more…)

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Conan O’Brien, who I don’t really care for, actually had something interesting to say at a Commencement speech to Dartmouth Grads:

Fogbound, with no compass, and adrift, I started trying things. I grew a strange, cinnamon beard. I dove into the world of social media. I started tweeting my comedy. I threw together a national tour. I played the guitar. I did stand-up, wore a skin-tight blue leather suit, recorded an album, made a documentary, and frightened my friends and family. Ultimately, I abandoned all preconceived perceptions of my career path and stature and took a job on basic cable with a network most famous for showing reruns, along with sitcoms created by a tall, black man who dresses like an old, black woman. I did a lot of silly, unconventional, spontaneous and seemingly irrational things and guess what: with the exception of the blue leather suit, it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don’t understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing.