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