Exotic Chicks

Back to my new eBook for a moment, now out through Barnes & Noble online and published through the excellent Smashwords. Its full title is: 'A Digital Kumquat. Exotic Hyper-Sexual Psychodynamics For Bored Rich People.'

Psychodynamics... Now what does that mean?

It just means the subconscious forces that move us, that secretly make us react in certain ways to things, or that make us (or allow us to) have an inner emotional involvement with people or things.

Exotic psychodynamics. Well now I suppose this might be a phrase that can mean to imply some sort of strange subconscious forces - or, it could mean very unusual ways in which we might be able to influence our own inner, hidden, thoughts and subconscious processes.

A lot of recent and contemporary Western academic or mainstream philosophical tradition – or fashions of thinking, let's say - makes much of 'science' and logical or objective congitive choice and decision. In a twist of that, modern American West Coast 'pop psychology' and 'pop philosophy' tries to create an attractive fusion of Eastern and Western ideas and regularly comes up with variations of 'The Secret,' which is really only the latest in a line of magical thinking fads – a bit like the 'ideas version' of yo-yos and hula hoops. Both the apparently 'logical' and the 'fusion' approaches deny the hidden biases humans often have deep in the subconscious territories of their mind: the supposedly logical is often hiding a state of denial of self, and the 'fusion' is often no more than ludicrous wishful thinking bordering on unrestrained fantasy.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced 'chick sent me high...' and why not!) is a very serious, also very mainstream, and I would say a very great modern psychologist whose ideas centre on something called positive psychology. This is an optimal experience state or condition for people, wherein they feel as if everything is flowing for them. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter, and the experience itself (of the activity) is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great costs, just for the sake of doing it. When they are thus fully immersed, their energy is focused, and they feel a full involvement and success in the process of the activity.

(The pic is 'Kronsteen' in 'From Russia With Love'...A bit of a psychologist trope, really).

This idea stands in contrast to something like 'The Secret,' in which a certain 'wish-fulfilling' actual material outcome or object gained, is the ultimate or even the fundamental aim.

Optimal experience states, or the positive psychology approach, are methodologies of intelligent action that are able to be systematically carried out using extremely mainstream psychology techniques, and even 'entrained' in a subject, or by an individual devising and conducting such a plan for themselves.

'The Secret' is unlikely to produce any empirical results of actual success. Whereas Csikszentmihalyi's optimal experience states through positive psychology certainly will, and with the collateral positive consequences that go along with things when there is 'positive psychology' at play: physical well-being and organic benefits, radical stress reduction, and improved personal relationships. There is nothing magical about it, other than the impression it gives that it is magical. Material success is a guaranteed eventual result of such sustained performance and experience states, however. And that is why all the top sports coaches and athletes have always stressed the psychology-side of things, and the current highest knowledge - the 'leading edge' – of these understandings and undertakings is in the area of Csikszentmihalyi's positive psychology optimal experience states.

In my eBook “A Digital Kumquat” I detail through a fictionalised story, techniques and devices of the very latest kinds that are used in very high circles today to exploit Csikszentmihalyi's research for a variety of purposes. Some of which are indeed extremely, exotic.

Regards to All,

Incognito 2011

The Winters Of Their Discontent

Okay a couple of people emailed me privately to ask – on account of the last paragraph of the last blog post here - did I maybe know something beforehand about the recently announced death of Kim Jong Il.

Yes there were some rumours around regarding the ailing health of not one, but 'several dictators' who were in some way also associated with China. I have some vintage champagne cellaring for the two I'm thinking about - two of the most malefic personas that have ever walked the stage of 'big politics.' I fear however that they will abide with us for a little longer.

But enough of such dismal stuff. And on to something more uplifting.

How does 'old money' get to be 'old?' And why is it important?

People have faced challenges regularly throughout history, challenges which shatter favourite illusions, and call into question the value of the prevailing knowledge – at the particular time - of how to solve such challenges. Fortunes are usually totally wiped out during those phases as previously well-to-do and establishment figures use up their wealth just to stay alive as the long winters of their discontent rages on towards their final destinations. Those who have ways and means of surviving with something left still intact after the winter darkness has retired – tend to possess the most ancient familial memories about life and how things really are. In other words, they have the experience to handle the challenges.

Maybe the world will encounter, new, as-yet never-before-seen, challenges? Maybe. But I find the challenges before us today, and those that I have read about in history books, and those that have been recounted to me by others who lived through them, all of a piece.

If I ever pulled the budget together to do a big film, I would be working from an ideal fantasy I have about being able to cast those intriguing, even somewhat prickly, actor/characters who rarely all appear on the world's stage at the same time. I would love to cast Klaus Kinski, alongside Marlene Dietrich, alongside John Malkovich, alongside Charlize Theron alongside... ...I dunno, there's so many; but you get what I mean.

Every one of these movie identities actually had a real life that reeked with drama and by now, legend. Klaus Kinski was a case in point, of someone, who managed to survive the most atrocious environment, and come out a magnetic, austerely philosophic, some say of course, also mad person. Not too many people today remember when Klaus was the sex god, really, of Europe. His real life was XXX-rated before there was such a film classification. Certainly, again, some say this was all a stunt for publicity. But I don't think so. I think it was pretty real.

I was once invited to go to that famous Davos Economic Conference thingy. Lots of two-bit millionaires get asked to go, and back in the day when I was one, I also got asked. But I did not go. At the time, I didn't quite get what the point was, although even then it was clear to me from the types who were going, that this was to be another elitist stunt about to be practiced on a gullible world.

Actually I did go nearby to Davos. Not far up the road to a place where lazy rich people like me (well not like me because they were a whole helluva lot richer!) went to play around each winter. Here are some pictures of the place. And this is still where I get my information from today.

Bettcha anything you like, that the types at this place are not going to go short throughout the coming euro-zone winter of every politician's and mainstream banker's discontent.

Calvin J. Bear

The Rienzi Overture

Is it possible for a work of art to be a life-changing experience?

How is it possible? 

Richard Wagner's Rienzi (pronouned 'Ree/on/zee' by the upper classes, btw, and not 'Ry/en/zee') Overture, widely-regarded as very beautiful music, is of course also forever notorious as the piece that Adolf Hitler said was the cause of everything, the source that motivated him to put into action previously vague plans.

Nicola Di Rienzi was a certain gentleman who lived at the time of the Italian poet Petrarch, and who overthrew the effete aristocracy of the day and successively won and then lost rulership of Rome. His story, for whatever reason, had already become romanticized even by the time Wagner himself further added his gleam to it.

Wikipedia goes on at great length, in its discussion about Stanley Kubrick's “Eyes Wide Shut” (why the hell am I going on about this movie in this blog all the time?!!) about Kubrick's references to anti-semitism in this film. I don't see them being there prominently myself – even when I look for them. However I do fancy I hear the Rienzi Overture drifting in and out of the piano music... And that would be interesting if correct. It is subtle, but I suspect it is indeed there – and there on purpose too. (The pic on the left is by Einar Einarsson Kvaran, and appears on the Wikipedia entry.)

I find commentary that Kubrick speaks out against anti-semitism in his movies as utterly crass. He does no such thing. Kubrick is doing what so many normal people also do, and that is appreciate things as they are and as they exist on their own merits. Under virtually every Youtube clip of the Rienzi Overture or Movement there is argument this way and that about the Hitler/Nazi connection to this piece of music and most ordinary music lovers rightly complain about making such connections.

Oh yes but of course there is a style that defines the 'Germanic' ideal. I can't explain why it is so. As far as so much of the commentary, review and argument goes, about these sorts of things that you see so much of all over the internet – even including so-called 'conspiracy theory-thinking' – it's all so predictable, you can see it all coming from a mile away...

Delusional thinking comes in many forms. You can't make money being deluded, and you can't hold onto stuff that you have grabbed from others when you slip into a state of self-delusion. But empires can fall when they are in the state of deluding themselves into believing there is never an adequate opposition, and money moves from those who take it for granted, to those who know how to control the delusions it brings with it.

Death comes to all on the face of the earth. Three things will happen in the next two years: old dictators will face their own death from old age, old politicians will face their own death from old age, and the public will begin to follow nascent delusions. These things are certain and cannot be altered.

Calvin J. Bear

An eBook That Won't Let You down

A DIGITAL KUMQUAT (Smashwords Edition eBook)

I have to tell you, that most of the time I simply do things for my own satisfaction. I had no idea, really, that quite so many eReaders are being bought and used by people around the world as independent statistics appear to show. There are, apparently, upwards of 13 million eReaders actively downloading material in the USA alone. I wish I could buy some shares into any company that actually shows revenues from such outstanding product sales!

Okay so I wrote an eBook. The reason I started to write one originally was because of a discussion I was having with a brother-in-law in the London-based big box office movie industry. (He's known for one really big film that I do like a lot. It's a romantic sort of ensemble piece. You'll know it. Sort of Christmas-y... I won't say what it is. But I will say that one of the characters in it he based on his younger brother, who took off firstly to Spain and then to Australia, and was a bit of a gormless twit, really. ...Married my big sister.)

Actually it took him bloody years and years to finally produce – he'd had the script since at least the Seventies!

Anyway, rather than detail for him, point-by-point, the incredibly huge literary references that someone like Kubrick (yes, I know, my favourite these days) uses in his films, I decided to go over the top and write something completely modern and up-to-the-minute – a story, something fictional - as if the theoretical reader was as well-versed in the references as any literary criminal genius.... Basically to kick his brains in about what he just plain didn't know so that he would stop arguing with me.

Half way down the track I realized well hell, anyone can just look up all the big words and obscure names on Google, and by the time they'd read the whole book they'd be pretty well educated in the highest of high-brow senses of the term!!

Trust me. If you sent me a dollar for every word and every name you thought you'd heard of and yet still had to look up you'd be looking at a good few thousand dollars by the time you got to the end. Don't bet on yourself here, my friend, you're really not yet as across it all as I am. YET. But I have hopes for you. And don't forget, I had advantages – big money family background, big European aristocrats. I certainly haven't turned out to be a world political leader, that's for sure. But I know stuff. Stuff you will have to look up, and that's whether you're a Nobel winner or not. I'm ahead of you; trust me.

Now look, there's a few other things I should say – I'm not so stupid as to think people will read anything dead dull and boring though.

On another website right now I think I'm getting into trouble saying that my mother wrote “A Clockwork Orange.” But... I'm thinking of asking my friend who lives in Switzerland to register on this blogspot here – her grandfather was the lawyer who sued Burgess on my mother's behalf and forced him to remove all references to her either in that book, or any attribution to her outside of it. There are many people who know what happened. Wikipedia does not. Or at least it skirts around the issue a little.

My book, is called “A Digital Kumquat” subtitled, “Exotic Hyper-Sexual Psychodynamics For Bored Rich People, and revealing for the first time publicly, The Samarkandian Wonderfruit Sex Confection.”

It's published, or channelled or whatever you call it, through the excellent Smashwords. Some of it can be downloaded for free and the whole thing is $4.99

It's on Smashwords' Premium Catalogue for “Adult Books,” and is available for download in virtually all eReader and PDF formats.

Happy Reading to all 13 million of you out there!

Calvin J. Bear

Christmas Pantomime

Education For The Elite.

“The elite...” That means you. Compared to the entire population of the world, those who stop by here are few; those who stay are rare. Relatively speaking, you are the few and the rare.

Pantomime is a form of drama that goes back to very ancient times. It is a Greek word, and means “to play all roles.”

La Cenerentola – or, Cinderella, is an opera by Rossini, and is more or less a high class version of a pantomime. As you know, some of the characters in a pantomime, are played by actors of a gender different from that of the role in which they are being represented in the performance. Status and position are usually also reversed at times during the performance, and the ending is usually highly implausible or unlikely.

Pantomimes are performed for children, but are meant to be understood by adults too because they operate on many levels of meaning and employ words and phrases which are not supposed to be comprehensible to younger people.

The good character enters the stage from the left as you watch, and the bad character enters from the right.

Clever adult pantomime is beyond the reach of common people, common religious or moral understandings, and common intellect or mentality.

...If you come here regularly and stay sufficiently to read these articles, you will realize that you need a password to enjoy all the benefits that there are here. Here, it does not matter whether you have degrees or a reputation proving that you are or know anything, it does not matter that you think writers here have pretensions or not, it does not matter that you wield power in other spheres. For here, promises cannot be broken. (I hope you recognize where that paraphrasing originates from.)

Okay, so tell me – if someone wasn't aware that “The Story of the Nightingale” is from Aesop's Fables rendered into English in a version by Hans Christian Anderson, how will it be possible for that person to understand the character of “Nick Nightingale” in Stanley Kubrick's “Eyes Wide Shut,” for instance? The pretensions of today's noisy ignorant, is absolutely staggering. And the education standards at the higher levels, have slipped beyond recall.

But rejoice! You have found this oasis right here! And I promise you interpretations that can place even “the facts” in a light which only real intellect may see anything under. In other words, neither children nor idiots will get it. And that will protect you. The benefit? Truth will set you free, and money will help you enjoy that freedom. Now there's an unlikely ending for yer.

Calvin J. Bear

The Great Roman Designer Of The Universe

Guess what? There have been a couple of big surges recently in the readership numbers of this blog. I think some people who were flying through maybe on account of the pics of girls actually STAYED!!

...Or maybe it was those who were Googling 'tax dodging and money laundering.'

I can't be sure what it is that most people really would like to see or read, since no one comments publicly here – and so, until anyone suggests anything I shall keep on my merry way roaming in any direction at all, I guess. There are quite a number of regular readers now – I get to see that via the site statistics. Maybe y'all want to see me burn a guitar on-stage or somethin'. Play the keypad with my teeth.

Okay I'll tell you what I'm really personally interested in myself: design. As a side-effect of working for a Sydney-based merchant bank in the hi-tech Eighties, for quite some time I had to gain the skills of a production manager in order to realise value out of patents and industrial know-how. I hired an ex-AMG (yes, that AMG) manager from Melchers Singapore – a German guy. Brilliant, really, he was. He never understood Australia but he was a decent production manager. An-y-w-a-y... turns out there are a hell of a lot of Masons (members of Masonic Lodges) in Singapore. I tell you that for no really deep reason other than to connect to the next bit of this tale...

Another friend of mine who sits on Youtube checking out every single Satanic conspiracy exposé and voicing outrage at all the obvious conspiracies that run the world, admitted the other day that he really loves watching all that accult stuff – he's really interested in it and is attracted to everything on the subject. He's big into the 'Masons are Satanic/Luciferian' and all that.

Here's where the Freemasons have it wrong: okay you have this 'Great Architect Of The Universe,' but personally I'm more interested in all the little designers of the Universe.

Design does, what all the pretenders only purport to being able to do.

Design whacks those lyin' Pakistanis with Predators. (Pic on right is from 'Deal of the Century' featuring arms dealing over Predator Drones...)

And by the way, while I'm beating up on the Muslims, why is there no reference at all in the Koran to Cleopatra and the Pyramids? 

...And there are A LOT of Muslims into Freemasonry, as you of course know.

Architects follow, designers lead.

Is there a 'Great Designer of the Universe?' Well, it's a matter of personal inclination but I'm inclined to the view that there is a characteristic greatness to the work of some designers.

Architecture is a function, and lucky if that... Design – real design, is a jaw-dropping miracle everyday.

Don't you agree?

Calvin J. Bear

Old Money-Style Entertainment

Agh! No more serious stuff!!

A friend of mine said to me just yesterday - “hey why are all the salespeople (well, actually they were all 'men,' salesmen...) so unethusiastic right now. They seemed to be all 'no' people this week.”

Thinking of my other friend Dr. Pillai from L.A., I opined, “well, the mind is naturally negative. And they have all just fallen back into their default condition.”

“Look I want the million-dollar experience.” He wailed. “If I spend money I want the feeling!”

“You want the feeling?” I said. “If you can trust me, just go to the Verte Green Cafe in the Collonade in Subiaco, and get yourself a syphon infra-red beam coffee made with Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee beans. It'll cost you about $4.50. And it will be the million-dollar experience. The Chinese guy there will blow your mind with the way he makes it and serves it and gets you to sniff the grind and asks for your opinion before he turns on the red glowing light. The RED GLOWING LIGHT...! It's all about the RED GLOWING LIGHT. And asking for your opinion.

I was going to stick up a pic of colourful marzipan here and complain about Robert Parker talking about tasting 'marzipan' in a red wine; the hell he would know marzipan if he fell over it on a dark night in an alleyway in Liechtenstein. Which is where you will experience real marzipan, as it happens. Not that tired, bitter, hard, horrible and largely fake 'confection' passed off everywhere as 'marzipan.' So which 'marzipan' is Parker talking about here? The one that is less than twenty minutes old and hasn't chemically deteriorated yet, and is still warm and soft and not bitter at all, and more or less is only made in a half a dozen obscure places still, around the world anymore? Or some other thing that he, and just about everyone else around – including me for a good long while – thought or thinks is marzipan?

Look, we live in a world of sheer and utter nonsense (and that includes what Parker does) pushed onto a largely yielding and gullible audience and it's all gone too far and that is why service and the feeling is not being located by my friend at the expensive luxury automotive showrooms.

The implied expectation about freedom and choice that is believed to come along with a million dollars is all well and good – and we'd all like to be in that difficult position of actually having a million dollars to spend on any old thing – but the almost endless mire of bad salespeople and illiterate professionals and ignorant 'experts' that also comes along is a serious bane to the modern wealthy elite.

So instead of uploading something largely inaccessible – namely, a picture of real marzipan – and therefore the source of possible disappointment to those who desire the million-dollar experience right away... ...here is a pic of Georges Guétary doing his 'Stairway To Paradise' at The Moulin Rouge. You can easily see the video clip on youtube.

And also, another pic of Kir Royale, that estimable invention of the Canon Felix Kir. If you can't find a cheap Cassis liquor, then get some cardomom seeds, fennel seeds, dried Juniper berries, dried blueberries and boil them all up in a little Demerara sugar water, add a bit of Ribena cordial – and tip a little of that whole concoction into a decent cheap white wine. Zut Alors! You 'av ze best Kir you 'av evairrr 'ad. Leave out whatever you can't readily locate if you like, it'll still work, more or less.

And here's what real girls do for your steps to Paradise...

Old Money women? Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose, I guess. And that's the way it should be too!

Best,

Calvin J. Bear

Creating Growth

The fundamental underlying problem with euro debt in the European countries which require support from the ECB right now, is the insufficiency of tax receipts in those countries domestically.

It should not be believed that these problematic countries deliberately 'borrowed too much.' What happened, was that the trajectory of (expected) tax receipts was not manifested in practice. And there was a good reason for that:

Over the last thirty years, capital-expensive physical infrastructure and physical delivery collateral for so many things has been wiped away and replaced by far cheaper micro computers and the internet, including wireless internet. The tax from sales and economic transactions to do with all of that infrastructure has dropped right off. The system that has replaced that past-era economic activity is much less expensive, and employs far fewer people.

But the output, i.e., the actual SUPPLY of production and industrial output going through these new channels and systems, has as much vertical net economic value as previously (because people are still being fed and clothed and housed, that is, there is no SUPPLY shortage).

Governments become more risk-averse the less their tax receipts are - due to public and political pressure of running increased deficits when revenue drops - and they tend to then try and rely upon encouraging banks and financial markets through cheap money to financial institutions, to force markets and industry to create transactions that will supplant what was lost in the economy. But what was lost was a horizontal layer pertaining to parts of the economy not directly concerning what has a direct incentive value to banks. And banks are not interested in supporting such a layer because of any wider long-term indirect economic benefit, and nor are they motivated to replacing it similarly because of any long-term economic vision.

And all that happens then is the banks take the money cheaply offered by central banks, and sit on it. And then you have potential for a Depression with a wide disparity between the incomes of bank directors, and everyone else in the economy. And then you certainly get 'Occupy Wall Street!'

What governments have failed to conceive is the connection between the basic transaction drivers in the immediate past-era economy, and the basic transactions drivers in the present economy, and the negative consequences of their easy money policy to banks on these fundamental economy drivers.

The fundamental economy drivers are not 'supply and demand of banks capital and/or their money' - but supply and demand of actual things!

Take one clear example - licensed music is no longer economically supportable within the commercial music industry through the manufacture and sales of CD's. Shops close, warehouses are empty, any associated advertising and marketing, photographics, design and publicity - all fall off in economic activity, including in employing people. But the actual market is still there and is no longer (commercially) exploited as it once was. Tax revenues drop. You can stick as much cheap money as you like into banks that used to fund everything Disney once promoted - Britney, Justin, Christina, you name them - but they won't actually spend any of it, and they will sit on it proudly fantasizing that some crew in Silicon Valley somewhere with dirty Walmart T-shirts have finally cracked how to sell music online and reap zillions whilst spending no money at all on shop leases, inventory, warehouses, trucking, and employees. You have created, i.e., a highly recessionary effect.

Whereas, the remaining real fact is that the musician and the listener still want to have a transaction.

Unfortunately, governments are not generally intellectually-aware enough to accept that the fiscal policy offset needs to go to both the musician and the listener - not the bank at all, nor the sunset industry participants. There is no real benefit in compensating the banks and no possible benefit in assisting a dying industry segment.

The only genuine benefit will come if you return the economic cost of progressing channel efficiency to either or both sides of the actual supply/demand dynamic - namely, the maker and the end-user. That is, if you intend to maintain the level of taxation receipts that you were counting on based on past economic activity.

Massive tax rebates need to be extended to producers of music (in this example) and also to the buyers. How do you accomplish that latter element? For example, you might offer kids who actually purchase music online one free physical premium CD sent in the mail for each fifty songs they download at say 10 cents a song. That would be feasible.

You would certainly grant massive tax rebates to the artists and their producers - that would unlock the cash out of the banks' and other 'money sitters' with the effect of velocity circulation increase in the actual domestic economy and the concomitant increases in taxation revenues.

Increased taxation revenues equals better ability to meet sovereign debt repayments.

And this process must be transferred across a huge range of examples of manufacturing and production where there is a clear delivery and infrastructure immediate economic multiplier deficit due to the new computerized-era effects.

Banks and financial instrument exchanges and allied professionals all grab the headlines at any opportunity and clamour for the attention of politicians and the media constantly; but they are irrelevant to the exercise of creating economic growth. They are an after-effect of growth. Unbridled, they become the parasites that deliver Depressions.

Calvin J. Bear

Economic Bonfires

It's really not okay anymore to keep allowing face to the popular media – which is fundamentally lacking in integrity because of its too-close connection with banks, top level politicians, and very unfortunately, the police and even segments of nations' secret services. The more that emerges through UK parliamentarian Tom Watson and the current on-going inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's News Limited, the more it is becoming clearer that the statement above is simply abundantly factual and not at all some kind of rabid frenzied imagining – unfortunately, I guess.

As I had guessed earlier, and said, on the Wall Street Examiner's BearChat Board, John Hartigan, the up-till-then CEO of News Limited in Australia – who the media had again tried to say was not in any way involved with the illegal communications interceptions and electronic bugging scandal NOW uncovered – was forced to resign from News Limited last week. Even if you consult Wikipedia, News Limited conveniantly seems to jump the era from 1975 all the way to 2006! Clearly NOTHING happened involving News or Hartigan or bankruptcies or bugging or crooked cops or politicians during that time. What a saintly lot they all must have been. And the '89 Stock Market Crash to boot withal... A minor incident afterall. Still,

EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD SEEMS SCARED OF UPTURNING THE APPLECART OF LIFE AS IT IS TOLD BY FOX NEWS.

Look, Christine Lagarde is not the god of market economics. The ECB does NOT have any right to determine any politicial decision of elected democratic government anywhere and the euro money thing is nothing more or less than a criminal enterprise devised by Goldman Sachs and Wall Street and the traitors who undermined the previous independence of the Bank for International Settlements. These 'academics' who are spruiking for the ECB are sounding more and more stupid everyday and are now coming out with extreme sorts of gibberish that even Joe Sixpack is starting to recognise for what it really is – GIBBERISH!

The BIS used to be the most solid guide and enforcer of discipline that ensured real and genuine market activity surrounding bank and government bonds – and ensured that non-competitive behaviour within regions resulted in higher (not, as they are now – lower) interest rates.

Artificial lower interest rates are a 'let's pretend' thing. This is cloud-cuckoo fairyland stuff. (E.g. Scrooge visiting the Internal Revenuers above).

Low interest rates can NEVER create economic growth in a credit cycle money-multiplier world. NEVER. And that is why the gold price will keep going up and up until official interest rates reflect the real price of money to productive enterprise. Economic growth is a dynamic of multi-variable, differential equation factors (or forces) – though at minimum it is a dynamic interplay between inflation and the cost of money, or interest rates. Growth cannot ever be a 'dynamic of forces between zero interest rates and zero inflation...' This means stagnation and no money circulation and therefore no tax receipts – i.e. economic and financial death. The idea that you can 'austerity package' your way out of this 'crisis' by forcing austerity in some countries and then blanket low interest rates everywhere because Germany wants it so – is just about as nuts an idea as you can have. The whole thing flies in the face of the fact of comparative advantage - and regional specificity too. Standardisation is not the same as 'no need to consider regional difference or comparative advantage.'

Actually, the wondrous thing about MARKET economics, is that it is just that – to do with THE MARKET. Not some manufactured, 'let's pretend I'm worth a hundred billion and I'm a Wall Street-er so everything I say is true' BS!

Right now, THE MARKET is telling Wall Street and the ECB to go take a flying jump. How do I know? Well I'll tell you: “you can't get a little bit pregnant, son.” Remember that line? Apply it to the Murdoch saga and every politician and banker that you know – excluding the heroes on that UK Committee. See what happens next. Just see. I've been consistently right so far and I'm still right now. The unthinkable... ...is about to come true.

Anyway, Christmas is around the corner. Here's a nice picture of some real money. Happens to be old. I reckon this is one of the most beautiful coins ever made – the George the Fifth Penny. George's great grandfather, I think, introduced the German tradition of the Christmas Tree to England. A great and beautiful tradition. You take the Yule Log, after you've had fun with it, and ya burn it. Out of the ashes, little green trees sprout. But yer gotta burn it all down into cinders and ashes first. Otherwise (and in the great tradition of Sir Desmond Claisebrook) it'll be like you're trying to flog a dead horse and that way you'll end up up a creek without a paddle. This thing about quickie loans at no interest for shonky purposes to Wall Street banksters has all got to end!! Christine Lagarde or no Christine Lagarde, it has to stop now. And it has to stop whether Rupert Murdoch's Fox News says 'austerity is smart' or not, it just has to stop. Austerity is NOT smart. It's actually plain dumb right now.

Oh, you mean you want to 'penalize' those who borrowed too much previously and can't fund it now, hence austerity... Why not just RAISE interest rates so that they go bankrupt? Oh, you ACTUALLY want to protect the bastards and shoot off the problem to the mug public instead? Well why don't you just say that you are a bunch of lying thieving bastards and stop pretending that you are academic economists and highly credentialed technocrats and advanced euro-political thinkers and all that?!

Once the public fully gets – and I mean they have nearly got it now – that these people are all just a bunch of lying thieving bastards protecting a few banksters interests, then what chance do you think there is of the euro experiment actually working? None. Absolutely none at all. The wheels have already fallen off. Get your Xmas tree out, stick it up, and celebrate, and wait for the bonfire. Because there is going to be one.

Love,

Calvin J. Bear

Frightening Stuff

Have you ever been truly scared by a movie – or a story in a movie? Or a book? I don't mean by some lurid and blood-soaked but otherwise paper-thin exercise of pointless and excessive violence.

There are films I have revisited with grown eyes and have appreciated more deeply what was being driven at. And once again too, as broader society itself opens further to its own once-hidden dark secrets, there is a raised level of tolerance to things which once easily frightened the innocent. The more society knows and the less it is scientifically ignorant, of course the less it is genuinely frightened by; I mean intellectually as well as viscerally frightened by, that is.

Very very occasionally you will come across someone, some intellect, that has so vast and advanced a grasp of how things are hanging together, that he or she can appear a little patronising to you whenever you talk with them.

What scares me is when I notice a huge intellect like some huge dark shape moving beneath the waves. Cruising, observing, waiting.

The great intellect is the one who, in the throng of mayhem and the din of battle, already grasps that the enemy army of alien hydrazine-blasting land-striders, cannot withstand but even a few microbes. Horses cannot vomit, and that's why they so easily succumb to colic. And titanic scary aliens are indeed not necessarily immune to simple earthly bacteria.

Atheism is a Greek word. Some Greeks like to destroy real gods, some, false gods. Some Greeks break Ikons (i.e. they are iconoclasts), and some are anarchists. Some don't believe in gods at all.

But let me tell you something – 'horses,' 'Greeks' and 'those who set themselves up to rule as gods,' all going in the same ideas, sentences or paragraphs together spells something and it is not likely to be a gift in the long run.

George Soros told me the other day 'John,' he said. 'The Euro is already finished.' Well he didn't say 'John' and address me personally, but he may as well have, and I recommend that you take it the same way yourself too.

(Pictures of scary people from scary films for you above... Calvin J. Bear)

The Calm Before

These days clever phrases are usually repetitions of earlier inventions from authors whose names and works are lost in the mists of time past. I shall not attribute this one I am about to throw here to the person and place from whence I read it most recently, as I am quite sure I've come across it before somewhere else still...

“The weight of luxury thrills and oppresses with such charm... I felt it tempt, and enflame guilt never before with such grace.”

Of course there is too too much use of the word 'luxury' today. Singapore seems to have an obsession with the word and all the marketeers focussing on anything China are head over heels in love with the word.

Actually the world is on the edge of a complete collapse and a kind of a nervous breakdown. I don't personally go along with all this complaining about the 'elite' or the 'top 1 per cent' controlling everything and some secret cabal running ordinary people's lives. You will presently see that I am quite right. The internet, if it has done anything at all, has certainly given the lie to how smart the fellows 'at the top' are: it is difficult to imagine whether a violent physical act could have done more real damage than the very recent 'simple' webcam recording of ol' Judge William Adams! Maybe there was some thicket of crooks trying to run everything to help themselves to the gravy.

Some kid out of Queensland Australia pushing $540 million through his poker gambling website demonstrates that the early movers are killing a lot of fish – before the big sharks come in.

Speaking of which I have recently been toying with the idea of pinching that kid's market. Anyone interested to get involved should pop an email to me or post a comment here. Seems to me that apart from the strong possibility of a spot of money laundering going on with the kid for some Russian mob interests, he was none too bright with his organisation. I mean, I'll give him a lot of credit for being one of the first to exploit things, but, he was otherwise no genius. It's clearly not illegal for Americans to play online poker; it is illegal for people to steal their money and defraud the revenue services though. Moreover, there is an issue to do with presenting a fair operation to the actual players and not to manipulate things through computer programs – which goes on a lot I fear.

Ah dear, the pressure of extreme knowledge and superb luxury.

You won't find this anywhere else on the net just of the minute: I had a nice little conversation a couple of days ago with the photographic director of a truly excellent 2004 (originally) internal video presentation of the Armani Prive Perfume series – David Bilowus. He worked with producer and artistic director Gilles Scalabre, and Eric Genilier to make this outstanding production. You can still see it on Youtube under 'Armani Prive Perfume 2004 Video Presentation.' He was kind enough to let me know that the music behind the film clip was the theme music to “The Quiet American” by Craig Armstrong and Matt Dunkley. There are a lot of people wishing to know all over the web what the music was. So, there it is for yer. As I said before, these guys know luxury.

Ciao ciao,

Calvin J. Bear

Online Poker and Money Laundering, Again!

Today, I'm going to touch just a little on real money laundering, and an aspect of professional risk-taking that is rarely discussed. In the days when a few oddballs went to actual book libraries, you could still indulge the phrase 'the secret of,' or 'a secret to,' but now, when everyone and everything is on the net in very easy access, anything that was a secret five minutes ago is quickly in the hands of the great unwashed, as well as fourteen year olds with fake ID's and the murky tide of 'realists' and 'sceptics' who have never contributed a single solitary idea of their own in the whole of their miserable lives!

In short, most people already think they either know everything, or can know anything and everything simply by consulting the World Wide Web. And what's most amazing, is that in spite of such conceit, you might suppose not too many would be sucked into online gambling – but no, it's incredibly successful.

And that's where the difficulties lie. Governments tacitly accept certain types of money laundering, where such a thing permits inflows of money from external (non-domestic) sources, and where the continued flow of some of it within the domestic economy attracts normal tax netting through the money multiplier consequences of ordinary domestic money circulation. Thus, when an online poker business starts up, and within a short time claims to be handling tens of millions of dollars and huge numbers of participants, the government would usually just fiddle around and castigate the owners with a soggy newspaper. But then, as soon as the government banking and currency statisticians observe that, hey!, a lot of real people are spending a real hundred bucks each to get involved, suddenly the wild claims about large numbers take on a different complexion. Because they ARE wild claims... ...to begin with. The claims are merely meant to support a money laundering scheme involving very big people behind the froth.

And then suddenly, the little people actually come in and mess everything up. The temptation to take their money and send it into the obscure tunnels of the global financial washing machine, means that suddenly, hundreds of millions of normal circulation of real domestic dollars – leaves the economy. And that, the authorities will never stand for. Thus, real players getting involved in online gambling spells the 'legal' end to the whole thing.

How could they be so silly? I mean, how can the ordinary public be so naiive? Neither you nor I will ever be able to convince them that there is no way to win money playing online poker anywhere at all – because they simply want to believe that you can. They want to have hope in 'something for nothing' and the serendipity of everything 'web,' and things being as easy as online poker seems. Something too about the ability to hide behind a computer screen answers to the fearfulness in people, and yet their cupidity which also exists at the same time.

Okay, let me modify what I said a little. The game that is being played online, is not poker. Poker is about yourself, and other people, not screenshots.

Which leads me to the 'secret' that is no real secret: the public everywhere is incapable or has become incapable generally, of independent thought.

And that is why too, that we are 'in' a so-called world financial or banking 'crisis.' The public has been told to believe, that nations that default on their debt to banks, will cause terrible consequences for everyone. Not true in any sense at all. But it is believed, and the media presses the story each and every day.

Rather than occupy Wall Street, people need to re-occupy their own heads with their own thoughts. A billion people all thinking independently will not all fail at once – but without doubt the entire population relying on the media's ideas and its pre-occupation with the art of failure will assuredly indeed all fail as a single group altogether.

Modern democracy means the Left arguing with the Right about the same idea pushed from elsewhere. It doesn't mean the Left having different ideas to the Right. At the moment, it's all about the same idea - the only idea there is, is that 'there is a financial and/or banking crisis' and there are apparently two sides from which to view that idea.

If you are a smart person you'd better make sure you have some individual and personal ideas beyond this 'fear the crisis' business. Professional risk-taking is about quality thinking. Quality risk-taking is about independent thought. It involves uniquely perceiving the rewards ahead of some determined, planned action. Uniquely. I used that word deliberately. Rarely can you rely on other people's quick signing-up to a really clever idea, but then, really decent-sized rewards are not generally found to go along with common ideas in the hands of a large number of people.

The only think that's risky about quality risk-taking is that it is almost guaranteed to have you ostracised by the crowd. Which is a good thing right now because when the crowd all sink and drown together – which they are about to and will do – you will not be with them.

It's quite clear that neither the media, politicians, nor the public possesses the one true and necessary component and indicator of a potential for quality thinking – imagination.

You can imagine that, for example, online poker will make you money, successfully. But you must extend that imagining into the region of uniqueness for such ideas to start to possess quality. Stylishness risks you little and colours your thinking. Be stylish. It does help.

The Armani Soundtrack

I am happy to tell you, that not much more than about 800 people worldwide read this blog... And that is not because it could not be more, but it is very limited intentionally because I wanted to see how many would get here of their own accord. My own purpose was, at some point, to start to divulge views into a world not popularly known.

Is there such a thing as an absolute hierarchical set of intellectual or aesthetic values? Beyond the apparent arbitrariness of taste, and the influence of monied interests, may there be an ascending set of values across a whole spectrum of human pleasures? I don't say that there is – it isn't evident to me that there is if you go by the fashions that come and go in music or art or literature or film. There appears to be some type of sense of quality or meaningfulness or consistent positive sensatory reaction in audiences, but it is not clear to me that this is particularly sophisticated even though it can be very elaborate.

So let us not say that what I am about to divulge or discuss is at the top. But I will say that it will be sophisticated. Why I chose to keep this blog relatively unheralded, is that I don't appreciate the number of times that whatever I was discussing in my office in Allendale Square next to the Quantum Fund's office here, suddenly turned up seemingly to have come from George Soros. Okay, maybe it was just synergy – I do believe he is a very very bright man. Having said that though, no sooner had I stopped enunciating my own strategies and thoughts on a vast swathe of subjects, than they stopped appearing in the newspapers and in the media in the mouths of others.

'Cross-Reflexivity In Bio-mechanical Nervous Systems Applied To Other Spheres,' drafted in Edith Cowan University under Doctor Thomas W. Odgers' department, turned up as George Soros's by-now famous 'Reflexivity In Markets' theory. The fact that James Wolfenson swept through Cowan once or twice around the same time is of course, just another mere co-incidence.

Have you noticed though, how nothing of any serious note or merit has been advanced in financial markets over recent years? How there is a total lack of creativity? How there is this monolithic megalithic attitude about everything financial? Maybe quite a few more than just me realized what was going on... It isn't a conspiracy theory - there is a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry about it in the United Kngdom right now! Frankly I think that Inquiry is making Rupert Murdoch look like the arrogant fool he always was but had gotten away with things previously.

How on earth is it possible for an investment bank to fear the default of a sovereign debt?? Surely, they can fear falling currencies, but hardly should this be the reason for a catastrophic Euro Zone financial crisis requiring the bailing out by taxpayers worldwide and austerity everywhere...

No I rather think we have at last entered the phase in which those who really can, do, and all others merely appear to do in the media because they control that media. Which at last brings me to divulge my personal tastes in things that idle people like me do. And I know that these things will leave some people cold.

You see, the fact is that when it comes to really big money, some people appear to think there is an absolute hierarchy of taste. I have earlier pointed out my own admiration for Karl Lagerfeld. The enormously wealthy Dubai rulers commissioned Armani to add design elements to eponymous hotels and resorts located there. And what truly brilliant places they are. One needn't actually go there to experience the style values and themes. I recommend you Google-up 'Armani Hotels & Resorts' and merely listen to the soundtrack behind his website to see that these artists understand a thing or two. But I think many people struggle to understand in their gut what is really being said. And I think that from around 800 individuals, perhaps 200 will acount for those who can understand. But then, I take that from the movie Half Moon Street, do I not?

I have sometimes taunted a woman with the statement that I prefer the company of women who are able to deserve ah, ah,ah, mah-ney.

JW/CJB!

I Still Know How...

"Confessions of a Riverboat Gambler." The art of playing Poker is to do with at least two variables and one constant. Firstly, it concerns the performances of other human beings and that is a variable factor. Secondly, it concerns one's own skill at judging a weak hand from a stronger one – and that too is a variable, because being human one's own fineness of judgement must be accepted to fluctuate within ranges and, moreover, it is possible that one also learns more and more over time and therefore becomes continuously relatively better at this element of the game. Therefore in any given game and at any given time of play, these two variable factors can offer at best a 'general expectation' value as to logical outcome. In layman's terms we carelessly explain these relationships in terms of 'chance' or 'luck.' There is chance and luck involved, but there is also such a thing as mathematical tendencies. There is a leaning towards one particular likely event outcome (let's say, 'success') or another ('failure').

But the factor that is most regularly forgotten about as to its relevance and bearing on real outcomes, is that of the stake that is to be played for. Risk is the chance of an outcome times the consequences thereof.

And that is a very important thing to remember. If one could play for a million-dollar outcome, using a tiny bet, multiplied by ascending levels of skill and judgement, one could keep doing it a long time without much personal financial damage. Then, if one could do it with a mathematical leaning towards the possibility of success, this becomes the arena and context in which a professional risk-taker will seek to operate.

This understanding makes investing in stockmarkets of today, not rational to the professional. In spite of all the hooha from large fund managers and the supposed 'wow' factor of the sizes of money they bet, and for all the worth of the credentials they are said to have, the relative outcomes played for are small by ratio. And that automatically eliminates these people from the class of true professional. In the nearest national stock exchange located to where I presently reside, whilst dividends actually paid are very weak, the price times earnings multiple for the top 20 stocks is an average of 8:1. And this approximates the historical lowest ever ratio. Unless the national domestic Money Supply setting is adjusted to increase, one could in the first place certainly not invest for dividends on an annual basis, and nor could one envisage the prospects for capital gains.

But underlying the broad equities and bond exchanges – which is to do with a previously fashionable financialisation of business syndrome – real business goes on. Everyone from accountants to the financial media and governments and their central banks as well as retail banks too, all claim loudly that the levels of activity are lower than during past times, and even that a possible deflationary spiral is afoot. And that of course, is the difference between the professional and the parasites. Parasites must keep their hosts dependently weakened or at least in a permanent state of sufficient enfeeblement so that they cannot rid themselves of those parasites or run away from them. I like therefore that image of the losing gamblers, bust gamblers, or crooked gamblers, being thrown into the murky river as the riverboat wends inexorably onward towards its ultimate destiny of the final shoot-out scene... Stealth in avoiding being seen at all by the parasites is a key. A million dollars must be at stake for the winning. You must play in the game of the financially strong. If you intend to have the winning hand, and you are a professional, you must play the longest odds, not the shortest odds. In other words, you must take on what others think is the worst chance, not the best chance, and be granted the greatest odds. There is a miasma of true mystery about people like me. Because there will always remain some element of doubt in observers' minds as to whether we just guessed right, calculated correctly – or had some other form of inside knowledge. Winning at gambling as a professional, is a magician's trick. That is to say, it involves some magic being achieved. That much I will confess, though only as an entertainment...

Calvin J. Bear

Something You Can Believe In

I played a casino once using a thing called The Reverse Labouchere. Basically, you bet both sides of an even odds-paying roll or spin or throw in ascending and descending units of One. For example: five dollars on Black, five dollars on Red. Black wins, you bet six dollars on Black, four on Red. And so on as the game proceeds. Get it?

You can go on for ages without doing any dough unless Zero comes up lots of times. If you get a run of one colour or the other (going on the Red/Black example) you can pretty much clean up. Anyway, the House noticed what was going on and changed the rules and you have never been able to bet in units of One on an even money outcome ever since.

The moral of this story is that the House doesn't ever play fair and it changes the rules when it starts to lose and knows it is also going to continue to lose.

Same way as New York and Chicago have upped the margin sizes for futures contracts on Precious Metals just now. I see a lot of people talking about the end of the PM bull market. About a 'crash' in Precious Metals... Okay. Maybe. But then why would they feel they had to change the usual rules? Time will tell I guess but it seems mighty strange to me. Meanwhile, sure, all the margin longs are liquidating. Doesn't mean there's a crash though. Means the margin longs are having to liquidate.

Well, you can't believe in the House. You can't believe in the government. You can't believe in Bernanke. You can't believe in Geithner. And they're trying hard to get you not to believe in gold or silver.

I still believe in a lot of things: Louboutins for smart women, A flame-grilled steak, Fast Eddie Felson... A good red wine. I believe a Philly Lawyer can talk a river run straight. And that's going uphill against the downflow of the prevailing current.

Calvin J. Bear