The Funniest Paragraph Ever

From an article entitled 'Jamaica's Miracle - Myths, Legends and the Making of Usain Bolt', by by Alexander Osang and published in der Spiegel:

[ The other athletes were mere accessories, Olympic and world champions playing the opening act for the fastest man in the world. The journalists were interested in only two other athletes. One was Oscar Pistorius, who is running the 400-meter race on prosthetic lower legs, and the other was 800-meter runner Caster Semenya who, for a time, was rumored to be a man. ]

The woman without a womb, the man without legs and the sprinter without limits; they're all competing in the London Olympics. It's the biggest circus of the day, and these are the star attractions.

2012-07-20 Coke, IBM WhipSaw Trading

Bloomberg - Investors Whipsawed By Hourly Price Swings In IBM, Coca-Cola

"Investors in three of the biggest Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) stocks were whipsawed by price swings that repeated every hour yesterday, fueling speculation the moves were a consequence of computerized trading.

Shares of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) and Coca-Cola Co. (KO) swung between successive lows and highs in intervals that began near the top and bottom of each hour, data compiled by Bloomberg show. While only IBM finished more than 1 percent higher, the intraday patterns weren’t accompanied by any breaking news in the three companies where $3.42 billion worth of shares changed hands."

ANC Centenary - Celebrating 100 Years of Selfless Struggle

A ZAR 1 Million Luxury German Sedan
Owned by the Ruling ANC
Emblazoned with the Slogan
'100 Years of Selfless Struggle'

Alan Watts and the Trouble with Symbols

Alan Watts: "Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience."

Most civilized people today are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other the whole system of symbols about this world that we have in our minds. They are all very, very useful symbols, all our civilization depends on it but like all good things they have their disadvantages And the principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality. Like we confuse money with actual wealth and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves with ourselves. Of course reality from the philosopher’s point of view is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me what do I mean by reality. Am I talking about the physical world of nature or am I talking about the spiritual world or what? And to that I have a very simple answer: When we talk about the material world it is actually a philosophical concept. And if I say that reality is spiritual it is also a philosophical concept.And reality itself is not a concept, reality is …

….and we won’t give it a name.

Marc Faber June 2009 - Bloomberg

YouTube Link

Bloomberg interviews Marc Faber in June 2009, with Faber's calls on the coming period being on point.

Marc all this is predicated on the fact that you see the US in a hyperinflationary state. I mean you compared us to Zimbabwe in July 2008.  Do you really think its going to be that bad, i mean really, on a scale of 1 - 10, you actually have zero confidence in the US ability to exit ?

Yes, [of] that I have zero confidence, absolutely zero.  There is no political will, to reduce the deficits, and to keep money tight.  And if you read all the articles that are published in the United States, and if you read the statements by mister Bernanke, they all point towards essentially keeping interest rates artificially low and at all cost to generate some inflation.  Now the problem with inflation is that you can't just generate 3 or 6 % inflation, inflation is a dynamic process, and I can assure you, all of the viewers of Bloomberg, that they will this year be hit by higher contributions to the government, and higher insurance premiums for their insurance policies, and so forth, and so on... higher transportation costs.  I don't know that deflation is what prices they are living by, but my prices in life, they go up.

The Slope - Trading Horizon @ 3 October 2011

The major US indices are down, with the S&P500 index being around 1105, down 2.3% on the day.

This is inline with the recent trend of the last 5 straight days.

Reuters:

[ The Good Ship Dexia Beaches near the Shores of Normandy ] Banks slumped after a 10 percent fall in shares of Franco-Belgian financial group Dexia. The company is highly exposed to Greek loans and it highlighted concerns about the extent to which a default in Athens would damage already fragile European banks.

[ Some story about a Bunch of Honest Cretans ] Greece admitted it will miss its deficit targets this year, which could make the country unable to receive more international aid and run out of cash. 

 [ Meanwhile, back in the fatherland, Bank Of America and Morgan Stanley are about to require some expensive life support if they are to survive the Greek default (Note of thanks to the desk at Goldman Sachs which planted the derivative timebomb in the basement of the less-than-dextrous aforementioned European bank, within the circle of the European monetary union) ] U.S. banks including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have all seen their credit default swap costs jump as other banks hedge their counterparty exposures and speculative traders bet on the situation worsening.

[ Margin Stanley ] Morgan Stanley has been the most volatile name in recent weeks, with the cost of insuring its debt rising to levels not seen since November 2008, according to Markit data. [ may be being circled by hedge fund vultures ] "Everyone is looking at the Morgan Stanleys of the world, looking at their CDS gapping up here," said David Lutz, managing director of trading, Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets in Baltimore.

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