Impression of Lijiang. An open air show choreographed by famous director Zhang Yimou
5/18/2012
JP Morgan Chase is the best
Obama has about US$1m deposit in JP Morgan Chase. And he is so confident of the bank to praise it as one of the best managed bank in the US. If JP Morgan Chase is one of the best and losing US$2b due to a flawed risk management formula that they have relied on, how many lesser well managed American banks are waiting to implode? Or is this a case of American is best, even when they can fouled up to such an extent?
How many high net worth private investors are licking their wounds for their blind faith in American financial wizardry? How many Sinkies are still staunch believers while privately cursing at the money they have lost from listening to American bank advisers?
Come to think of it, like Obama said, what is US$2b? There are many very well run funds losing tens of billions or hundreds of billions and still crowing how well their funds are being managed. Losing US$2b is chicken feat, a great achievement really, seriously, honestly. Just don’t check my books. The American banking and financial system is the best. They have exported this great formula of success to the world. The last port of call is China, before curtain’s up.
Blessed are the believers.
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[JPMorgan unit has $100 billion in securitized assets, structured debt: FT]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-jpmorgan-idUSBRE84H02J20120518
To be a banker in any cuntree is license to write and sign your own paycheck.
To be a banker in the US of A (so-called THE land of the free and THE home of the brave), is to do it in more style and become a media star -- justifying your obscene self-importance and being worshiped for it. The bigger the asshole, the more adoring the fan-base.
Sure, there are people who will criticise you and accuse you of being a thief, liar, fraudster...but what the heck. Working in top-level banking is a great way to become a hedge fund anager. If your fund does well...then expect to earn around 500 million...sadly, this is down from previous highs. Tough as it may be, you'll be able to struggle through life by cutting expenses here and there, and "downgrading" where necessary. Ah...what to do, most people feel poorer these days.
Oh those poor struggling finance professionals, let's all cry and pray for them.
Wanker Bankers
Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc
interesting talk on Ted Talk by Nick Hanauer of Amazon.com billionaire, how trickle down economics are actually hurting the rich like himself when they don’t share their wealth
And less tax for the rich because they are jobs and wealth creators are big lies ...agreeing it’s the middle class that made him rich.
It was considered so controversial that TED Talk pull it out from there library!
If you watch it he was only telling the truth and nothing controversial at all :)
http://nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-hot-for-ted-income-inequality-20120516
Bengster
It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one.
If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
This idea is an article of faith for republicans and seldom challenged by democrats and has shaped much of today's economic landscape.
But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It's not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.
In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are "job creators" and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.
I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.
That's why I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.
So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.
Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.
That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.
If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.
Part 1
Nick Hanauer
Part 2
Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.
I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or cars or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the vast majority of American families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.
Here's an incredible fact. If the typical American family still got today the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn about 25% more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year. Where would the economy be if that were the case?
Significant privileges have come to capitalists like me for being perceived as "job creators" at the center of the economic universe, and the language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the current social and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it is a small step from "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not accidentally choose this language. It is only honest to admit that calling oneself a "job creator" is both an assertion about how economics works and the a claim on status and privileges.
The extraordinary differential between a 15% tax rate on capital gains, dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 35% top marginal rate on work for ordinary Americans is a privilege that is hard to justify without just a touch of deification
We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.
So here's an idea worth spreading.
In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.
Nick Hanauer
@Matilah
Lecture on the wanker bankers
By Liaquat Ahamed: Learning From the Great Depression
http://fora.tv/2009/10/13/Liaquat_Ahamed_Learning_From_the_Great_Depression#fullprogram
Will watch it tonight .... I must get a woman to Occupy my time instead of learning financial history!
No wonder i m still single @ 40!
Bengster
@Bengster
I'd take a woman anyday over spending my time listening to someone complain about some negative aspect of our world. Fuck that shit -- you want problems? You don't have to look very far. However, when it comes to women, you have to at least put in some sort of "concentrated effort" directed toward a worthy objective ;-)
40 and single? Don't sweat lah. Actually, you might be better off. At 42 I tied the knot yet again (bloody fool thinking with his cock) with Mrs Matilah #3. Ex-Mrs Matilah #1 and #2 cost me an expensive home each, never mind the additional costs and legal bullying. So yeah, being single might have its benefits ;-) At least the risk of being financially hantamed terok terbobok by pissed off women is reduced.
Like any private enterprise, you can lose money in a domestic relationship. All enterprises have the possibility of making profits BUT carry a certain amount of downside risk.
JP Morgan Chase is a private enterprise, and in this instance they lost money in their commercial bonds hedging operations. Unless you yourselves were on the wrong side of the trade, why give a fuck? If you play "big bucks" in the market, you are going to get "an experience".
Not so bad lah. Lose 2 billion and still standing. Fire a few fuckers, promote a few more...and life goes on. Plus the US President just publicly declared his "faith" in your enterprise.
Weigh it up...not such a bad deal lah.
@Matilah
Hey i wont make that mistake! just my second head needs some steamulation too! his been complaining for some action
Matilah thought you be smarter then that!
i rather pay now at geyland then pay later :)
As the great Zsa Zsa Gabor said
I'm a great housekeeper. I get divorced. I keep the house
Anyways i wish you third time lucky ya! Huat ya!
Bengster
@Bengster
When it comes to women, my dick head will outsmart my brain in a flash, and I am consumed. Point is, I cannot function without female companionship. That's just the way I am, so my actions in these instances are not "mistakes"
I'm a victim :-)
@Matilah_Singapura:
JP Morgan Chase is a private enterprise, and in this instance they lost money in their commercial bonds hedging operations. Unless you yourselves were on the wrong side of the trade, why give a f***? If you play "big bucks" in the market, you are going to get "an experience".
We sympathise with your lady troubles, but like with women, the situation is not as simple as it seems.
JP Morgan and other mega US banks get to use their government-guaranteed deposits to play in financial markets. If the mega bank gambles and wins, its traders and management get l33t bonuses. But if the bank loses a bet like JPM just did, and if the loss is serious enough, the US government will bail out the bank instead of allowing it to fail because a failure would be "catastrophic for the economy", and so that's exactly what it did in 2008. (side note: hedging by definition cannot result in unexpected blowups; if the result was unforeseen, it wasn't a hedge).
"US government pays" means taxpayers pay, or savers pay due to the zero interest rate policy killing deposit rates.
So, heads the bankers win, tails the taxpayers and savers lose. If you are a taxpayer or a saver, you are on "the wrong side of the trade" whether you wanted to be or not. That makes mega banks not such private enterprises after all, n'est-ce pas?
How big is this trade? If you follow the arguments of Andrew Haldane from the Bank of England ( http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2010/speech433.pdf ), he is saying that if a banking crisis happens once every 20 years, the total cost to the global economy of bailouts + lost output from recession is between 60 and 200 TRILLION dollars.
In other words, banks destroy much more value by causing crises than they have ever created in the entire history of banking. Kinda like certain public transport company CEOs, too. Same kind of thinking going on in both cases.
So yeah, you should give a f*** about these shenanigans because we all indirectly pay for them. The financial "system" needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from ground zero to meet the needs of people, not bankers.
@Marshal Mathers IV
By now most people know that US banks are "insured" by tax payers money.
The bigger they get, the more they qualify for welfare...oops, I mean bailouts courtesy of the Big Daddy Government, which of course gets the dough from the enterprise of the people.
But there's nothing the people can do. The fix is in. You can change the government, but the scam stays because certain well-protected "elites" will act to protect their cushy lifestyles, and they have the power, connections, amorality and influence to do so.
Whether an enterprise is private, public or a shady mix of capitalism and government...I don't give a fuck if they lose money.
I have a simplicity rule: I don't give a fuck on things I cannot control. One less thing to worry about (but I will comment on it).
Am I inconsistent? I'll leave you to form an opinion on that (an opinion I don't give a fuck about either).
You worry too much. I suggest you self medicate. Thanks to another cabal of govt and business -- Big Pharma ;-)
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