Is chess non-violent war?

Does the player who doesn’t make the last mistake usually win?

After the game

the king and pawn go into the same box

Italian proverb

The more captured opposing pieces the less risk

and vice versa

Do some football running backs fake left and go right

to mislead the defense to commit in the wrong direction?

All warfare is based on deception

…when able to attack we must seem unable

when using our forces we must seem inactive

when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far…

when far away, we must make him believe we are near

Sun Tzu

Allen Johnson: "Alston, a member of the powerful Simkins PAC, is not-so-subtly suggesting political payback if they don’t go along with his group’s proposal. "

"...Melvin “Skip” Alston’s involvement as a broker for investors seeking to renovate a near-derelict shopping center on Phillips Avenue made citizens in that northeast Greensboro community visibly wary.

Some say they simply don’t trust Alston, the former longtime county commissioner who was known for his hardball politics.

...The city tentatively has chosen clients represented by Alston to resuscitate the center and eventually own it.

Complicating matters are allegations from some City Council members that Alston, a member of the powerful Simkins PAC, is not-so-subtly suggesting political payback if they don’t go along with his group’s proposal.

The PAC endorses local and state candidates, and Alston is one of its leaders. [Treasurer]

“I believe there was the implication that if we didn’t support them there’d be negative consequences in November,” said Councilwoman Nancy Vaughan, who plans to run for mayor. “Those words were not directly used, but they were implied.”

Another council member, Marikay Abuzuaiter, gave a similar account.

“He said I seriously needed to think about voting for the project with his developers because I needed to think about the election in the fall, and the Simkins PAC would be very upset if I didn’t vote for his developer. It was pretty devastating.”

...in 2010 Alston was accused by Vaughan, then-Mayor Bill Knight and then-Councilman Danny Thompson of using similar tactics as a broker for investors who wanted to build a new downtown hotel...

...Alston flatly denies any threats, implied or otherwise.

"You name me one person that’ll come to me and say that” he said last week.

How about two? Vaughan and Abuzuaiter held fast, even following phone calls from Alston challenging what each had said. “I’m still not going to lie about it,” Abuzuaiter said. “It happened, and I was shaken up by it. Why would I cook something up? I was so upset I called the city attorney.”

Added Vaughan: “I stand by what I said.”

The city tentatively has agreed to sell the center for $490,000, plus to provide a [forgivable] $2 million loan (a sweet deal) to Alston’s clients, Renaissance Center of Greensboro, which would in turn renovate the center, lease part of it to the co-op and donate additional space to the community.

Either way, here’s hoping the impasse, and Alston’s overly aggressive tactics, don’t jeopardize prospects for the co-op’s success.

[Alston] should stop threatening people.

Alston reminded a caller last week that he’s not an elected official anymore.

But, make no mistake, he’s still a politician.

Allen Johnson

I believe money is fungible

Fungible means interchangeable.

The word comes into play
when (inter alia) earmarked funds end up in a general account.

These funds are then free to be used for purposes other than intended.

Example: You would like to go on a vacation but you have unpaid car repair bills.

A wealthy uncle hears that you are having financial trouble and sends money to help.

However, he would never have agree to pay for your vacation
–- he’s nice, but not that nice.

Once your uncle’s money is deposited into your checking account,
you are free to spend it as you please.

You then get to pay off your bills and go on vacation.

In essence, you paid your bills (a necessity) while your uncle funded your vacation.

http://blog.mises.org/archives/007321.asp#

Fungibility

Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity

whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution.

Examples of highly fungible commodities [like oil] 

are ...currencies.

It refers only to the ease of exchanging one unit of a commodity

with another unit of the same commodity.

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility

Word for the day: Fungible

Mark Pittman (October 25, 1957 - November 25, 2009) was a financial journalist covering corporate finance and derivative markets.

The Federal Reserve

CFA Asset Manager Code of Professional Conduct: General Principles of Conduct

Accountability

"Saying it's not your fault you crashed the ship into the rock
because the rock was underwater and hidden
nobody could have seen it coming loses its force
when you are navigating in waters that are known to be rocky.

Even if you have the latest sonar based upon fancy, innovative math
that is supposed to detect the rock before you hit it
and even if regulators were supposed to clearly map and mark all danger
if you hit it anyway,
there's a reason why captains are expected to go down with
or at best be the last ones off – the ship.

It ensures they'll do all they can to avoid hitting it in the first place."

Mark Thoma
The Professionals are not being Held Accountable
Economists View

Don’t say you can if you can’t, say you’re going to and not,

be a very good bad example, think you know what you don’t,

do what you don’t understand,

sacrifice future unhappiness for an unnecessarily pleasant present,

underestimate irrationality, offend many to benefit few,

and not hold yourself and others accountable.

Perkins, Carroll and Kotis Linkfest

Greensboro CIty Council Member Robbie Perkins Text Messages to Developer Roy Carroll During Council Meeting, Any Ethical Questions?

Kieth Brown

Triadwatch, December 22, 2009

Percolating a New City Scandal

Joe Guarino

Guarino, December 21, 2009

Roy Carroll's Company + City of Greensboro are Defendents in a Court Case

Kieth Brown

Triadwatch, July 16, 2009

City of Greensboro City Council Candidate Information Request I

George Hartzman

Questions for America, July 17th, 2009

On City of Greensboro City Council Agenda Items 10, 11 and 15

George Hartzman

Questions for America, November 6, 2009

.

.

Horsepen Village Commercial, LLC

Martin Ware

Vie de Malchance, July 17th, 2009

Greensboro and Carroll company co-defendants in lawsuit

Roch Smith

Roch 101, July 17th, 2009

Monte Carlo

… a "Monte Carlo" simulation, commonly used in financial planning

estimates the odds of reaching retirement financial goals.

 

Though these tools typically run through hundreds or thousands of potential market scenarios,

they often assign minuscule odds to extreme market events.

 

Yet these extreme events seem to be happening more often.

 

If causes, actions or winners have effects, reactions or losers

and A is caused, allowed, accelerated, held back or prevented

is it better to pre-think what could happen to B, C and D

than not?

 

The questions about Monte Carlo tools

reflect broader concerns about mathematical models

for gauging portfolio risks

 

These models were supposed to help quantify and manage the risks

of...complex instruments

 

If achievement takes less time with a rational plan

can you get farther faster than those without

and vice versa?

 

But given the events of the past couple of years

it appears that the models often gave big institutions

as well as small investors, a false sense of security

 

Critics emphasize that the problem isn't Monte Carlo itself

but the assumptions that go into it

 

If some financial estimates and hypothetical illustrations

assume perpetual levels of varying data

can probability be manipulated?

 

Is the present you the only who

who’s going to care for the future you?

 

 

Since no standard approach exists

one user might plug in a range of assumptions on interest rates

inflation or volatility that is different from another user

 

Some industry participants and academics

are pushing for Monte Carlo tools to more clearly illustrate

the scarier scenarios

 

Eleanor Laise

The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2009

 

If there are at least 15,000 professional American Economists

and less than 1% foresaw the financial crisis

and many mathematical based financial prognostications

were relatively useless

which if left in place

could negatively affecting the future

should some try to fix what’s probably broken?

What is a Kleptocracy?

…while stimulus may have helped avert crisis, the process made clear that crony capitalism is alive and well.

…more stratified, more complex societies are in essence Kleptocracies, where those in power re-distribute societal wealth to themselves. Those at the bottom of the society’s pyramid accept this unequal, non-egalitarian state of affairs because they too benefit from their society’s relative advancement.

…The key is to…gain popular support in order to re-distribute as much wealth to the ruling class as the populace will support.

…as the stability of the economic status quo disintegrates into instability via economic depression, you should expect the ruling elite to step up uses of these methods of retaining power…
…[Jared] Diamond says the Kleptocrats maintain power using 4 different methods:

“1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite.” [GH: Financially]

“2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways.” [GH: Medicare Part D, Social Security, Health Care “Reform”, Cash for Clunkers, Tax Cuts, Stimulus Legislation etc…]

“3. Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence.” [GH: Bailouts, unemployment benefit extensions and foreclosure assistance has limited crime]

“4. The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy.” [GH: Propaganda saturated mass media information dissemination]
…over time the natural tendency of any ruling elite is to deploy the state’s coercive power for greater and greater self-benefit…

If the ruling class takes too much, it will be overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class (which in turn will re-distribute wealth to itself using the same four methods)…

…The question is whether this should be tolerated, mitigated or eliminated.

…My understanding is that scientific studies have convincingly demonstrated that human beings will actually consciously disadvantage themselves to seek revenge as a means of restoring justice and fairness.

…in the real world, fairness and justice are important…And when an economic system is deemed unfair, people will go so far as to hurt themselves economically in order to level the playing field.

…Overreach has been the order of the day and will ultimately invite an opposing response.

Edward Harrison
Credit Writedowns

Why would an anesthesiologist manufacture positive results in some pain medication studies?

¶

A New Low in Drug Research: 21 Fabricated Studies

by Sarah Rubenstein

 

Should those who test medicine

receive speaking fees and research grants

from those who want to sell what passes tests?

 

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients

…and never do harm to anyone

                     

In every house where I come

 I will enter only for the good of my patients

keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing

 

Hippocratic Oath

Are rising financial markets in the best interests of the financial news industry?

 

Sales of new homes rose in February

for the first time in seven months

…another sign that the housing market is thawing

 

New-Home Sales Rise 4.7%

The Wall Street Journal

March 26, 2009

Why would a mainstream news story entitled

New-Home Sales Rise 4.7%

not mention year over year sales were down 41%

or that January 2009 new home sales fell 10%

to the lowest level since reporting began in 1963

48.2% below January 2008 estimates?

 

Who controls the past controls the future

 

Who controls the present controls the past

 

George Orwell

If $100 loses 50% and then rises 5%

how should most feel about having $52.50 instead of $100

after enduring conjured platitudes?

 

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed

 

 If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed

 

Mark Twain

Same thing only different?

 Civilization is unbearable

 but it is less unbearable at the top

 

Timothy Leary

If after a community of monkeys

were trained to exchange pebbles for cucumbers

a select group got better tasting grapes

 

the cucumber earning monkeys stopped gathering pebbles

in response to perceived unfairness

 

and exhibited hostility

when some received grapes for doing nothing

 

are some humans responding the same way

to perceived injustices in response to economic distress

only differently?

 

You Call That Fair?

Discover Magazine

September, 2003

 

Is liberty dependent on limits for some

to provide minimal rights for others?

 

An imbalance between rich and poor

is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics

 

Plutarch

If need is sustenance and a temperate climate

 

and modern society’s social contract

is do not do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you

unless you need to

 

have a few at the top broken society’s social contract

with the many underneath?

Can freedom and economic optimization be simultaneous?

The less people know about how sausages and laws are made

 the better they’ll sleep at night

 

Otto von Bismark

If politicians can’t be bought

and lobbyists only support politically compatible candidates

without expectations of quid pro quo

 

after donating nearly $20 million to federal elections since 1989

why would a homebuilding association

publicly announce a donation cessation following failed legislation

that would have allowed builders to use current losses

to recoup past paid taxes

 

and why was similar legislation reintroduced the next day?

Could many who believe the government should pledge to tax ever larger portions of their children’s future income to prevent the failure of insolvent businesses, be indirectly advocating a political system other than capitalistic democracy?

Capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all

but a kind of socialism for the rich

 

James Grant

 

 

Does intervention delay real recovery?

 

If capitalism is dependent on creative destruction, what is it without destruction?

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter
popularized and used the term to describe the process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation

 

…innovative entry by entrepreneurs was the force that sustained long-term economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies

that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power

 

Creative Destruction

Wikipedia

 

If most economists still believe in the concepts that discounted the possibilities of the financial crisis, should economic policy rely on the same prognosticators who helped enable the worst financial distress since the Great Depression for economic tactics and forecasting?

 

The process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within,  incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one ...

 

[The process] must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction, it cannot be understood on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull

 

Joseph Schumpeter

The Process of Creative Destruction, 1942

 

If the natural cycle of laissez faire capitalism revolves between risk and aversion, what should happen if government intervention perverts the process

to forestall short term economic pain?

 

What should the electorate expect

from leadership dependent on the status quo?

 

Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act

 

George Orwell

Must Read: David Brooks on Financial Self-Restraint

Financial self-restraint should be America's next culture crusade

 

Centuries ago, historians came up with a classic theory to explain the rise and decline of nations. The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.

 

"Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity," John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, warning against the coming corruption of his country.

 

… despite the country's notorious materialism, there has always been a countervailing stream of sound economic values. The early settlers believed in Calvinist restraint. The pioneers volunteered for brutal hardship during their treks out west. Waves of immigrant parents worked hard and practiced self-denial so their children could succeed. Government was limited and did not protect people from the consequences of their actions, thus enforcing discipline and restraint.

 

When economic values did erode, the ruling establishment tried to restore balance. After the Gilded Age, Theodore Roosevelt (who ventured west to counteract the softness of his upbringing) led a crackdown on financial self-indulgence. The Protestant establishment had many failings, but it was not decadent. The old WASPs were notoriously cheap, sent their children to spartan boarding schools, and insisted on financial sobriety.

 

Over the past few years, however, there clearly has been an erosion in the country's financial values…in the three decades between 1950 and 1980, personal consumption was remarkably stable, amounting to about 62 percent of GDP. In the next three decades, it shot upward, reaching 70 percent of GDP in 2008.

 

During this period, debt exploded. In 1960, Americans' personal debt amounted to about 55 percent of national income. By 2007, Americans' personal debt had surged to 133 percent of national income.

 

…Our current cultural politics are organized by the obsolete culture war, which has put secular liberals on one side and religious conservatives on the other. But the slide in economic morality afflicted Red and Blue America equally.

 

If there is to be a movement to restore economic values, it will have to cut across the current taxonomies. Its goal will be to make the United States again a producer economy, not a consumer economy.

 

It will have to take on what you might call the lobbyist ethos -- the righteous conviction held by everybody from AARP to the agribusinesses that their groups are entitled to every possible appropriation, regardless of the larger public cost. It will have to take on the self-indulgent popular demand for low taxes and high spending.

 

A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances...that are now deemed politically impossible. But this sort of moral revival is what the country actually needs.

 

David Brooks

The New York Times, September 30, 2009

http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/09/29/article/david_brooks_financial_self_restraint_should_be_americas_next_culture_cru

Lawrence Lessing on Systemic Denial at the Roosevelt Institute’s “Make Markets Be Markets” conference.

Systemic Denial

…things are actually much worse than anyone ever talks about. The pivot points of our financial system -- the infrastructure that lets free markets produce real wealth -- have become profoundly corrupted. Balance sheets are "fictions," as Professor Frank Partnoy put it. Trillions of dollars in liability hide behind these fictions. And… practically every one of the design flaws that led to the collapse of the past few years remains essentially unchanged within our financial system still…

…Expert after expert spoke as if the problems we faced were simple math errors. As if regulators had just miscalculated, like a pilot who accidentally overshoots the run way, or an engineer who mis-estimates the weight of cargo on a plane. And so, because these were mere errors, people spoke as if these errors could be corrected by a bunch of good ideas.

...Again and again, we were led back to a frame of bad policies that smart souls could correct. At least if "the people" could be educated enough to demand that politicians do something sensible.

This is a profound denial. The gambling…was caused by a corruption of the system by which we regulate those markets. No true theorist of free markets -- and certainly none of the heroes of even the libertarian right -- believe that infrastructure markets like financial systems can be left free of any regulation, including the regulation of rules against fraud. Yet that ignorant anarchy was the precise rule that governed a large part of our financial system. And not by accident: An enormous amount of political influence was brought to bear on the regulators of these core institutions of a free market to get them to turn a blind eye to Wall Street's "innovations." People who should have known better yielded to this political pressure. Smart people did stupid things because "the politics" of doing right was impossible.

Why was their no political return from sensible policy?

The answer is so obvious that one feels stupid to even remark it. Politicians are addicts. Their dependency is campaign cash. And in their obsessive search for campaign funds, they let these funders convince them that for the first time in capitalism's history, markets didn't need the basic array of trust-producing regulation. They believed this insanity because it made it easier for them -- in good faith -- to accept the money and steer financial policy over the cliff.

…We need to admit our (democracy's) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won't have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns.

…until we solve that (eminently solvable) problem, we won't make any progress in making America's finances safe again.

Lawrence Lessig
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Co-founder of Change Congress

Dylan Ratigan on Crony Capitalism

…As Americans, I believe we reject Communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice.

 …a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

 And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.

If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

 …those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.

 Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws…, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.

 The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.

Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don't adapt fail and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.

The concept of Communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems -- and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government...so why are we standing for it now?

 Dylan Ratigan, Host of "Morning Meeting" on MSNBC, and "Freedom Talk" on WABC Radio

If there were far fewer illegal immigrants during the economic turmoil of the 1970’s, should there be more or less anti-immigrant friction as economic volatility and unemployment increases?

Illegal Workers Swept From Jobs in ‘Silent Raids’
 
The Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and farms …with sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers.
 
While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported.
 
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures.
 
What do the worlds religious texts and traditions
suggest the authorities do about illegal immigration?
 
…The audits force businesses to fire every suspected illegal immigrant on the payroll— not just those who happened to be on duty at the time of a raid — and make it much harder to hire other unauthorized workers as replacements. 

 

 
If hiring illegal aliens increases business profitability
at the expense of legal workers
have low skilled immigrant workers
lowered poorly educated American’s income? 

 
…“Instead of hundreds of agents going after one company, now one agent can go after hundreds of companies,” said Mark K. Reed, president of Border Management Strategies…
 
…Employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work, that Americans continue to shun despite the recession. 
  

Have overextended unemployment benefits
artificially reduced demand for low paying, labor intensive agricultural work? 

 
…Immigrant advocates said they are surprised and frustrated with Mr. Obama, after seeing an increase in enforcement activity since he took office. “It would be easier to fight if it was a big raid,” said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, a group in Seattle. “But this is happening everywhere and often.”  

.
 
If you were Superman
what would you do about illegal immigration? 

Julia Preston
New York Times, Saturday, July 9, 2010 

If my theory of relativity is proven successful
Germany will claim me as a German
and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world
 
Should my theory prove untrue
France will say that I am a German
and Germany will declare that I am a Jew
 
Albert Einstein