Lie To Me

I THINK EVERY ECONOMIC COMMENTATOR OF ANY KIND OUGHT TO SAY WHAT MUSIC HE OR SHE LISTENS TO...

It would give you a stark perspective from which to ajudge their mind culture.

For this post I shall give you three that I listen to for your own consideration about what it can all mean or imply:

(You can see them all on YouTube).

Lola Astanova – Rachmaninov's Movement Musicaux Opus 16 # 5.

Above and Beyond pres. OceanLab – 'If I could Fly.'

Three Drives – 'Letting You Go' Greece 2000 (Dabruck Klein Vocal Radio Edit).

It's from the last of these that the following words occur:

“You can say what you want to/Cry me a river if you need to/Go put my name in a tattoo/and you can spin me lies if they come true...”

The last line has complex possible meanings and I approve of it. The problem with 'Jesting Pilate' is that he never stayed around to hear the answer to his infamous question.

The name of the game in the financial media today appears to be the spouting of data to justify a prognostication. I have a view that the G30 itself essentially consists of manufactured credentialists, driven from a long time ago by strong and powerful political elites in countries where democratic transparency has never existed – let's be kind and say: 'never properly existed...'

Nobody is prepared to contradict the 'data' and the spun versions of economic ground truth (as Rumsfeld might say) from groups or people speaking from the platform of G30 membership.

The fifteen seconds of fame and the mantle of the fifteen-second 'wise guru' that is the reward of the damned souls of economic limbo and tv-land virtual reality, includes all of the members of the G30.

To put it simply, my own view is that right now, they have no clue. And it's not a good idea to steer your course by anything they might say.

Certainly they have massive effects on markets of all kinds from moment to moment daily, but that is the same thing as the falling man claiming to be flying as he drops past the 12^th floor of a 13 storey building. Actuality, is critically a different version of the facts.

All of us who are actual professional investors of some kind, whether on behalf of official funds, or privately, must of necessity go back and consult our own waypoints of investing – that is, we must consult our own actual records of what we did, when, and for how much, and examine these in light of actual results. And this is relieved of the dictats of clever and manipulative prognosticants.

Having largely made my own personal biggest plays in the go-go era of the mid to late Eighties, and having necessarily been acutely aware of the types of mindsets abroad at the time, I often told the less experienced not to swing the words integrity and credibility around too much; for one thing I always feared those who made too big a thing about these qualities, and quietly questioned why they did it. For myself, these things are absolute givens and not subject to serious question. Full stop.

A businessman with this suit has integrity.
Soros gets close, which is good enough.

It's certainly not that I have changed my mind now or my view of things or the principles involved, it's just that I can't see modern era politicians and bankers in any other position than one which must be experiencing a sense of vertigo that they cannot admit to having. There is no ground under them, and there are no safe holds for them. The Dow is at great heights and sales and profits are under great question. Circulation velocity is anaemic and the notion of austerity matched to spectacularly unrealistic interest rates and simpering, keening, prognostications about economic growth abound in the mouths of everyone from Stanley Fischer to Bernanke to Dimon and/or Levin.

Notably Soros and Faber and Rogers and the rest of the private investor old guard are saying something else quite different again.

Currently the Yen via Japanese Government Bonds is adjusting what performances can be expected over the short run from Japanese corporates. I expect a phase of stunning and amazing superficial technology presentings to be brought about by the monetary policy currently being unfolded in Japan.

When taking serious market positions I personally tend not to go by particular views about the future, but rather, I structure or 'wind-in' a set of positions based on the immediately obtaining dynamics of the situation.

Mansory Maserati - definitely NOT the banker's version
of Punxutawney Phil's hutch!
Stockbrokers with integrity drive this car.

Thus, if I were to utilise positive revenues from equity upside positioning (adopting what is currently being claimed as the relatively attractive 'equity risk premium') then I would certainly also be positioning myself in low dollar priced long-dated Calls.

I have never been more confident of the directional pull of the existing dynamic tensions. And because of it I am most unlikely to go around making predictions or prognostications about the future or the outcome of markets' trajectories! There is no way I would want to alter what is being offered cheaply right now, just because I happen to have some kind of mathematical calculation that, if seen, would cause Bernanke's carefully-trimmed bearded jaw to drop and Fischer to look for a hole deep down Jackson way to crawl into. Which is where he belongs in the first place. A kind of Punxsutawney Phil of the financial world.

Calvin J. Bear

Hot Chillies, Hot Money

With very many things in this life, words and their meanings have a great significance on the likely outcomes of any venture! Stick a really hot chilli in your mouth and YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN IN THE PAIN AND DISCOMFORT! Doesn't matter what the public egging-on conned you to try.

Take the phrase 'precious metals.' Precious to whom? To the guy who wants to sell it to get cash money? To the obsessed person who wants to horde it?

It's part of this typical modern generalised nomenclature that means just about anything anybody wants it to mean! 'The precious metals markets...' What is that? I don't know.

Whenever gold does a sudden backwards summersault, the top end advisers bring out this idea that well, it only ever was insurance against some kind of cataclysmic event in the paper currency world – and of course, everyone knows that you have to pay for insurance, and the small percentage of time during which the gold price was down is how you 'pay for that insurance' overall. Or some variation on that argument.

The important thing to watch for is if ever there is a falling-out between members of this all-pervading global cartel of paper currency printing and political elite. Just as what happens when a rigged horse race suddenly comes unstuck for any number of possible reasons, the rich owners and powerful bookies all run for cover and get this look on their faces similar to Bruce Banner's Hulkian colour change.

Which leads me to what I really want to post about: the 'world's hottest curry...'

Ghost Pepper - world's hottest, they say...

In England, the 'world's hottest curry' idea is based around the 'world's hottest chilli' idea – which relates to what is called the 'Bhut Jolokia' ghost pepper chilli. By official accounts, this thing can rate up to six million Scovile units. Which is great and all and I have seen the YouTube video clips showing a few english lads and one famous doctor undertaking the adventure of consuming a plate of the world's hottest curry made using six of these super hot chillies.

Now I grew up in a kitchen full of Tamilian people who knew stuff from days of yore. Everybody who cooks traditionally, using chillies, knows that as soon as you cook them, you tone down the heat. Not that I am rubbishing what these english fellows are saying or doing – just that you can get a curry up to even higher (if you want to do that) heights of 'chilli power!'

Bhut Jolokia chillies are firstly, not the hottest chillies in the world – but there is absolutely no way that I am going to say which are – DHS might prevent people from acquiring them. Any of the really super hot chillies – Jolokias, Nai bird's eye, even certain Scotch Bonnets, are so potent that the steam off them will blind you if you get too close to the plants when the chillies are ripening in hot sun. And by the way, I don't tell lies here so if you check up about it you will find that what I am saying is the plain truth. The steam alone, will burn your eyes badly, and you won't be able to see properly for a day at least. Police and military pepper spray is not significantly more potent than what you can extract from a Bhut Jolokia.

However people – including the police – are confusing the effects of capsaicin, with other compounds that produce the longer term burning sensations when you actually ingest certain 'hot' natural substances. What produces the truly hottest HOT curry, is the combined effects of ginger and black pepper. Whilst in the case of chillies, odorant (smell) compounds from off chillies produce a sensation of pungency so strong when in combination with the capsaicin in the chilli, that you can think the experience is overwhelmingly burning.

But, simple though it sounds, putting too much ginger in a curry together with fresh ground black pepper, will utterly destroy the eater in a way that will send that person to hospital. Adding real fresh uncooked Jolokia chillies after you have cooked the curry and are ready to serve it, will produce an odorant gas that will literally burn your face before you get the spoon to your mouth.

Of course, those who can eat a curry like a proper Indian – with your fingers and not with a fork and spoon – will not marvel as to why some Indians have very red tongues and very pink skin on the sub-liminal faces of their skin.

...And what does all of this have to do with money. W-e-ll, I'll tell you. Eating at the spiked monetary curry table of the Fed, or the ECB, is like those english lads laughing and falling about when they are testing the 'world's hottest curry.' Yes, it's hot. And no I personally would not necessarily try it. Some people say the english doctor hallucinated in the middle of his 'hottest curry' adventure, although he claims not. Hallucination, wild and exaggerated claims, and a lot of knock-about humour, is however, closely equatable with attempts of the Fed and others, to manufacture value from out of nonsense. The yardstick of value – and values – is distinctly different, from what the Fed has any brains to think about, in terms of creating and sustaining economic growth in a worthwhile society of human beings.

'Worthwhile,' and 'human,' being very key words.

Jaguar customized in Iran by designer Hossein Yekta.
No special reason for pic!

The Australian economist Ross Garnaut, who was tasked with the Australian Carbon Tax report, recently commented that central banks had been arranging the flow of low interest 'money' into economies pressured by conditions that could have led to a Depression and had thus averted such a thing (I'm freely quoting him, but it's close enough). However the thing they are required to do is arrange the flow of CREDIBILITY into governments, banks, financial ventures, stock markets, politics, and risk/reward situations. And failure to admit that THIS, is in fact THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL, is going to wind up with a visitation of fate befalling all those knock-about lads pretending to know what it is all about when it comes to economics.

For if a government lacks credibility, and they resort to the power of their enforcement arms to have their way, they automatically lose the moral authority that allows them to have a government at all. We in the West have pillaged much from Ancient Greece, and have yet forgotten that the Greeks also invented anarchy. Anarchy actually simply means not having one overarching government for all and thus forcing each individual to be his own government for himself. In this situation, tell me, what is the form of money that you will be prepared to use and can rely will work for you?

Singleton's Error

Unlike too many other money arenas these days – certainly unlike the Stockmarket trading floors, any poker games or pool-halls – horse racing still affords one the opportunity of being able to watch human psychology in a financial crucible.

The biggest news in Australia and anywhere 'horse racing-land,' right now is the seemingly quite acrimonious split between one of the world's greatest horse trainers, Gai Waterhouse, and one of the world's wealthiest advertising barons, John Singleton.

The genuinely great trainer Gai Waterhouse

I'm afraid not too many people will know that Singleton's reach is certainly as far as New York and Hollywood, since his public profile is largely limited to Sydney, Australia. But then, not too many people would also know that Gai Waterhouse was once an actress in London, who appeared next to Tom Baker's Dr. Who, among a few successful productions.

Max Presenell, who in my view is also one of the world's best racing journalists, gave a fairly detailed description of what transpired at Sydney's Randwick racecourse last Saturday, and it was such a sorry tale that I am embarrassed on behalf of anything to do with Aussie horse racing to recount it completely.

Max is too nice of a man to cast any one side into deep darkness but I am driven more by what the human psychology aspects are and so, I will certainly underscore Singleton's stilted vision in the matter.

He is of course, at present complaining either that his horse More Joyous was not allowed to run on its merits, or, alternatively, that the mare shouldn't have raced that day at all and that the trainer, Waterhourse wasn't being transparent at all times about the situation due to a 'conflict of interest.'

I don't know anything about what really happened, personally. Singleton is complaining that he punted $300,000 and would have placed $600,000 on his horse but for a rumour from 'good friends' advising him that Waterhouse's son Tom Waterhouse, one of Randwick's leading bookmakers, had told friends that the horse could not win.

Wags have already commented that Tom Waterhouse doesn't have any friends. And that may be true!

However, the mare is a rising 7-year old, who has already won almost 5 million dollars under the training of Gai Waterhouse and no one that I know of who is experienced in horse racing would have suggested this mare had any chance to win this day at all no matter what else was going on.

John Singleton also says that the poor public ought to have been told before the race that the horse was experiencing some sort of issue which might have affected her running up to her best.

I feel for John. He just blew $300,000 on a racing bet and clearly he needs his head examined for a lot of things. I'm sure Disability Services Australia or some children's hospital could have shown him a good time for half this kind of money.

However, for all of us who are just as focussed on the implications of understanding the value of mercantile money that John clearly has shown, albeit with him in an excessively exuberant way – let me set a certain matter on the table:

Investing too heavily in one side of an expected financial outcome, always affects the risk/return ratio. And therein lies the lesson which may be extrapolated to parts elsewhere. And I will say just this, but I will make it perfectly clear in an upcoming post – the gold market is under this same kind of mistaken weight of dumb money right now.



Euro horse Frankel

Just as an aside, foreign horses from the UK or Europe, are ridden in a different style to the way Australian jockeys ride. These horses are very hard ridden with an idea that they are extremely robust, and often also because the ground is heavy in Europe, they lift their front legs up too high and are pounded down heavily by their riders on the firmer turf over here still using the same 'up and down' post riding - with the ultimate consequence of many a horse going lame.

 

Calvin J. Bear

Esta Tarde

“Esta tarde se me va, toca me...”

These are lyrics from a great 90's trance/dance track by Fragma, called 'Toca Me.'

No one seems to be able to agree exactly on what these words are intended to mean, but that are something like: 'as the afternoon is slipping away, touch me.'

The rest of the words are mostly in english and say – 'Let me tell-a you, I need a miracle, I need a miracle; it's more physical what I need(!)'

...I think it's completely pointless pursuing any line of idea to do with the mess the world is in right now – be it anything to do with central banks, or government economic policy, or even national security, or all those crazy ideologies that end up killing and severely injuring people. Wherever they really come from.

The Fermian was a white wine, though

One of the people I thoroughly despised when reading about him in ancient Roman history, was Sulla. And yet I believe it was some close relative of his, Faustus, I seem to recall, who managed to maintain the best vinyards throughout all the disturbed years of Sulla, and make the best wine, as legend goes, of all time – namely the Faustian Fermian.

Now I'll tell you something about wine that almost no one else knows.

Dopamine is not the neuroselector for the enjoyment of wine – even though you will read from many learned places that it is. Wine, of course, goes nowadays for extreme prices in China – even now that there is something of an economic pullback – and it is difficult for those with an ordinary budget to acquire those big name wines from France, in particular. One day, soon, or not so soon, depending on several things, but one day eventually, all those purple prose words written about wines will be made to look like the foolish things they always were.

I mean there is a huge industry of wine enjoyment, let's say wine appreciation, and no one is in a hell-bent hurry to change the basis for talking about how the human brain perceives the enjoyment of wine.

But indulge me and I will just now paint a particular picture for you, and I assure you, that by following reasonably precisely yourself, the time-line of events, and the salient sensory details described, you will suddenly find, even a bottle of sparkling water, flavoured with flower petals and castor sugar, will take on an ethereal grace...

Lili Marlenes

Lately I have taken to walking the streets around my neighbourhood, occasionally with my dog, occasionally not – but in all events, deliberately past a certain front yard that has a simply perfect lawn, and about ten rose flushes growing from their ten separate straight single stock posts, carefully cultivated and tended over the many months necessary. Even before I turn the bend in the short street, I can sense the rose scent. This is not like that pink Bulgarian rose essence that you buy in bottles – which has its own place I guess – but it is a darker though lilting, and diffuse on the breeze, hint of something both mysterious and possibly miraculous, and not easy to grasp.

Here's a line from out of a great piece of literature by Arturo Perez Reverta: 'like a hummingbird, money is fast, fascinating, elusive...'

Like the scent of these Lili Marlene roses.

You must, simply must, imbibe a great wine in very special surroundings. And you must wait, at the very minimum forty minutes before letting a drop touch your lips when you have opened the vessel. Whether it is the unique and magnificent Seppeltsfield 100 year old Para – which is Australia's most expensive wine, not the Penfold's Grange Hermitage, by the way – or a 200 year old Tokaji, and you know what, if at all possible, you must either give a bit of it to someone else, or best of all, have another person give you the wine specially.

You might not be able to have music especially playing for you, but you will at least try to imagine it. Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov. And for those very adventurous among us – Lauge: Sandslottet.

And at around 1:44 on the adventurous music track, you will begin to feel a bit strange.

Of course it depends on how clear your neuralnet pathways are, and how used they are to these kinds of experiences, but by 4.50, chemicals in the wine will commence their effects. It's not all about the alcohol either. And here's one of the key secrets – alcohol's effect on brain perceptions is that it moves the temporal signals around, sometimes inverting the wavesignals, sometimes altering the beat-pattern, with the potential effect, but not always (which is why sometimes, experiences seem less 'interesting,') of binaurality. Alcohol does more than just affect the physiology; it affects the electro-chemical nerve signals.

And if you are daring enough to program something like Sysyphe's 'Sinking' next, you will certainly know all about it later!

New Currencies

My kid's music teacher was very impressed when I mouthed off a few things I knew about the main eras in musical composition. A few days after that she came up to me and asked if I could write something for her that she could use in her class.

Basically, I had mentioned simple stuff like that there was a time when the piano keyboard had fewer keys, and that the Romantic era followed from the end of the Wars with Napoleon and was about people becoming sick of the destruction and misery of war and turning to happier themes.

One interesting thing though is that a lot of musical styles followed particular economic migration: the Baroque proceeded from the economic power of navigation and the enhanced trading that occurred thereby. The Portuguese held navigation maps as secrets of state, and the word 'baroque' is a Portuguese word to do with their excessively lavish embellishments of pearls with gold ornamentation all of which was enabled by the wealth their map-making brought them.

A Portuguese Musician

A further detail is that composers possessed valuable things more than just their music alone – because the paper on which they wrote down the note scores was always very expensive bank ledger stock, and this was valuable in its own right, and could be sold whether it had notes on it or not!

When you look at what might constitute new forms of currency, you must consider that art and the quality of artefact, has almost as much to do with enshrining value in people's minds as anything else. A lot of people make the mistake of continually thinking during a major economic decline that absolutely nobody has money but that is completely incorrect. And then you have to realise that people who do have money in a general decline typically start to really prize preservation of all kinds. And that, for instance, is who buys tiny little, yet historically-important, and also very beautiful, things of extremely dense value such as the 1924 Australian sixpenny coin. Bankers, economic criminal masterminds, retired corrupt bureaucrats – all those kinds of people. The New Age movement often asks 'why do bad things happen to good people?' But I ask things like, 'can good money come from bad people?' Or, 'do bad people know what good and beautiful things are?'

Eighty thousand dollars

I say all of this just as things to think about, as we enter the time when new currencies are indeed developing in the wider marketplace. But they are most unlikely to be the ones which currently appear to have captivated the attention of the media...